“Liberals Against the First Amendment”

Marco Randazza again, this time on naked state-backed censorship at the University of Massachusetts:

The UMass conservative organization, the Silent Majority, publishes a newspaper called “The Minuteman.” The most recent issue of The Minuteman exposed some financial irresponsibility in another student organization, Bridges (an organization that is supposed to spend its funds to tutor minority students), and mocked the organization and its director. The Expose appears on the first page of this document. . . .

The Bridges crew wasn’t too pleased about this, so they engaged in a pretty time-honored UMass tradition: They stole all of the copies of the newspaper that they didn’t want others to read. The UMass student government association responded by calling for the conservative group’s funding to be cut unless they purchased an advertisement in the campus’ main newspaper, The Collegian, apologizing for the above statements. (source)

Despite the fact that the measure violated the First Amendment in two different ways, it still passed. The resolution passed, and when a student senator attempted to introduce his own measure repealing the clearly unconstitutional measure, he was escorted from the senate floor by campus police.

No decency, no shame, not even a hint of self-awareness.  Says the very liberal Professor Randazza:  “Any ‘liberal’ who doesn’t stand up for the Minuteman has no right to complain the next time it is liberal-valued free speech under attack.”

Huh?  What’s a “right”?

Originally posted 2009-04-19 11:33:36. Republished by Blog Post Promoter