A federal judge has permanently barred Arizona from using a state law to prosecute an online merchant who sells shirts that list names of thousands of troops killed in Iraq.
U.S. District Judge Neil Wake did not strike down the 2007 law against selling products that use of military casualties’ names without families’ permission. But he ruled that using the law to prosecute Dan Frazier would violate the Flagstaff man’s First Amendment rights because his “Bush Lied — They Died” shirts are “core political speech.”
“It is impossible to separate the political from the commercial aspects of that display,” Wake wrote. “For example, the state argues that Frazier can sell his shirts without displaying the soldiers’ names. But Frazier’s product is his message, and his customers’ message.”
Arizona’s law was enacted with little debate by the Legislature, and Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas have enacted similar laws.
Don’t you think you wouldn’t have to explain Freedom of Speech every couple of weeks to the goofoffs running the country?
#34, GirlFriend,
First let me clarify that I think you should respect a soldier’s family wish to not be on the shirt. If you want to be an ahole and put it on the shirt go ahead but you’re an ahole in my book.
How many of these families have expressly asked that their kin not be on a T-Shirt. Please supply a link to where this information might be. And please don’t twist it around to where the T-Shirt guy needs to garner permission first, he doesn’t.
Why would honoring a slain person’s name on a T-Shirt make you an “ahole”. Wouldn’t that also make the all those war memorials also “aholes”?
I NEVER said you can not say what you want; where the f%#k did I say that!
I don’t think you read my post #29 very well. Bobbo called you a “dolt” and a “neo-con”. Both are descriptive of your attitude you displayed up to that point. Yet you take him to task and berate him for expressing a truthful thought.
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#37, CZ,
The point of bringing up Abortion was to show the hypocracy of liberal hate. “Killing soldiers is wrong, but go ahead an scrape that fetus out. Free speech is great as long as I agree with what is said.”
So what is wrong with abortions? If they were a living human being I could understand your position and comparison, but a fetus is not a person.
The first is a woman controlling her own body, the second is the loss of life through a lie.
The wing nuts (of which neo-cons are a sub-set) don’t like free speech. They also like to be controlling.
#39, Cow-Paddy,
Yup. Back without anything constructive to add. Again.