Gaaark writes:
"The First Amendment has been upheld in the United States!
Dan McCall has been making T-shirts and mugs that parody the National Security Agency as "the only part of government that actually listens" for over a decade. In 2011, he got a cease-and-desist letter from the NSA and from the Department of Homeland Security. Last October, McCall filed a lawsuit saying his shirts and mugs parodied the government agency and were therefore protected by the First Amendment.
'Citizens shouldn't have to worry whether criticizing government agencies will get them in trouble or not,' said Public Citizen's Paul Levy, who filed the suit on McCall's behalf. 'This settlement proves the First Amendment is there to protect citizens' rights to free speech.'
Now, the NSA has admitted: McCall is right ."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jcd on Thursday February 20 2014, @04:59PM
I agree with a lot of what you're saying here, but I have a lot of contact with the younger generation, and I have some very bad news. They have no concept of what the Constitution was about. Or of what the Revolution was trying to accomplish. Or what the founding fathers believed in (or who they even were - I showed a picture of Jefferson to a room full of high school seniors and they guessed Edison and a couple of other wildly unrelated names). So let's not count on the next generation.
I know that makes the situation all that much more dire, but it's the truth. The next generation has an even smaller idea of what this country stands for, and "freedom" is just a word you say when you're talking about the US, it no longer has any real meaning. It's just patriotic to say it.
"What good's an honest soldier if he can be ordered to behave like a terrorist?"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2014, @06:34PM
My daughter will never know the freedom of privacy. :( She'll never even miss it.