Fingergate

[footfootfoot]

I believe this is a freedom of speech issue.

(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.)


She was on a school bus, presumably the school receives money from the government so therefore it is a public forum.

The bus and other traffic was stopped, therefore her giving the finger did not pose an endangerment to other drivers.

Whether the finger salute passes the obscenity test, may be debateable. One couod arague that it was seditious speech, which is not protected. (Seditious Speech and Seditious Libel .--Opposition to government through speech alone has been subject to punishment throughout much of history under laws proscribing ''seditious'' utterances. In this country, the Sedition Act of 1798 made criminal, inter alia, malicious writings which defamed, brought into contempt or disrepute, or excited the hatred of the people against the Government, the President, or the Congress, or which stirred peo ple to sedition. 90 In New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 91 the Court surveyed the controversy surrounding the enactment and enforcement of the Sedition Act and concluded that debate ''first crystallized a national awareness of the central meaning of the First Amendment. . . . Although the Sedition Act was never tested in this Court, the attack upon its validity has carried the day in the court of history . . . . [That history] reflect[s] a broad consensus that the Act, because of the restraint it imposed upon criticism of government and public officials, was inconsistent with the First Amendment.'' The ''central meaning'' discerned by the Court, quoting Madison's comment that in a republican government ''the censorial power is in the people over the Government, and not in the Government over the people,'' is that ''[t]he right of free public discussion of the stewardship of public officials was thus, in Madison's view, a fundamental principle of the American form of government.'')

I haveto go back to work , but here is a godd website with info on the first amendment: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/c...n/amendment01/

TBC...