“Tehran Tom” Cotton and Criminal Speech. [View all]

[riqster]

https://bluntandcranky.wordpress.com/2015/03/11/tehran-tom-cotton-and-criminal-speech/

Source info at the link.

As you know by now, 47 members of the Teapublican Treason Team (aka “republicans”), led by GOP Senator Tehran Tom Cotton, sent an illegal letter to Iran’s government this week. That letter and the decision to send it displays an appalling level of ignorance when it comes to history, the Constitution, and law in general. Such ignorance is par for the course amongst Teapublicans, so Mister Blunt and Cranky will offer a brief primer on the limits of “free speech”.

Even the current nutjob Right Wingnut majority on our “Supreme” Court understands that criminal speech is not protected by the First Amendment. Extortion? Not protected. Blackmail? Not protected. Speech that violates the Logan Act? Not protected.

So anybody saying that Tehran Tom and the TTT were exercising their “free speech” rights is just as willfully pig-ignorant as they. Hell, even the Second Amendment doesn’t give us the right to commit armed robbery. Nor does the Establishment Clause sanction virgin sacrifices. Same with speech.

There are just some things a law-abiding citizen does not do. And making common cause with a foreign government against our own nation is one of those things. Whether the other country is friend (like Israel) or foe (like Iran), Americans cannot legally engage with them in order to do harm to a person (like the Prexy) or the country as a whole.

The “Republican” party, like the Federalist party before them, is engaging in criminal speech. The fact that they will almost certainly get away with it does not mean that their actions are anything other than illegal.

Lots of people don’t like Obama. But most of us understand that disliking the President doesn’t give us the “right” to commit crimes against his office and our country.

Pity that Repub lawmakers don’t even understand the simple idea of obeying the law.