A (Canadian?) reader writes:

I have just read in the news of this (a little bit whacky) church group that loudly demonstrates against homosexuality at the funerals for killed military people. They just won their case, it was decided they have the right to express themselves (is it 1st Amendment in the US?). I do not like the manner they are doing it, but it seems to me to be good news: now maybe you and others officially have been declared as having the right to NOT approve! Are you going to have a comment on your blog?

I think my reader is referring to the recent decision that Fred Phelps and his cult of nuts have the right to free speech in shouting “God hates fags” at funerals. Yes, that is a first amendment case and yes, I’m happy that the Court preserves first amendment rights even when evil people like Phelps abuses those rights.

Indeed, I’ve been struck by the recent brouhaha over the weirdo fashion designer who is apparently being brought up on charges in France for some anti-semitic rant he slurred his way through in a French bar. I think it much more sinister that the state inserts itself into what some drunken idiot says in bar than that some drunken idiot in a bar makes a spectacle of himself. Fire him from his job, don’t buy his stuff, treat him with opprobrium: all well and good. But it’s none of the *state’s* business. I regard the first amendment as one of the most precious rights James Madison ever had the foresight to preserve with the force of law.