Blog 2.1

I don’t know how many people have been following the Morse v. Frederick Supreme Court case (aka “Bong Hits 4 Jesus”) but I want to make sure it’s known what Clarence Thomas thought of the case. Remember, as a Supreme Court Justice he is one of the most powerful people in our government.

The court ruled 5-4 that Frederick’s banner was not speech protected by the First Amendment. “Because schools may take steps to safeguard those entrusted to their care from speech that can reasonably be regarded as encouraging illegal drug use, the school officials in this case did not violate the First Amendment by confiscating the pro-drug banner and suspending Frederick.”

I have many problems with this ruling, not the least of which is the suggesting that a banner reading “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” is a sufficiently persuasive statement to “encourage illegal drug use.” I can only imagine all the young impressionable minds in the audience of that Olympic torch relay, confused about how to best express their love and devotion to Jesus until suddenly, on the horizon, they see the answer to their question in the form of a shoddy, hand-made banner bearing the prophetic phrase “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.”

Reading the holding of the court only served to increase my disbelief of this ruling. How did the majority reach this conclusion? And, perhaps more importantly, how long before a clip of a Supreme Court justice uttering the phrase “Bong Hits for Jesus” appears on YouTube? Time will yield an answer to the latter, but the amazing opinion paper submitted by Clarence Thomas sheds some light on the former.

For those of you interested, you can read Justice Thomas’ complete opinion here.

I’ll give you some highlights.

Translation: Tinker provided students limited protection of free speech (in that case, three Des Moines students wore black armbands to school in protest of the Vietnam War). Thomas disagrees, and believes it should be thrown out - that students are not protected by the First Amendment in any way, shape or form. Furthermore, this statement suggests that anything the Constitution does not explicitly protect can be prohibited at will.

By his own logic, Thomas shouldn’t even be allowed to be a justice of the court. After all, if blacks were originally understood to have the rights and privileges of citizens, then the courts of our founders would have enforced them. By this same logic, Justice Ginsburg should not be allowed to vote.

The general theme of Thomas’ opinion is that everything would be fine if our schools returned to 19th-century practices. In that light, this statement implies that present-day schools are also not places for the “debate of competing ideas.” The lunacy of this statement leaves me as a loss for words.

Thomas continues on celebrating the strict discipline handed out by 19th-century schoolmasters to their students, and closes his opinion with this statement:

That’s right. If it were up to Thomas, students wouldn’t even have the right to protest an unpopular war by merely wearing an armband to school. At 17, a young man can fight and die for his country, but he is not allowed to silently and peacefully express his opinion at his school. In fact, it would be prudent for him to be beaten for doing so. This is the opinion of one of the most influential people in our government.

Keep in mind, this is all going on while we have a Vice President who claims he is not compelled to make disclosures demanded of the entire executive branch because the post of VP is “not a part of the executive branch” and a President who thinks it’s permissible to suspend the writ of habeas corpus despite the fact that such an act is clearly forbidden by Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution (apparently civics wasn’t their strongest subject in high school). Where is the Congress in all of this? Don’t worry, they’re busy with important matters like deciding how to handle the pensions of professional football players.

God Bless America, land of the free.