Brown v. Board of Education

The Warren Court. photo: Wikipedia

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Ruling unanimously, in an opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Court declared that racial segregation in public schools was a violation of the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution.

Freedom Rides

Beginning in May 1961 and continuing through the summer, the Freedom Rides, initiated by the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee spread through the South.

The Freedom Rides were designed to test and encourage enforcement of a Supreme Court decision declaring segregation in interstate transportation illegal -- a direct challenge to the decades old Jim Crow laws and practices that segregated transportation throughout the South.

On May 14, 1961, a Greyhound bus was attacked outside Anniston, Alabama. With the collusion of local and state police and the local KKK, the bus was firebombed with the driver and passengers held inside, with the intention of killing them all. When that failed, the mob attempted to lynch the passengers, who had fled the bus, but they were prevented by warning shots by the police. The passengers were badly beaten, arrested, and jailed.

See:

PBS documentary, Freedom Riders, in the American Experience series.

Wikipedia, Freedom Riders.

A Well Regulated Militia

SCOTUS blog reports:

Analysis: 2d Amendment extension likely
McDonald v. Chicago, 08-1521, Argument recap

Lyle Denniston | Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 11:26 am

Analysis

The Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed poised to require state and local governments to obey the Second Amendment guarantee of a personal right to a gun, but with perhaps considerable authority to regulate that right. . . .

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Well, that's the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, though there are some alternate versions, with different punctuation.

I don't understand how the far-right, strict constructionist, textualist, original-meaning justices can fix the Second Amendment in the late 18th century as a way of permitting citizens to arm themselves with hi-tech 21st century firearms. How does that work? Why aren't those rights, if they actually exist, limited to 18th-century arms?

Just asking.

Fleeting Words

On FCC v. Fox Television Stations, in which the majority ruled that the FCC could fine television stations for broadcasting "fleeting" uses of dirty words:

Adam Freedman writes in the New York Times:

As much as one sympathizes with language prescriptivism in general (please, let us all resist “c u l8r”), censorship is necessarily a descriptivist endeavor. Indecency laws are tied to evolving community standards. In 1623, the English Parliament passed legislation to prohibit “profane swearing and cursing.” Under that law, people could be fined for uttering oaths like “upon my life” or “on my troth.” In the Victorian era, the word “bull” was considered too strong for mixed company; instead, one referred to “gentlemen cows.” Times change, notwithstanding the fervent wishes of prescriptivists to keep dirty words dirty.

The Supreme Court does not have a particularly sensible understanding of language or rhetoric, as it often proves in decisions about censorship, freedom of expression, and related matters.

Adam Freedman, "Gentlemen Cows in Prime Time," New York Times, 3 May 2009.

FCC v. Fox Television Stations, at SCOTUS Wiki

Hillary: The Movie

Yesterday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments about the film Hillary: The Movie, a 90-minute political documentary released for the 2008 campaign. At issue is the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, whether it covers the film and whether, if it does, the law should stand or be declared unconstitutional.

Adam Liptak describes the oral arguments in the New York Times.

Adam Liptak, "Justices Skeptical of Campaign Law's Scope," New York Times 25 March 2009.

The link on the image above will take you to the film at Amazon.com. The link to the web site for the film itself, sponsored by a group called Citizens United, is here, where you will also find a trailer.

Brian Snee has also posted a note on the film at our Rhetoric of Documentary blog here. Our 2008 book on The Rhetoric of the New Political Documentary is about just this sort of film in the 2004 presidential campaign.