I bristle every time my son mentions the Free-Speech Zone they have at his university. This whole country used to be a Free-Speech Zone and universities were its cathedrals, places where free speech was sacrosanct. But then it's pretty much sacrosanct everywhere in the USA according to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
"Hypocrisy has its own elegant symmetry."
h/t scorpiorising
Update: While not a transcript, this is representative of what HRC is saying in the film while her words are being contrasted to the police brutality going on in our nation right now. The hypocrisy is stunning:
The revolt in Tunisia has prompted questions about the stability of other Arab governments and initially dragged down equity, bond and foreign exchange prices in parts of the region, notably Egypt.
Tunisia's veteran strongman Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali was swept from power on January 14 after weeks of protests.
Clinton minced no words, suggesting Egypt's government had to act now if it wanted to avert a similar outcome and urging it not to crack down on peaceful protests or disrupt the social networking sites that help organize and accelerate them.
"We believe strongly that the Egyptian government has an important opportunity at this moment in time to implement political, economic and social reforms to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people," Clinton said in a statement with Jordan's Nasser Judeh at her side.
"We urge the Egyptian authorities not to prevent peaceful protests or block communications including on social media sites," Clinton told reporters in the most blunt comments to date by the United States urging Mubarak to undertake reforms.
Source
With respect to the First Amendment, someone recently told me that 'the courts have held' that permits may be required, etc, etc...
I don't dispute that. I just view it differently. I'm very impressed with the First Amendment and those who wrote it. I'm much less impressed with the random bloviating judgelets, lawyers and politicos who have nibbled away at it for lo these many years. I say bring back the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights, and fuck those guys.
Srsly. Fuck these constitution-destroying assholes with their treasonous Patriot Act, domestic spying, corporate personhood, official torture programs, extra-judicial assassinations, Free Speech Zones, SWAT teams, mercenaries, super congresses, state secrets and police brutality. Fuck them and their whole fascism-on-a-stick schtick.
And don't go on about how terribly wise our courts are when they are clearly insane and manifestly malignant.
Our courts have held that corporations are people with all the rights and none of the obligations. Our courts have held that money is free speech (that kind of free speech they like) and that corporations are free to spend as much money corrupting our political system as they so desire. Our courts held that W should be made President even though he lost the election and was an obvious disaster in the making. The only interests served by that were the corrupt, the greedy and the criminally/insanely rich. So tell me again why we should continue to give a rat's ass about what these fools think, say or do. These assholes, like most of the rest of our government, have made themselves irrelevant by virtue of their corruption and dereliction of duty.
So should we go to these traitorous bastards hat-in-hand and ask them pretty please may we have a permit to protest their corruption and oppression?
Hell no!
Revolutionaries don't ask for permission.
We don't need no stinking permits.
Power to the people.