COOLJUSTICE: DID OBAMA Pick a Douchebag for the court in Sotomayor? Free Speech loses?

[Liberation Angel]

Before you miss the irony in this post (and attack or delete it) please give it a read

COOLJUSTICE is a blog on political and legal issues by a former columnist for a Connecticut legal publication which covered the case of a high school student whose election to be her class secretary was voided because in a private blog she wrote that the administrators of her school were "douchebags".

Sotomayor was on a panel of three judges which said that the female junior in high school calling the administrators "douchebags" (on her home computer on a blog off school grounds) was a substantial threat of disruption to the adminisitration of the school that their banning her t-shirts for free speech and her campaign and voiding election results where she won was justified.

I highly recommend COOLJUSTICE Blog

Read the article and related info at the link below:

Excerpt:

A Connecticut teen who used a vulgar epithet on a personal blog to describe her school's administrators never imagined someone like Sonia Sotomayor would stand in the way of her student-government career.

But the Supreme Court nominee did just that last year, when she sided with school brass, which had barred the ambitious student from holding office over the offending blog entry.

Now the case -- which touched off a wide-ranging debate on the boundaries of free speech -- is back in the spotlight as a clue to Sotomayor's approach to the Constitution.

"I'm absolutely concerned" about Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court, the student, Avery Doninger, told The Post.

"We want someone who is going to protect our First Amendment rights."

Doninger had sued her school in Burlington for violating her rights after it blocked her from serving as class secretary.

A 17-year-old high school junior at the time in 2007, Doninger wrote on her home computer about a school event, "Jamfest is canceled due to douchebags in central office."

Lawyers for the school argued that even though Doninger blogged off campus, she still disrupted school because of the power of the Internet.

"Imagine if the class president got in his car after school, went 15 yards off campus, opened his laptop and then called out the school principal or superintendent using all kinds of four-letter words," said Thomas Gerarde, the lawyer for the school.

"That would clearly be disruptive" and cause for discipline from the school, he said.

Free-speech advocates disagree.

"Student speech at home is no different than adult speech at home," said Doninger's lawyer, Jon Schoenhorn. "This case holds that the school administration can reach into the home and punish students."
(Reprinted with permission)

Excerpt:

By ANDY THIBAULT
The Cool Justice Report
www.cooljustice.blogspot.com
May 3, 2009

EDITOR'S NOTE: This column is available for reprint courtesy of The Cool Justice Report, http://cooljustice.blogspot.com

In the news: Sonia Sotomayor, a federal appeals court judge from New York, has been mentioned as a top contender to fill a U.S. Supreme Court vacancy.

Every judge / politician has baggage. Some of Sotomayor's baggage is fundamental: She is on the record as an enemy of free speech.

We can and have done far worse, according to a New York civil rights lawyer who has seen Sotomayor in action. His moderate view is that in the future she would make precedent rather than codify the shoddy work of government-friendly judges like Connecticut's Travesty Kravitz.

-- Travesty Kravitz

No matter how politically correct a choice Sotomayor might be as an Hispanic woman, her anti-free speech opinion in the Famous Douche Bag Case -- Avery Doninger V. Paula Schwartz / Karissa Niehoff makes her at least an intellectual cousin of that rat bastard judge who wrote the Go Torture Rules for Bush / Cheney / Rumsfeld.


-- VERBOTEN T-SHIRTS



This is a good time to look at the lifetime tenure we give this privileged class of unaccountable government employees. Even with 10-year appointments there would be only a little bit of accountability, but that's better than what we have now.







http://cooljustice.blogspot.com/2009/05/stop-enemies-of-free-speech-from-being.html

edit to fix link