{"id":953,"date":"2008-10-28T11:42:26","date_gmt":"2008-10-28T16:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/?p=953"},"modified":"2008-11-06T14:37:54","modified_gmt":"2008-11-06T19:37:54","slug":"free-speech-on-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/2008\/10\/28\/free-speech-on-trial\/","title":{"rendered":"Free speech on trial"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rev. Dr. Neal Jones<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unitarian Universalist Fellowship<\/a> of Columbia<\/p>\n

<\/span>Today as I write this (Monday, Oct. 27), a friend of mine and of many within our congregation, Brett Bursey, Director of the SC Progressive Network<\/a> (of which our Fellowship is a member), is appearing in Federal Court in Charleston for a hearing on a Writ of Coram Nobis<\/em>.\u00a0 We pay lawyers to translate these legal Latin phrases for us.\u00a0 This one translates as \u201cthe error before us.\u201d\u00a0 The error in question is an error that occurred in Brett\u2019s original trial in 2003, in which he was convicted of threatening the President under a federal statute that governs \u201cPresidential Assassination, Kidnapping, and Assault.\u201d\u00a0 What on earth did the otherwise peace-loving Brett Bursey do to the President?, you may be wondering. \u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/span>Well, at a political rally at the Columbia airport, at which President Bush was promoting local Republican candidates in the 2002 election, Brett was carrying a sign that read, \u201cNo More Wars for Oil.\u201d\u00a0 When Brett was ordered to move to a designated \u201cfree speech zone\u201d a half-mile away, he refused.\u00a0 Like many of us, Brett probably thought that the United States of America is a free speech zone.\u00a0 He was wrong, and for this he was arrested.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Interestingly, all the pro-Bush and pro-Republican signs that were surrounding the President at the rally were not considered a threat to his safety.\u00a0 One of the police officers who arrested Brett confided to him, \u201cIt\u2019s the content of your sign that\u2019s the problem.\u201d\u00a0 Brett did not pose a security threat to the President; he represented a public relations threat.\u00a0 In the lead-up to and immediately following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, at every public appearance made by President Bush, the Secret Service instructed local police to corral protesters into areas far away from the President\u2019s view \u2013 and the view of the media covering these events \u2013 so as to give the appearance that there was no opposition to war.\u00a0 The handlers of a communist regime couldn\u2019t have done it better.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Brett, like the rest of us, knew that the Secret Service was being used as an armed political advance team by the President, and he filed discovery motions and subpoenas during his trial for any White House directives to the Secret Service, but these motions were denied as a \u201cfishing expedition.\u201d\u00a0 Since his conviction, Brett and his legal team have discovered the White House Advance Manual that indeed states, \u201cThere are several ways the advance person can prepare a site to minimize demonstrators.\u00a0 First, as always, work with the Secret Service and have them ask the local police department to designate a protest area where demonstrators can be placed, preferably not in view of the event site or the motorcade route\u201d (p. 32).\u00a0 Hence, the error in Brett\u2019s trial was that the government knowingly withheld evidence.<\/p>\n

<\/span>It is incredible to me that a peaceful demonstrator could be arrested and convicted in the United States of America, a nation founded by dissenters, for expressing a dissenting opinion. I hope that Brett wins his case today.\u00a0 Even more, I hope that our government will once again recognize the First Amendment to the Constitution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rev. Dr. Neal Jones Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Columbia Today as I write this (Monday, Oct. 27), a friend of mine and of many within our congregation, Brett Bursey, Director of the SC Progressive Network (of which our Fellowship is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-network-newsevents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=953"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1021,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953\/revisions\/1021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}