Kavanaugh had a bad steak dinner at Morton’s.

We're going to apply your logic to a Presidential candidate. John Smith decides to follow the Democratic presidential candidate to every single campaign stop to protest on the sidewalk outside his events because he thinks that candidate supports the killing of babies. According to you, he's breaking the law. According to me, the First Amendment protects his right to protest.

 

That is not the same thing. Public events where the public is invited are not the same as private events or activities like eating dinner at a restaurant, driving your kids home from school, or going fishing with your son.

You conflating this with something like following a band around the country while they're touring is completely disingenuous.

 

It is the same thing. Some campaign events are private events. The protestor certainly cannot enter and refuse to leave a private event where he's not allowed, but he can protest outside on the public sidewalk. There's no "eating dinner at a restaurant" exception in the First Amendment.

 

There's also no "yelling fire in a movie theater" exception written in the First Amendment, nor is there a "loud music at 3:00 a.m." exception written in the First Amendment, nor is there a "malicious lies" exception written in the First Amendment... yet we have laws that restrict all of the aforementioned that are all but universally seen as non-infringing of First Amendment liberties.

I also love how you're suddenly a bad textualist.

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/nationa...g-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/

Besides that, you're misunderstanding my point. We have the same exact behavior in both circumstances. You're saying what distinguishes between constitutionally protected protest and unprotected protest is the nature of the event. And that's simply not correct.

 

It's not as simple as merely location, but the event/location contextualizes the action and whether it falls within a First Amendment protection.

Lining up outside the Courthouse saying "you will pay for this" is obviously not the same as surrounding a person (even on a public sidewalk) being inches in front of them saying "you will pay for this."

What else would time, manner, and place mean, gator_lawyer? You're just substituting "place" for "event."

 

Merrick Garland is failing in his duty to protect Supreme Court justices

The federal statute, 18 U.S. Code §1507, makes it illegal to try to “influence” a justice, judge, or juror by demonstrating outside the person’s residence. Such demonstrations threaten judicial independence by intimidating jurists and disturbing their neighbors, but the worst part is that they create potential threats to a jurist's family.

Supreme Court precedent has held that First Amendment speech protections are not violated by mild public-safety-motivated restrictions on where and how political protests may be conducted.

 

Let them eat steak!

 

You can keep talking in circles. It's not going to change the reality here. You can't use stalking laws to prevent people from nonviolently protesting government officials in public forums. Morton's is in downtown D.C. a few blocks from the White House. You're simply wrong if you think that protestors aren't allowed to demonstrate on the public sidewalk outside the restaurant. There is no time, place, or manner law preventing that.

 

Unsurprisingly, it's a right-wing rag. Neither federal nor state law enforcement (Maryland and Virginia both have Republican governors) are enforcing the residential picketing laws out of concern that it would violate the First Amendment. If the oligarchs don't like sowing what they've reaped, they're welcome to resign from the Supreme Court.

 

Begging the question.

 

Either you don't understand the history or, more likely, you're too weak to admit the truth of it. Repubs exploited the split in the Dem party with the so called Southern Strategy, appealing to racist white southerners, leading to southern whites becoming solidly Republican. That's just basic history.

 

Come on, Dangole, it's not like the voting bloc (Southern white conservatives) that used to support the segregationists in the Democratic Party are voting Republican now. That's why Democrats still dominate the conservative white vote in states like Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia. Wait, hold on, no, you're right.

 

Several years ago, I went to DC for work. I get off the metro and see a crowd forming around a restaurant. Turns out Obama was going out to dinner with Michelle.



I’m sure some of these folks had nice things to say. Others not as nice. But they were all allowed to be there. No one pushed them away or arrested them or told them the sidewalk of a restaurant is off limits to either protest or praise. Even with the President inside. Obama dealt with it, ate his dinner, and moved on. That’s just life as a high profile politician in America.

Kavs may not like the attention he is getting, but no one forced him to become an influential government official. He sought that out, and this is the sort of stuff that comes with the territory. He has a right to not be threatened or attacked. He doesn’t have the right to be free of criticism, even in public places he’d rather not see it.

 

Earlier in this thread, I pushed back on the idea of bounty type approach to protest. I am not a big fan of intimidation because I don’t see it as being all that effective.

Reading the arguments folks made here is somewhat compelling. I’m not completely on board… but the more I read about the subversive way the “Christian” Right has privately met with SCOTUS justices and influenced them, the less I feel compelled to defend them. I think Pete had a good response. He articulated the correct interpretation. The SCOTUS judges really are the elite class the Right keeps railing against.

 

What is the law that bans what these protestors did?

 

How can you read the text of those laws and not see that there is a bounty offered to those who report abortions? Sure, there is not a more specific bounty offered to those who report abortions by 10 year-olds, but that doesn't change that those bounties in these laws apply to abortions by 10 year-olds.

 

The southern strategy in a nutshell is for Republican elites to use “social issues” in order to distract the rubes, getting them riled up against (choose from enemy of the day: blacks, immigrants, trannies, Jews, same sex-marriage, Muslims, CRT, abortion ) and get them voting against their own self interest on more substantive issues. It’s amazing how easy it is to get the sheep stuck on one topic and then immediately shift them over to the next one. What makes it worse is in most of these cases, the “side” of the argument they fall on are either basically undermining the constitutional rights of these “out groups” or are at best pissing into the wind against the realities of the world.

 

It’s amazing how much smarter your side is from all the dimbass pubs. I mean we all keep falling for it.
Fascinating.