‘….Take for example what happened yesterday to Florida pastor Terry Jones, who went to trial and was even jailed briefly because he wanted to hold a protest outside a mosque in a suburb of Detroit. Not only was he denied his First Amendment rights by a Dearborn jury, but as part of the court decision against him yesterday, Rev. Jones was prohibited for three years from setting foot on the property of the mosque or adjacent areas.
Mr. Jones has never broken the law. He has never been violent nor threatened violence. However, because what he says makes other people threaten to kill him, his right to free speech — as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution — has been denied. And because violent idiots may confront him if he exercises his right to free speech, he has been denied his Constitutional right to peaceably assemble.
…….So, in a way, our situation is worse, because the highest law in the land — the United States Constitution — forbids the states and the federal government from doing exactly what was done yesterday to Terry Jones.
His case may make its way all the way to the Supreme Court, but I wouldn’t count on five justices upholding his right to speak freely. One of the justices is, after all, on record as saying that he’s not certain the First Amendment protects Koran-burning. Since the Constitution means whatever five Supreme Court justices say it means, we are at most a single Obama appointment away from the formal encoding of sharia in the Constitution….’
Gates of Vienna
