American School Makes Boy Remove American Flag From His Bicycle

Evo

As I pointed out in post 18, Free Speech has limitations.

http://www.physicsforums.com/showpos...0&postcount=18

Evo

What the heck are these links? And what do they have to do with the OP?

Al68

No, of course not: They are paid to wear it. The U.S.P.S. is composed entirely of volunteers.

Jimmy Snyder

There is no district jurisdiction. Cases decided in Circuit courts apply the entire country.

Gokul43201

Which are what?

Several times? Here, try these:

http://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech...otected-speech

http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/home...u-arizona-says

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...googlenews_wsj

http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/afte...l-agrees-stop-

BobG

Technically, that's not entirely true.

If a district federal appeals court renders a decision, it's binding on every lower federal court in that district. It's not binding on the state courts that may be located in the same region, nor on any military courts that may be located in the same region.

It's technically not binding on other federal appeals courts, but, in practice, precedents from other districts are commonly referred to if they cover the same, or very similar, circumstances. It's very common to see court decisions of other district appeals courts cited in federal apeals court decision. It's not very common for federal appeals courts to disagree with each other (i.e. - what you say is more or less true in practice). When they do disagree, it's almost a certainty the issue will be resolved by the US Supreme Court.

The US Supreme Court is the only court binding on all lower federal courts, state courts, military courts, etc.

Galteeth

I know a far left group who in fact, thinks the ACLU is a crypto-fascist organization since they regularly defend the free speech rights of bigots and ultra right wingers.

Point is, they have a pretty good track record of defending all speech, regardless of political content.

CRGreathouse

That's actually the point with which I was disagreeing.

I would love to test this (over future events, of course, to avoid selection bias) if you can come up with a good way to code events in terms of importance of position on the spectrum. PM me or start a new thread if you're interested.

CRGreathouse

False.

NobodySpecial

Displaying it on the back of his bike is utterly improper

US flag code TITLE 4 > CHAPTER 1 > § 7 (b)

CRGreathouse

Not useful; sampling bias. (I haven't looked at the articles.)

If you are interested in exploring this further (I am!) see post #42, where I extend my offer to include you as well. If we go forward with this it would be ideal if we could find someone with a stronger stats background on these boards; mine are passable only.

Gokul43201

I wasn't looking for an unbiased sample. All I needed was one counter-example to falsify your belief, namely (emphasis mine):

"I've come to think that they support only speech which furthers their underlying political preferences."

Moreover, any test you design needs a well defined null hypothesis, which means you'd likely have to specify what underlying political preferences you are testing for. I asked before, and you didn't say what they were.

Nevertheless, in the context of this particular thread, the obvious and oft repeated precedent is the Cinco-de-Mayo case, which was the one I first looked for as I suspected it might be one of those things that you believed fell outside of the ACLU's preferences. The first link in my previous post describes the ACLU's arguments defending the display of the US flag in that particular case - a much more "risky" environment than that being discussed in this thread, IMO.

zomgwtf

Nah you're much more likely to be killed by people of the 'same gang'. It's much more complicated than a blue vs. red analogy that the media loves. Gangs that associate with the 'bloods'(red) kill each other far more often than fighting anyone else.

BobG

The lesson to be learned from this?

Terrorism works!

To be fair, the school's response wasn't radically different than the response of the US government to 9/11. Protect people's safety, even if it denies them their rights.

At least initially, anyway. Given time to figure out which reactions make sense and which are simply irrational knee jerk reactions, one would hope that most would do the same as the school and come to the realization that at least some of their initial reactions were wrong.

Al68

No doubt that reminds many of the famous Ben Franklin quote: "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

JaredJames

If people don't like seeing the US flag, why would they live in the US?

This is nonsense. If you want to live and benefit from the US then get used to seeing these things.

It wasn't so long ago that a council in the UK requested someone take down their Christmas decorations from the outside of their home so it wouldn't offend neighbouring immigrants.
The reaction was simple, people said tuff. You want to live in a country, get used to their traditions and such. If you don't want to integrate that's up to you, but it isn't down to those already there to alter their lives to accomodate you.

If people are going to threaten someone, especially for something as ridiculous as simply displaying the flag, they don't deserve to be in that country.

Sorry for the rant, but it's things like this that really infuriate me.

Evo

You think schools were more lenient in Ben's time? The schoolmaster probably would have beaten the kid with a stick or boxed his ears for causing trouble.

We're talking about child safety on school grounds here, let's keep it about the actual circumstances please.