Back in 2007, Xavier Alvarez told a crowd while he was campaigning for the post of water commissioner, that he was a Marine and that he’d been awarded the Medal of Honor, neither of which was true. Melissa Campbell, a former active duty Marine herself, questioned the veracity of the statement. She was suspended from her job two weeks later for unprofessional behavior and fired two weeks after that. <\/p>\n
Now three years later, a bunch of clowns impersonating the judges of the Ninth Circuit appellate court, tell us that lying is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution (Fox News<\/a> link).<\/p>\n A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with him in a 2-1 decision Tuesday, agreeing that the law was a violation of his free-speech rights. The majority said there’s no evidence that such lies harm anybody, and there’s no compelling reason for the government to ban such lies.<\/p>\n The dissenting justice insisted that the majority refused to follow clear Supreme Court precedent that false statements of fact are not entitled to First Amendment protection.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n McQ from Blackfive<\/a> writes;<\/p>\n …I\u2019d love to hear the argument or see anything in writing from them which claimed the 1st Amendment was designed to protect liars in general.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n If i lied in court, they’d toss my ass in the hoosegow for what they call perjury. If I lied to a police officer, again, I’d get tossed in the Grey Bar Hotel for obstructing an investigation. Certainly speech that applies to the justice system is not protected by the 1st Amendment, so it follows that somewhere there’s some unprotected speech outside of the legal community. <\/p>\n The truth is important in legal proceedings, so those judges have an obligation to “unprotect” speech that the rest of us have to deal with every day. But apparently, they’re just too lazy to protect the people they’re sworn to protect.<\/p>\n I still think that anyone who defends the behavior of jackasses like Alvarez as protected by the Constitution are just contrary for the sake of being contrary. And, oh, what is the 9th Circuit going to say about Melissa Campbells right to free speech while she paid an actual price for questioning Alvarez’ lies?<\/p>\n Jerry920 among others sent me the links, even though I’d written about Alvarez last night (thanks for reading, guys :eyeroll:)<\/p>\n UPDATE: Some guy named Mark Seavey who is moving up in the world, has an excellent article on this subject in The Hill’s Congress Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"