On Oct. 6, the justices will weigh whether the First Amendment protects a Kansas church's campaign to publicize its beliefs by picketing military funerals with vulgar placards and insulting fallen soldiers' survivors in online screeds.
The father of a fallen Marine is seeking damages for emotional distress from the church, which believes that God is killing American soldiers to punish the U.S. for its tolerance of homosexuality.
A month later , the court is to consider whether states can bar minors from buying violent videogames, on the theory that these games cause damage to developing minds and this outweighs young people's constitutional rights.
Both cases add digital twists to constitutional doctrine. The church's Internet posting potentially exposes the entire world to its hurtful attack, while the videogame laws single out computer role-playing as uniquely dangerous to children while leaving violent music, films, comic books and other media unrestricted.Meanwhile, what of the emotional distress I've suffered knowing that money that has been stolen from me has been used to pay all manner of hired-killers to go to foreign countries and murder and destroy in the name of "keeping me safe from X", after which I have to hear the "free speech" of these criminals' supporters that they are HEROES (!!)? This "free speech" comes in the form of harangues by public figures on public airwaves and/or at public events.
I also wasn't aware that Constitutional law was about utilitarian trade-offs. I thought the Constitution was legally absolute and insoluble barring an amendment to said law by the People (and their Elected Representatives)? No matter, we have young minds to protect, nevermind how we'll prove that what is potentially lost in ignoring Constitutional protections is less than what is potentially gained in trivial vanities such as shielding young minds from poor influences (says who?).
The Constitution is a legal document that applies to the territorial jursidiction within the imaginary borders of the United States of America. The fact that the Kansas church case is even being considered leads me to believe that the United States federal government now believes its borders encompass the entire globe, otherwise, what does it matter if the church's "screeds" can potentially expose the entire world?
The Constitution, 2010: even more irrelevant to the conduct of American society than it was in 1789.
