Comments on: Bush had “people banished to a free speech gulags”

By: Devin

Devin — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 10:48:17 +0000

Why is it that those of Mr. Weber’s faction are so keen to shout “censorship” and throw around terms like “gulag” and “fascist”, but have so little to say about *actual* repressive regimes in the world?

I attended art school through much of President Bush’s second term, and there was an astonishing hate-driven industry of political artwork produced by the students there, all directed against the Bush Administration. There was even a poster hung up in a window urging the freeing of Saddam Hussein during his trial. Yet, amazingly, no one was arrested or shaken down by cops or federal agents; no one’s home was invaded by jackbooted thugs; no one was ushered off to a re-education camp; no one was beaten in the street; no one’s family was threatened… It was almost as though the students were exercising their freedom of speech without government reprisal.

Honestly, has anyone remained silent over the last eight years? Because *somebody* sure was making a lot of noise. If it wasn’t the American Left, I’m really curious as to whom it was.

By: Pappadave

Pappadave — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 04:56:44 +0000

Only a complete bugwit would assert that it should be “legal” to shout down a speaker that hundreds of people had come to hear. What about the right of the other people in the venue who want to hear what he or she has to say? Do YOUR right to disrupt and shout down a speaker trump their’s? I don’t think so. You may have the right to free speech–to a degree, but you do NOT have the right to deny others their right to free speech, too. While you have the right of free speech, there is no law that says you have to be given a VENUE to speak, nor is there a law that says you have the right to be heard. If you don’t like what a speaker is saying, plug your ears or leave and go somewhere you can’t hear. Our campuses, which SHOULD be places where all points of view should be heard and considered, have become places of supreme INtolerance of anything that disagrees with leftist dogma. Professors who deign to teach from a conservative perspective are shunned by other faculty, harassed unmercifully, denied tenure and essentially run out of academia. Student organizations that are conservative in nature are denied meeting places by university administrations, denied certification and even cut out of access to student funds…merely because they are conservative in nature. One NEVER hears of anything similar happening to leftist student organizations, teachers or guests, or, if one does, it’s the exception that proves the rule–such as that idiot in Colorado who lied about his own ethnicity to achieve his position and tenure and then used it to indoctinate students with the most vile, hate-filled crap until even the leftie administration had had enough and ran him off. “Little Eichman’s” my ass!

By: Pappadave

Pappadave — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 04:33:22 +0000

Sojourner – Some anonymous “spokesman” from the CIA has made the assertion that her job was “classified.” That doesn’t make it so. I’ve read the law. What she was doing was fairly low-level intelligence analysis. Those within the CIA who have jobs, the revealing of which constitute a criminal offense, are FIELD agents and under cover (or those who WERE undercover field agents within the previous 5 years). Ms Plame was neither. She wasn’t a field agent and she had NOT been for over 6 years, in point of fact. Therefore, the “leaking” of her name as working for the CIA was NOT a criminal offense to begin with. Secondly, it wasn’t Scooter Libby who “leaked” her name in the first place. It was Richard Armitage and the “special prosecutor” admitted that he’d known that almost from the first week of his “investigation,” but he thought he saw a way to “get” someone high up in the Bush administration and continued his “investigation”…even though he knew who the “guilty” party was before he’d even SPOKEN to Libby. It was purely political and as phony as “I did NOT have sexual relations with that woman….Miss Lewinsky.”

By: Jim

Jim — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 02:07:53 +0000

Don S: Good question. BTW: How come very few of the Big Hollywood twits on this site are on TV at all?

By: Pappadave

Pappadave — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 14:35:36 +0000

Nonsense, Sojourner! First of all, Plame’s “identity” wasn’t classified in the first place. Secondly, Cheney said no such thing. Richard Armitage was the source of the leak to Novak that started all this and HE was certainly no friend of the Bush Administration. In fact, he opposed almost everything the Bush administration did. He was just another Clinton retread that Bush failed to get rid of when he took office…to his everlasting regret, I’ll bet.

“Free speech,” like every other enumerated right contained in the Constitution, is NOT an unfettered right. You may not commit slander or libel, for example, without severe and serious consequences, and you can’t defend slander and libel by pleading your “free speech” rights. It SHOULD be illegal for someone to disrupt a speaker by shouting obscenities and rushing the podium as liberals are prone to do any time a speaker that they even THINK disagrees with leftist dogma is preparing to speak. It’s not, but such idiots are routinely ejected from the venue when the hosts of the speaker insist on hearing what he has to say. Too often, colleges and universities look fondly on such disruptions and do nothing. Bug-witted idiots are even prone to throw pies (or bricks) at conservatives on campus because they know they’ll get away with it. Where again are these “gulags?”

By: George

George — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 09:43:58 +0000

Three cheers for left-wing emotional infants! Still carpet bombing they are, as a wise old Yoda would put it. Conflating things which have nothing to do with the issue, perpetuating lies, emotion-based posturing about a complicated matter like Guantanamo when anything approaching a solution from their side is utterly stupid. Your typical left-wing alphabet soup of mullarkey but it pretty much protects them and keeps them impervious to rational arguments.

By: hary flashman

hary flashman — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 09:35:20 +0000

Am I to realize, only now, that “Big Hollywood” is just another big named cenosred site? As if “Big Hollywood” is any different from any of the other Hollywood sites? Can we call it “Big Santa Monica.com?”

By: Gary Eaton

Gary Eaton — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 07:32:20 +0000

There’s a pretty funny musician’s joke :
How do you get a guitar player to turn down?
You put music in front of him.

Change guitar player to troll.
Change music to facts.

By: Sojourner

Sojourner — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 05:57:39 +0000

George,

I didn't "carpet bomb" anything. I answered very quickly with a list of Bush Administration tactics used to stifle dissent.

And just for the record (as much as it counts for a poster using a false name), I do not condone or engage in shouting anyone down or booing them, or any of the other tactics used to shut down rational conversation.

BTW, labeling me "a typical leftist kook" and then rambling on about "those people" and "moonbats" is another tactic engaged by radicals on both sides who use labels to try shut down the conversation–"he's a , therefore I don't have to listen to anything he says."

Sad and divisive.

By: Jackpine Savage

Jackpine Savage — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 05:42:28 +0000

“”Terry – January 20th, 2009 at 2:36 pm

Oh, so “Free Speech Zones” don’t exist?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zones“”

Terry, if you consider wikipedia a reliable source of information, you are beyond hope.

You Do realize that any kook with a computer can add to wikis right?

I suppose you get your “News” from comedy central too huh?

Liberals are just Too Funny!