Scalia Bans Media From "Free Speech" Award
By Mike Hersh, Mar 19, 2003

In a story almost too strange to believe, right wing injustice "Benito" Scalia banned the media from covering a "Free Speech" award!

According to the Associated Press, "Supreme Court Justice [sic] Antonin Scalia banned broadcast media from an appearance Wednesday where he will receive an award for supporting free speech." This is typical 1984 Orwellian lunacy. Honoring someone who is calling for severe limits on free expression as a champion of free speech!

The same article reports that the man who unconstitutionally ordered a halt to the fair, full vote count in Florida says we have too many freedoms and denies the Constitution prevents government from cracking down on dissent. As Bush drags us into war, Scalia seems overly eager to finish off what's left of our Constitutional rights.

Scalia's view of the Constitution is extremist, frightening and wrong: "The Constitution just sets minimums,'" Scalia said, according to the AP. "Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires." This is fascistic nonsense, typical of Scalia and the extremist "Federal Society" right wingers he represents.

Scalia is half right, making his half truths all the more dangerous. True, the Constitution does mandate minimum respect for freedom, as Scalia says. However -- and here's where he's wrong, it also guarantees all of the rights we enjoy. Scalia is absolutely wrong denying this most basic principle of Constitutional Law.

By turning the most basic principle on its head, Scalia claims most of our rights are somehow optional, somehow not protected by the Constitution. This makes no sense. One wonders how Scalia didn't flunk out of law school with such wrong-headed notions.

Rights without protections are not rights at all. All honest, competent Constitutional scholars agree the Constitution does not limit rights, but none would endorse Scalia's extreme view that it doesn't protect "Most of the rights that [we] enjoy."

Scalia's demands violate the usual practice for the City Club which "usually tapes speakers for later broadcast on public television," according to the AP report. "Scalia insisted on banning television and radio coverage, the club said, the AP notes.

Ironically Scalia is receiving the "Citadel of Free Speech Award." How fitting! See: Supreme Court Justice Scalia Bans Media From Event Where He's Accepting Free-Speech Award, http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/ap20030319_919.html.

Why give an award to someone who -- before even accepting it -- makes a mockery of the principles honored? "I might wish it were otherwise, but that was one of the criteria that he had for acceptance," the report quoted James Foster, the club's executive director. It gets even more absurd.

According to the City Club, they honored Scalia because he "consistently, across the board, had opinions or led the charge in support of free speech.'' How nice.

I guess they mean "across the board" with the exception of free speech critical of the right wing Bush Occupation or even letting the group honoring him for his commitment to free speech express itself freely at the actual award ceremony!

How about this as a concept? One of the criteria for getting or giving a free speech award should involve at least a passing familiarity with free speech, if not an established commitment to free speech. Luckily this irony is not lost.

Scalia's fascistic disdain for freedom as demonstrated by his hostility to free speech, "begs disbelief and seems to be in conflict with the award itself,'' wrote C-SPAN vice president and executive producer Terry Murphy in a letter to the clearly confused City Club. "How free is speech if there are limits to its distribution?"

The Guardian (UK) reports that Scalia's hostility to free speech is habitual. At John Carroll University, Scalia also banned cameras or coverage as he discussed his bizarre views on constitutional rights.

Scalia is on record as complaining Christians are a persecuted minority, gays and others are waging a culture war against America, and the government should "scale back" our rights during wartime. See: Justice Bans Media From Free Speech Event, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-2491954,00.html.

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