Property rights vs. 1st Amendment
Now, I’m no lawyer, but I know I hate hippies and I know that whenever they claim their first amendment rights it’s so they can trample someone else’s rights. That’s the case before the Supreme Court now. The LA Times reports that stank-ass hippy, Dennis Apel has taken his case to the Supreme Court, or, more accurately, the Department of Defense has taken his case to the Court when the Ninth Circuit (who else?) ruled against them when Apel claimed that he had a right to protest in front of Vandenberg Air Force Base. Apparently, the command there had an area set aside for protests and when Apel violated the boundaries of decency during his protests there, they banned him;
Apel had been barred from Vandenberg after his earlier arrests, which led to convictions. But he believed he could legally protest in the designated area across Highway 1 from the base.
“I didn’t reenter the base,” he said on the court steps Wednesday. “No one should be arrested for protesting on a public highway.”
The justices, however, said he was mistaken. The property agreement with Santa Barbara “makes it very clear that the military commander has authority to exercise control over the easement property,” said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, referring to the part of Highway 1 that runs through the base.
While I agree that hippies do indeed have a right to protest, no matter how distasteful their protests might be, there are boundaries, and throwing your own stank-ass hippie blood on a base sign is outside those boundaries, especially since some airman will have to clean the sign and expose himself to whatever biological hazards are contained within said stank-ass hippie blood.
The military goes out of it’s way to accommodate hippy protests without affecting or hindering their mission and the hippies should be appreciative of that fact. But, they want to push the limits of those accommodations – like the Code Pink and labor union protests at Walter Reed celebrating the casualties of the Iraq war.
Category: I hate hippies
I’m kind of busy right now, but I’m willing to volunteer to go out to Vandengurg and man a firehose toward Apel.
EVERY Veteran ought to be allowed to beat up to a dozen hippie freaks like him each day!
This is one case where the protester should catch a break. He says that he was in a place that he thought that he was allowed to be. I think that the place refered to outside of the base across the road from the base would be seen, to a non biased person, not as part of the base. For this reason the charges against him should be suspened as long as he signs a contract not to go back to that location.
Punching Hippies is First Amendment expression. Not only that, but it’s good exercise.
damn, I hate to agree with Curt… but unless the area was clearly posted as under Vandenburgh jurisdiction, it sounds like it appeared to be legally off-post. Think we need more facts….
@5. You knew it was wrong to agree with him. You should have resisted the inclination. Justices Scalia and Kennedy answered your concern with their all but forbidding Apel’s lawyer from going to the 1st Amendment issue at all. At one point, Scalia told him, “You can raise it, but we don’t have to listen to it.” Apel received notice that he was barred from the base and the protest area. He knew damn well he was not to be where he was. And a federal statute makes it a crime to, in part, go on military property after being barred from that property. And that’s the core issue here: Whether the easement is base property for purposes of applying the statute. Thus, it has nothing to do with WHY Apel was there, only that he was there.
guess that’s what I get for not reading the original… if he knew he was banned from the specific area than screw him. Was not clear above… sounded like he was across the highway – used to work across the road from Bliss and where we were was very much civilian turf. I would have been shocked had a protester been arrested there. Live and learn….
Problem is, David, is that Hwy 1 does go through a large portion of Vandenberg between Lompoc and Santa Maria (I have family who live in Orcutt), and leaving the highway does put you on federal property, and there are in fact signs warning you of that.
He chose to ignore that. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
I just read the first amendment again! Nowhere did I read about you can only exercise your first amendment rights at a place designated by the government that they call a speech zone! The republican fascists on the supreme court normally side with the goverment untill the mexican-american vote is large enough(150,000 minorities turn 18 voting age every month!) to impeach them off the supreme court. Hopefully Mrs Clinton when she becomes president will have them arrested for treason and sedition.
Holy shit.
That is weapons-grade fucking stupid right there, vwp.
You could do comic books with an alternate reality like that.
Ok, VWP has apparently started drinking Stereo
VWP, He is being charged with trespassing, not protesting or speaking his mind. I will give you a better example. YOU have every right to flap your cockholster. If you step onto my property after I told you not to and started spewing your crap, the loss of your chicklets would be from trespassing, not talking.
Oh, my, but laughing hysterically is tiring!
Would that the people who see 1st Amendment rights violations for everything from trespassing to smoking dope to everything under the sun apply half as much imagination in expanding what the rest of the amendments mean.
@11 NHSparky Just put coffee right through my nose! Thanks for that comment. LMAO
@VWP. If and I say if, Clinton wins in 2016 then you can kiss your sorry ass goodbye. Along with the middle class who support your dope smoking, worthless, liberal ass!
NHSparky, do you mean you can actually understand that incoherent drivel? Man, you are definitely The Master.
I was not aware that the neo-Nazis had any reps on the Supremes. That’s news. When did that happen?
PH2–on the other board I frequent a lot, there’s a poster who speaks in word salad as well. I wish I could say I’m as baffled as you. Believe me, you don’t want to know what he’s saying.
@VWP Try getting off welfare or SSI or whatever supports your dope habit and try joining the real world. Learn about the system of government and economics which are apparently keeping you alive. By the way, there are plenty of online courses for English composition, Logical Thinking and several other subjects which would do you a lot of good. Because the pot enhanced drivel you are posting is worse than a Chinese crossword puzzle. I cannot hold a candle to the other posters here when it comes to putting thought to paper. But at least I am coherent.
Actually, a military base is a form of legally private property, in that it does belong to the government. It’s the same as my yard belonging to me and I don’t have to tolerate people smoking on my front lawn or letting their dogs leave piles, either.
This concept of private ownership, however, is something that escapes the befuddled processes of vwpissant’s semiliquid brain. A good dose of BRano, the new brain cleaner, would probably fix that in a jiffy. Get all the clogs out.
@21 I am an easy laugh! Thanks for that…BRano. May I steal that from you?
NHSparky, I think it’s what you find in the Cheech and Chong movies — mostly mumbling that no one can understand, kind of like Ozzie Ozbourn with Sharon translating for him. It works that way, but it just doesn’t work when it’s put into print, does it? No.
The Kelo decision by the SCOTUS eliminated individual property rights. Several state legislatures passed laws to protect citizens, but for the most part, individual property rights in the US of A are a fiction.
Where are they coming from? Is there a word out for all crazies to get on over to TAH and spout of nonsense? Do they have a bat signal?
@22 Sparks, you may absolutely do so.
@26 Ex, where did you go to college? If I may ask. You are among so many here that write so well. I am an engineer and am far better at mathematics and writing technical jargon than essay.
@27 Sparks, small midwestern university, but it probably has more to do with my high school English teacher than anything else. He encouraged all of us to write, and be concise, as in ‘get the complete idea across in a short space’.
That, and my father taught theater and put on a Shakespearean play once a year, and sometimes twice.
Besides, places like this blog are great practice for the practical application of writing clear and vivid prose, especially for fiction.
@28 How cool. My high school English teacher gave me a love for poetry. She was my favorite. She did chide me though for “run on sentences”. I went to the University of North Carolina on the G.I. Bill. We know God is a Tarheel because He made the sky Carolina Blue!
Sorry folks for the off topic posts. For the record, VWP is still the ass he was thirty minutes ago!
What part of the words birth rate don’t you understand! If you don’t like are mexican-american brothers and sisters deciding the elections breed faster! And the peoples right to protest in front of OUR air base shall not be infringed! If it is kiss your second amendment good bye!
Must…not…dickpunch…through…screen…
Someone needs to watch Idiocracy…..
Among other failings that libbies have is their obsession with people’s race. They simply MUST identify a group or subset or regional whatnot to which each and every person belongs.
It certainly is more pleasant to be among those who live as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. discussed many times but is most often quoted from his “I Have a Dream” speech – judging others by their character instead of color of their skin. Libbies are such utter failures in doing that. (Which defines them all as racists.)
As usual, vwpimp has outed itself for the racist fool that it is.
@9
VWP, please post your address so I can exercise my 1st Amendment rights of burning a Soviet flag in your living room.
@31, you’d have to pay some kind of federal tax before you could even entertain the idea that you have any claim to a USAF base, or any military installation. Now, you taking SSI bennies, food stamps and sec 8 housing doesn’t make you a taxpayer, it just makes you a leech.
So, GDIAF vwp.
@31 My kids are Mexican Americans. If you think that being of a certain ethnic group limits your capacity for independent thought and ties you to a specific political party you are an ignorant racist. Now go fill your bong with C-4 and light it, you waste of space.
@32NHSparky, nearly fell off chair, laughing.
#35- A few other fun things to open in VWP’s living room:
-Gun shop
-Slaughterhouse
-Tea Party convention
-Death Metal Appreciation club
@37 tell that to the black and brown americans who get stopped every day for the crime of driving while being black or brown! wealthy minority atheletes are stoped by police while driving in rich neighborhoods far more times then white atheletes. Both the naacp and aclu have the studies available.
@40
Both the NAACP and the ACLU, huh?
Any credible organizations, or is all you have branches of the DNC?
@40 Tell them what you should-have-been-a-brown-stain-on-the matress, that my kids are Mexican-American or that they hae they capacity for independent thought. Stop drinking the bong water, its damaging you brain.
@42, vwpissonalivewire can’t damage something s/he/it doesn’t have.
@43, You have to admit he must be making a hell of an attempt.
man vwp, i’ve been lurking this site for a while now. aside from your foolish drivel that makes 0 sense, I’ve noticed you have zero grasp on how the english language works.
It’s like your emulating a wacked out Dr. Seuss
“Oh the drivel you’ll driv!”
@VWP Are you a wealthy minority athlete living in a rich neighborhood who has been stopped by the police? If not STFU! You are a racist though, of the worst sort. Liberal ass hats like yourself always point out race as an issue in most any discussion. When race is not part of the discussion at all. I agree with Old Dog @37. Get your hands on some C4 and pound it into your pipe and light up.
P.S. Don’t try to write, or speak for that matter, when you are stoned. You are ignorant enough to begin with. The dope just makes your ignorance shine all the brighter.