Sprachen Verboten! By: Mark W Adams

Elections have consequences, and those elections effect future elections -- and your liberty. There simply is no logical reason for the 5-4 split decision on censorship that came down from the Roberts Supreme Court except to say -- they know what they don't like when they see it.

Ahh, the luxury to have a life-time appointment with the power to impose all my petty prejudices and wacky notions of how the world should be run with the stroke of a pen -- no matter how foolishly narrow-minded I come off.

"The message on Frederick's banner is cryptic," Chief Justice John Roberts said. But the school principal who suspended him "thought the banner would be interpreted by those viewing it as promoting illegal drug use, and that interpretation is plainly a reasonable one," Roberts said in the majority opinion.

Cryptic indeed. Just as cryptic as the Court's reasoning when it comes to the other free speech decision it reached, reversing itself on campaign finance so we can be subject to unlimited cryptic messages bearing blatantly false, misleading, and downright offensive political ads by groups permitted to raise and spend unlimited funds to give us all the lies money can buy.

Is it any wonder that more, not less people are believing the lie that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, a staggering 41% of the population actually believe in an alternate reality -- about as many God-fearing folks who believe in the literal truth of the Bible.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Well, okay, there's a bunch of stuff wrong with this, I just don't want to get into it.

But, um .... that makes the point, doesn't it? Surely some kind of law breaking it being advocated by the cryptic picture on the left -- of course Senator Kerry is smiling, so I guess we can rule out rape. (But this just has to be some kind of gross sexual imposition -- it makes me feel gross and imposed upon.)

It seems that when you take the two decisions together, as long as you have high priced corporate lawyers you can say just about anything you want. I doesn't even matter if it's an outright lie. Just claim it's satire and you're golden. However, if you happen to be passionate about an issue and want to get your message out -- like the message that Christ likes the Ganja -- you better set yourself up as a 527 corporation or some kind of PAC before you start unfurling your little bedsheets with unapproved exhortations to grow your hair long and preach peace and love -- because there are different rules for the rich and famous -- and don't you forget it.

For far too long this nation has been run by far too many up-tight white guys. I don't believe for an instant that the Bong Hits For Jesus kids were forbidden to exercise their free speech rights because how they expressed themselves or what (or whatever the hell?) they were trying to say might incite some illegal activity. That's patently weak and foolish. They were censored because they pissed of their betters and their message was deemed unworthy.

The righteous indignation of our Christian elders was offended. How dare these kids take the name or our Lord and Savior and debase it in such a manner. By god, this will teach them. We'll find some way to shut them up and the consequences be damned.

Now seriously folks. Bong Hits For Jesus. That is now and forever a legitimate search query in the data base of United States Supreme Court decisions. Nothing else they could have spent their precious time on that would have been a bit more productive?