Up in Smoke at the High Court By Dana Milbank --WaPo

[Demeter]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/19/AR2007031901696.html?referrer=email

Tuesday, March 20, 2007; A02


....As Ken Starr told the nine justices yesterday why a student's "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner didn't qualify as free speech, the whole bunch of them sounded one toke over the line.(VARIOUS WEIRD QUOTES FROM THE SUPREMES, WHO SOUND LIKE THEY HAD A BAD CASE OF SPRING FEVER) All that was missing in the chamber yesterday was black light and Bob Marley. And to think Douglas Ginsburg withdrew his nomination to the high court because he had used marijuana.

If the justices sounded as if they were doin' the doobies yesterday morning, the case invited a certain amount of reefer madness. The case began when a high school kid unfurled a banner across the street from his Juneau, Alaska, high school in 2002 when the Olympic torch was passing through town. By the student's own admission, the sign had no meaning, but that didn't matter. The principal suspended him; he sued. Ken Starr and the Bush administration sided with the principal. The ACLU and various Christian groups sided with the student. Thus does a high school prank become a federal case -- an important First Amendment case before the high court, no less...a case in which a Dadaist slogan in Juneau will wind up setting a new precedent for students' speech. If Starr and the administration prevail, students might lose any semblance of free expression. If the other side wins, teachers might lose any semblance of order in the classroom.

The justices seemed frustrated with both sides. Starr got only 90 words into his argument before being interrupted by Kennedy, then Souter, each demanding to know how the banner had been disruptive. "I'm missing the argument," Souter told the former Whitewater prosecutor...The skepticism grew when Edwin Kneedler, an administration lawyer, tried to argue that a school could ban any speech "inconsistent" with its educational mission. "I find that a very disturbing argument," Samuel Alito said. Schools "can define their educational mission so broadly that they can suppress all sorts of political speech."

Mertz, arguing for the student, fared even worse than Starr and Kneedler. He got out only one sentence -- "This is a case about free speech; it is not a case about drugs" -- before Roberts interrupted. "It's a case about money," the chief justice said....Scalia, in fact, went even further than Starr in making Starr's case. "Any school," he proposed, "can suppress speech that advocates violation of the law."

[shain from kane]

1. "We don't need no education..."

[Dhalgren]

2. The slogan on that banner did not "advocate" anything.

The banner read: "Bong Hits 4 Jesus". That is neither a sentence nor a meaningful phrase in English or any other language. Milbank was close to the truth in referring to it as a "Dadaist slogan", except that it is hard to view it as even a "slogan". One might translate the string of characters to mean that a "bong" strikes a person or thing named "4 Jesus" - R2D2's friend. Or it might be a truncated score - "Bong Hits 4, Jesus (?)". We may never know what Jesus scored. The point is that the only way the government has a case is if this sting of characters on this banner carried "meaning". The author of this banner (as well as anyone who reads it) has already testified that it had no meaning. With out meaning, the banner could not have violated school policy, so it has to be the "disruption" argument. The school had been let out and there was no "structure" nor "formality" to "disrupt" in that setting. I can't see the SC deciding against this kid, but then the SC often go counter to rationality...

[Demeter]

3. I Just Hope That Ken Starr Feels Adequately Humiliated For His Gall

Because Lord knows the man deserves some retribution for the huge waste of time, space and energy that he represents and epitomizes.