An important but largely unheard of Federal Lawsuit in Arizona, USA, has just ended with a very important ruling.
An internet merchant and great activist, Dan Frazier, has been selling T-Shirts which say “Bush Lied – They Died”, listing the names of the thousands of US soldiers killed in the Iraq war. Dan was being sued under an 2007 Arizona law which states that no one can use the names of military casualties' names without families' permission.
The Federal Judge did not strike down this law but ruled that using the law to prosecute the Dan would violate his First Amendment rights because his shirts are "core political speech." The Judge said that it is impossible to separate the political from the commercial aspects of that display and that while the State argued that Frazier can sell his shirts without displaying the soldiers' names, Frazier's product is his message, and his customers' message.
Rael commented, “A great victory! This is America at its best. The Constitution is one of the best documents in the world and it’s great to see that the checks and balances put in place by the designers of the Constitution have not been completely eroded yet by Bush. We send Dan Frazier our support and congratulations for his victory and happily will promote Dan’s site on our sites.”
Dan Frazier is a great activist. His site (http://carryabigsticker.com/bush_lied_shirt.htm )has many great (and fun...hehe) things. He has even written the State Representatives who voted for the law which has been ruled unconstitutional. One Representative told him that “…several of us mistakenly voted yes. Those who did so include me, Rep. Lopes, Rep. Prezelski, and Rep. Kirkpatrick. There may also be others as well who were mistaken, although I have only spoken about it with these three members.”
The Bush administration has carefully and strategically manipulated the US population into a war which 70% of the US population regrets having done. The administration used the media to not only lead the US into an illegal and immoral war through a series of lies, they are also doing all they can to chip away at the beloved U.S. Constitution – all in the name of “protecting people”, which is exactly what the Constitution was designed to do. If we are to learn anything from history, we have to remember that this Hitler used the same tactics and media manipulation in the exact same way to convince a German population that they needed protection and they gladly gave up many of their rights in the name of protection.
If you find that hard to believe, we’ll close with this. We have printed the following quote before, but it bears repeating again and again and should be posted as a note taped to everyone’s television so that it can be seen daily before watching anything. It was said by Hermann Goering, Hitler’s Reich-Marshall at the Nuremberg Trials after WWII. Here it is, word for word:
“Naturally, the common people don’t want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.”
Sound familiar?
Again, if you would like to see Dan Frazier’s website and shirts:
link