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Supreme Court Dances Around The F-Word With Real Potential Financial Consequences
Dirty words make it to the U.S. Supreme Court only occasionally. One of those occasions came Monday, in a case involving a clothing line named "FUCT." The issue is whether the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office acted unconstitutionally when it refused to grant trademark protection to the brand name. And, for the justices, the immediate problem was how to discuss the the F-word without actually saying it.
The "FUCT" clothing line, created by designer Eric Brunetti, is mainly hoodies, loose pants, shorts and T-shirts, all with the brand name prominently displayed.
[...] Brunetti's case got a boost two years ago when the Supreme Court ruled that an Asian-American band calling itself "The Slants" could not be denied trademark protection. The trademark office had turned the band down, because it deemed the name racially "disparaging," but the court said the denial amounted to unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.
Dealing with the brand name "FUCT" proved a bit more daunting in the Supreme Court chamber Monday. Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart referred to the brand name as a "profane past participle form of a well-known word of profanity and perhaps the paradigmatic word of profanity in our language."
Also at Reuters.
Previously: Two Unanimous SCOTUS Victories for Free Speech
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Thursday April 18 2019, @12:40AM
Not sure what your "but" is for there — that's what I was saying.
FTFY
No, there's nothing at all in the 2A about "current military and police use", either pro or con. The reference to militia in the explicatory or prefatory phrase was written to refer to the majority of able bodied men, not something like a government controlled national guard (there was no such thing, that was the point, in fact); the "well regulated" phraseology in the same section was written to indicate consistency of arms. There were specific laws written in the years just subsequent to this that specified what that consistency meant; so much shot, so much powder, etc. In the context of the day, what they meant and intended was quite clear.
In any case, this section is not the instruction to government, it is just (obviously part of) the explanation for what follows. Certainly no one of that time would have said "no, you won't need arms to hunt for food", for instance. So we know the explicatory phrase is only the tip of the iceberg... and yet it doesn't matter much, because it is, after all, an explanation. The instruction, the explicit restriction on the government to not infringe, is crystal clear.
The 2A, as presently constituted, explicitly forbids government infringement on the keeping and carrying of arms. There's no limit on that. There obviously should be, but they're very much afraid to try to change anything significant in the bill of rights (actually any part of the constitution), lest they let the constitutional convention dragon out of its box. So instead, they rely on arrogation of power in the form of unauthorized law.
Personally, I think the 2A is in extreme need of revision; but as it stands, pretty much every arms law on the books is in blatant violation of the constitution. The government is very much in the habit of doing whatever the fuck it wants, whenever it wants to. Which is one of the key reasons why we don't actually have a constitutional republic, but instead, an oligarchy. It is also why today the constitution is, at best, only treated as an advisory document. If the government wants to violate it, it will. As been demonstrated over and over, and often enough such malfuckery has subsequently been rubber-stamped by the incompetent puppets in the SCOTUS.
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You can't fix stupid. But you can elect it.