A NOTE TO THOSE WHO THINK THIS LACKS VISUALS (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.) VISUALIZE "CONTENT."

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Enter old page, School, Swing, and Other Things

Free Speech Left and Right No pictures here either, just one of my essays.

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The First Amendment guarantees our right to free expression and free association, which means that the government does not have the right to forbid us from saying what we like and writing what we like; we can form clubs and organizations, and take part in demonstrations and rallies. ACLU webpage

The ACLU said prosecutors had incorrectly invoked a rarely used criminal libel statute that makes it a felony to publish statements "tending to blacken the memory of one who is dead, or to impeach the honesty, integrity, virtue, or reputation or expose the natural defects of one who is alive."

"Writing an underground newspaper should not be grounds for sticking a fifteen-year-old with a felony record," said Todd Taylor, a Greeley criminal defense attorney who participated on the ACLU defense team. "This prosecution was overkill from the beginning."

State District Court Judge James H. Hiatt agreed, and granted the ACLU's motion to dismiss the case in an order signed on July 23.

"This ruling is a victory for the First Amendment," said Marcy Glenn of Holland & Hart, who filed briefs in the case as an ACLU volunteer cooperating attorney. "The judge explained that satire, even offensive satire, is expression that is fully protected by the Constitution."

In dismissing the case, Judge Hiatt said that school administrators are public officials and the student's writings were obviously satire. The judge characterized the writing as "scatological, bizarre, puerile, and crude, " but explained that "there is absolute First Amendment protection for statements that cannot reasonably be interpreted as making factual assertions."

As examples of the content, the judge cited insinuations that a school administrator is a lesbian who had an affair with Princess Diana; that 95 percent of all teachers at the high school are involved in sales of illegal drugs; that the principal was caught selling crack to students. Other allegations accused administrators of being members of the KKK and asserted that certain administrators had been seen meeting in the school library dressed in white cloaks and holding Confederate flags.

"The First Amendment forbids the government from treating such satire, parody, or rhetorical hyperbole as a crime," said Mark Silverstein, ACLU Legal Director. "As the court explained, no reasonable reader could believe that the author was seriously making assertions of actual fact that could harm the administrators' reputations." ACLU webpage

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