Friday, April 06, 2012

A TEA PARTY MARINE AND THE PRESIDENT. A Tea Party marine is facing a dishonorable discharge for superimposing the president's image on two film posters, one Jackass and the other The Incredibles, which he renamed The Horribles and for declaring he would not follow presidential orders if they were illegal, all this within the context of a debate on whether NATO forces should try US military personnel for having burned the Koran.Representative Duncan Hunter,Republican from California, an ex marine, says he knows that this (what? support for book burning? Support for constitutional rights?) is an opinion shared by most marines, even though he hasn't even taken the slightest poll, conducted even a superficial interview, and seems to have decided unilaterally that he can speak for all United States marines. Darrell Issa, other Republican, is in support of not dishonorably discharging the marine, for unknown reasons. The American Civil Liberties Union is concerned that this dismissal for the superimpositions limits free speech rights overall. What I don't understand is why the interest in turning this into a free speech issue for a thought so extreme as that of the tea partiers, who already support anticonstitutional positions like unionbusting for one, instead of investigating who supports the burning of the koran, or bookburnings in general, and determining whether the political ramifications of that though are constitutional, or support equality among all of us. For that matter, there's nothing anticonstitutional about interfaith, but plenty about religious extremisms, and faith is not what the burnings could be about anyway. Why the push to legitimize Tea Party speech, since Republicans are taking up the issue? Why have a Tea Party issue determine whether free speech should be limited or not?

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