Gottheimer denies Commissioners’ legal counsel at NJOHSP briefing.

On March 22nd Congressman Josh Gottheimer sent an invitation to the Sussex County Board of Commissioners to attend a “briefing” by the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (NJOHSP) on “the latest domestic terror threats in our State.”

The invitation, signed by Congressman Gottheimer and on official stationery, did not contain the date and time for the briefing or the location at which it was to be held. It did contain this paragraph:

“I will follow up with specific details on the briefing with NJOHSP and look forward to working together to stop hate, domestic terror, and extremism in all forms.”

But Congressman Gottheimer never did follow up with specific details. According to InsiderNJ’s Fred Snowflack, he instead politicized the briefing, using it as a political hit piece on the Commissioners. On a March 25th InsiderNJ post, Snowflack wrote:

“Today, Gottheimer, whose 5th District includes most of Sussex County, released a letter he sent to the county commissioners on March 22.”

Despite Gottheimer’s attempt to use the briefing as the basis for a political attack, his congressional office was contacted by Sussex County Commissioner Chris Carney, a union worker with Local 825 of the Operating Engineers. Carney, who was selected to fill the remainder of Josh Hertzberg’s term and who is running this year for a full term on the Board, demanded that Gottheimer hold the briefing.

In response to Commissioner Carney, Gottheimer’s office sent a follow-up to the Board of Commissioners, slating the briefing for today at 12:30pm by Zoom. The Board responded that it would be attending, along with the Board’s special counsel. After initially agreeing to this arrangement, Gottheimer’s office contacted the Board to inform them that their attorney would not be allowed to hear the briefing.

Why?

Why would the Board’s attorney not be permitted to hear a briefing by the Director of the NJOHSP? Might he ask some difficult questions? Would his presence make it more difficult to smear the names of private citizens and open the participants up to civil suits? Would he provide some unfortunate clarification as to what is or isn’t an actual crime?

So many of the NJOHSP “incidents” involve “flyers, pamphlets, and signs” that promote “white supremacy”, “white nationalism”, “neo-Nazism”, and “hate” of various kinds. But is this a crime when anyone can purchase Mein Kampf, by Adolph Hitler, on Amazon.com. What is more Nazi than Mein Kampf? Does each purchase count as an “incident” or is it uncounted?

The truth is that any government agency can increase or decrease the number of “incidents” by defining or redefining them in a way that expands or contracts their numbers. Is this what’s going on?

And here is another curious thing about this briefing. In January, Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed Congressman Gottheimer to the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security. But this is the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (NJOHSP) – a STATE agency that has nothing to do with Congress.

As a Congressman, Josh Gottheimer has no responsibility for or oversight of the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (NJOHSP). He doesn’t vote on their budget – the STATE legislators who represent Sussex County do. In fact, Senator Steve Oroho and Assemblyman Hal Wirths are ranking members of their respective chambers’ budget committees. So why were they not invited to this briefing? Might they ask questions too?

Is this briefing anything more than political theater, for the benefit of a political ally, provided by the appointee of a Governor facing re-election? As such is it an abuse of power, a fraud, and a waste of taxpayers’ money?

We suggest a proper, academic review of the history of terrorism and the causes of extremism. One that does not whitewash the part played by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. It could be named in honor of that great liberal – a true, old-fashioned liberal – United States Senator Frank Church, Democrat of Idaho.

“In examining the CIA's past and present use of the U.S. media, the Committee finds two reasons for concern. The first is the potential, inherent in covert media operations, for manipulating or incidentally misleading the American public.
The second is the damage to the credibility and independence of a free press which may be caused by covert relationships with the U.S. journalists and media organizations.”

U.S. Senator Frank Church
(Veteran. Burma campaign. WWII)

Christine Blasey Ford and the ACLU: Now accusations count more than evidence.

By Rubashov

Once upon a time, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) could be relied upon to follow its core beliefs to their logical conclusions. Freedom of Speech was Freedom of Speech – even if it meant defending the right of American National Socialists to conduct a public demonstration in a town where a large community of Holocaust survivors resided.

While the ACLU’s defense of the Nazis was in poor taste, it was in keeping with their purist – admirably so, many would argue – view of the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights, that gift from all the Americans who have gone before us. That is who the ACLU was, with a stated mission "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States".

But no longer. The ACLU has “jumped the shark” as is said. We cannot tell if this is due to a growing presence of a new generation, unhistorical, overloaded on so much information from today that no room remains for all that came before; or if it is due simply to the whims of those who underwrite the ACLU – its contributors and benefactors. We cannot tell. We can only observe what they have done.

Those funding an organization inevitably call its tune. Today, there are many more groups asking for money than there were back in 1920, when the ACLU was formed. And an annual budget of more than $230 million is a big nut. One can only imagine the arguments between the group’s purists and those whose concerns focus more on fundraising.

And then there is the ever present pressure of political correctness, illustrating that America has never really moved on from its puritan roots. The need to shun, to censure, to shame remains within our DNA. Only the subject changes. If a company like Chick-fil-A can be brought to heel from the outside, how much easier for an organization like the ACLU, from within?

And so, this past weekend, the ACLU presented an award to an accuser whose accusations could not be substantiated and whose own supporters later doubted her account. An accuser who made her accusation in 2018 – about something that she said happened in 1982 (Yes, wouldn’t we all wish to live under a tyranny in which government investigators could conjure an accusation from our long past that could be made fresh to destroy us? Wouldn’t we all wish to apply such to our own lives?) In presenting an award for “courage” to this accuser, the ACLU made clear that innocent until proven guilty no longer matters.

The accuser is Christine Blasey Ford. The accused, one Brett Kavanaugh. Of course they did. What else matters?

The accuser is painting herself as a victim of a crime and the ACLU is accepting this. And yet no crime had been adjudicated. So we say again, the principle that the accused is innocent until proven guilty no longer matters.

This is quite a turnabout for the ACLU. Most everyone has heard of the Miranda case and that the police, when arresting someone, must “Mirandize” them or read them their Miranda rights. This came out of a 1963 case in which the accused was arrested for the kidnapping and rape of an 18-year-old girl. The accused admitted to the rape and confessed to police. The accused was convicted at trial of kidnapping and rape. Later, it was found that the police had neglected to inform the accused of his right to counsel, so the ACLU and others successfully argued for his release. It led to the famous decision by the United States Supreme Court, in favor of the accused – who had been convicted of kidnapping and rape.

Ernesto Miranda went to trial again in 1967. Witnesses testified that Miranda himself had bragged about the rape at the time of the offense. He was convicted in 1967 and sentenced to serve 20 to 30 years in prison. However, this was before the Reagan/Clinton era of tough-on-crime mandatory sentencing laws and such, so he was released in 1972. Miranda was stabbed to death in a bar fight in 1976.

(NOTE: America is now in the process of regressing to the past – of going back to those halcyon days when a man convicted of kidnapping and rape was back on the streets in five years. The victim, in this case, was just 27 years old when the man convicted of kidnapping and raping her was released. Hopefully, she moved so she didn’t have to look at him. Remember this well, because this is where we are going – here and to the great re-learning that will of necessity follow. Look forward to a new wave of mandatory sentencing laws in the 2030’s and 2040’s.)

This was who the ACLU was back when it believed that the accused was innocent until proven guilty – back when the ACLU would take on the case of a convicted rapist and kidnapper and insist that – no matter the public outcry, no matter how loud this mob or that howled – the rules had to be adhered to. How you played the game mattered to the ACLU. Then. Not now.

Now the howls of the mob are all that matters. And the money. Bet the fundraising is going great!

The Left in America (and throughout the West) has embraced a kind of Modernist justice that leaves it “free” from empirical evidence and facts. Going forward, they tell us, “justice” will be based on “imagination” and “feeling” – whether of the individual or of the mob (be it in body or on social media). Of course, even the most ardent Modernists had to later admit that the “oakness” of the truncheons did intrude on the mind’s abstractions. Then, when the darkness fell, and “justice” became whatever the government, with its men with guns, said it was.

Let us mourn the passing of the old ACLU. Too bad, it almost made a hundred.

Yes Alan Steinberg, once upon a time America did send people “back to where they came from”

What is a “Congresswoman of color”?  How does she differ from a plain old “Congresswoman”?  Are the duties, rights, and responsibilities different?

Terms like “Congresswoman of color” are generally used by people who come from mono-chromatic worlds – whether that world is an all Somali-neighborhood in Minnesota or a Palestinian enclave in Michigan.  You can tell such places by the flags they fly.  If a neighborhood flies a flag other than the American flag it’s a good chance you have wandered into a mono-chromatic world.

See, Americans are a mixed people.  Ethnically and racially – as was often pointed out by the great Harlem Renaissance poet Jean Toomer.  A Quaker, Toomer knew that Americans were a “people of the word” – what sets us apart are the words in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.  Our freedoms make us who we are.  After spending many years traveling, Toomer lived and mentored in Doylestown, Bucks County, where he died in 1967. 

Those who think in terms of “people of color” and who are obsessed by the tint of one’s skin are almost always themselves racialists.  Wikipedia notes that “Racialism is the belief that the human species is naturally divided into races, that are ostensibly distinct biological categories.”

The philosopher W.E.B. DuBois argued that racialism was merely the philosophical position that races existed, and that collective differences existed among such categories.  DuBois held that racialism was a value-neutral term and differed from racism in that the latter required advancing the argument that one race is superior to other races of human beings.

Of course, science has largely erased such arguments.  Aside from some genetic correlations in the incidence of diseases in this subset or that, the idea of “racial identity” that is forced down every American child’s throat, that haunts our society in everything from census forms to employment applications, is entirely a political construct.  The American idea of “race” is nonsense and calling people “racist” is a nonsense game.  The actor Morgan Freeman got it right…

Enter Alan Steinberg, house “Republican” for a far-Left insider blog financed by some rather unsavory government vendors.  Steinberg longs for the days when the NJGOP was run by rich, so called “blue-bloods” (a mixed caste that claimed it could trace some measure of its history back to America’s colonial masters).  Unfortunately for Steinberg, all the rich “blue-bloods” are today Democrats, which is why Steinberg is such a decidedly anti-Republican “Republican”.  Like the writer Stefan Zweig, he longs for a lost monarchy, his queen, in exile. 

Alan Steinberg is a racialist.  He embraces the concept of race as central to our political, academic, economic, and cultural discourse in America.  He wants to elevate it to the center of all things, a thing that does not exist.  In some ways, Steinberg is like Donald Trump, who is also a racialist, albeit a tongue-in-cheek one.  Who can take half of what he tweets seriously?  How much of it is designed to arouse – like the comedic entertainer – simply for the pleasure of it.  Steinberg however, is very serious.  He applies heavy meaning to his racialism.

So do his allies in the Democrat Party.  As do those radical Democrats he claims he doesn’t like – Ms. A.O.C. and her posse.  They are racialists all. 

Alan Steinberg is deeply troubled by President Trump’s most recent taunt to Congresswoman A.O.C. and her… wait for it… fellow congresswomen of color, that they “go back to where you came from”.  Of course, they all came from here, from the America of made-up racial and ethnic “identities”.  All from mono-chromatic worlds.  Fake worlds, with flags from other places that are meant to impart some sense of false nationality, irrelevant to the place in which they actually live.  But fly them they do, in these make-pretend “colonies” that unwind and break-up as those within them meet, fall-in-love with, and are absorbed by the real place, by the nation that is, by America.

But as Steinberg fumes and pouts, it is funny to remember that – once upon a time – America really did send people “back where you came from”.  And for the most part, they could in no way be described as “people of color”.  Most of these people where Nazis, war criminals, and America was more than happy to use the words “go back to where you came from”.  Wikipedia notes:   

“According to a February 2, 2011 release from the United States Department of Justice, since 1979, the federal government has stripped 107 people of citizenship for alleged involvement in war crimes committed during World War II through the efforts of the Office of Special Investigations (OSI).  An unabridged 600-page Justice Department report obtained by The New York Times in 2010 stated, ‘More than 300 Nazi persecutors have been deported, stripped of citizenship or blocked from entering the United States since the creation of the O.S.I.’ The Los Angeles Times reported in 2008 that five such denaturalized men could not be deported as no country would accept them, and that four others had died while in the same situation.”

One wonders:  With Governor Murphy’s Sanctuary State directives and the unwillingness by many Democrats to in any way question an asylum seeker’s claims, how many sometime war criminals (or just plain violent criminals) will we be holding similar proceedings on some decades from now?  Stay tuned…

Did he cover for a Nazi? Democrats placed in bad spot by Malinowski.

When a Republican legislator attended a country music concert last year and was photographed standing in front of the band’s banner, he was excoriated by a long list of Democrats because that band banner incorporated aspects of a “rebel” flag.  The Democrats promptly accused the Republican legislator of being a racist (even though he has African-American family members who quickly came to his defense) and called for his resignation and a boycott of his business (a course of action that caused the Executive Director of the local County Democratic Committee to break with her party and come to the defense of the Republican).

Last week, Democrat U.S. Senator Cory Booker got caught holding up an anti-Israel sign and calling for the destruction of the border security wall that has done so much to reduce the number of terrorist murders of innocent women and children by Islamic extremists.  It was a grossly irresponsible act by the increasingly light-weight, childish Senator.

Now it’s emerged that Democrat Tom Malinowski ran an organization that was decidedly anti-Israel and that employed as one of its top operatives, a guy who is obsessed with the Third Reich.  In a column published in yesterday’s  Times of Israel, journalist Robert Goldberg writes:  “Tom Malinowski Defended Advisor’s Nazi Fetish.”

The author notes how Tom Malinowski ran Human Rights Watch’s Washington, DC, office when it came out that Marc Garlasco, Human Rights Watch’s longtime senior military advisor was “an enthusiastic collector of Nazi memorabilia.”  The column continues:  “Rather than speak out against ‘any sign of anti-Semitism’, Malinowski defended Garlasco, claiming he was just a student of history and that his critics were part ‘of a campaign to deflect attention from Human Rights Watch’s rigorous and detailed reporting on violations of international human rights and humanitarian law by the Israeli government.’”

That’s right Tom, blame the Jews themselves for the anti-Semitism inflicted upon them.  The column continues…

“The website NGO Monitor which was critical of Human Rights Watch for claiming – based on Garlasco’s assessment – Israel was guilty of war crimes during Operation Cast Lead – noted at the time, that collecting Nazi memorabilia in many European countries is illegal. ‘It is banned on many internet sites and from auction houses….The Simon Wiesenthal Center notes it glorifies the horrors of Nazi Germany.'”

Garlasco’s Screen Logo

Garlasco’s Flak-88 Mini Cooper

“Garlasco’s screen logo was a picture of a German badge with a swastika.  His screen name on the Nazi memorabilia sites was Flak88, which is a German anti-aircraft gun but also a code for ‘Heil Hitler’ used by neo-Nazis to identify themselves. Though Garlasco likely knew of the dual meaning, NGO Monitor notes, ‘he even used it on his license plate (a practice which is banned in Germany) and as a screen name on websites unrelated to his Nazi collection.’  When he obtained a leather SS jacket Garlasco gushed that it made his ‘blood ran cold.  It is so COOL.’”

“… in September 2007, Garlasco wrote: ‘Need advice. So I am trying to figure out what to do. My book [on Nazi war medals] is clsoe [sic] to done, but I am not sure if I should put my name on it. If folks at work found out I might very well lose my job. That is the reality, so don’t dwell on it – ok? But this is a small group of people – should I worry? And shouldn’t I stand up for myself? And if I use a psyeudonym [sic] isn’t that worse, like I am trying to hide something?’

Garlasco then added, ‘I will talk quietly to some at work that I trust – a small group indeed.’”

“If he did talk to people at HRW in 2007, it means that someone at the organization knew about his fetish two years before he was exposed and did nothing then, as well as in 2009. HRW was, at the time, leading the effort to get the United Nations, Obama administration and Congress to endorse the Goldstone report which concluded Israel had committed war crimes and released several reports urging endorsement.  Garlasco’s claims that Israel deliberately bombed civilians and used incendiary weapons during Operation Cast Lead were cited repeatedly by the report. And Garlasco’s reports – as well as he alleged military expertise —  were being successfully .”

“…Through all this, Malinowski, who had no problem praising Garlasco before the controversy, remained silent.  Garlasco was suspended without pay pending an investigation, if It was ever conducted, has not been discussed publicly.

Malinowski’s behavior during the Garlasco affair not a profile in courage. It was an act of political expediency.  It raises the question of whether Malinowski would have defended  Garlasco was an exuberant collector KKK memorabilia. In either case, the fascination with an evil regime dedicated to killing Jews (and African Americans) is a disturbing fetish that Malinowski and HRW defended as scholarship.”

The author notes that Malinowski’s “actions then and now were inconsistent with his moralizing about running for Congress… But it is consistent with Malinowski’s leadership of HRW when it supported the virulently anti-Semitic Durban Conference on Racism in 2001 and in 2009, which, as the Forward noted, was ‘the blueprint and launching pad for the modern iteration of the boycott movement against Israel, otherwise known as BDS’.”

Author Robert Goldberg closes by asking Tom Malinowski to disclose…

“It is consistent with his leadership in developing and defending the discredited Goldstone Report as well as vigorous efforts to get the world to condemn Israel based on that review. Indeed, it is consistent with Malinowski’s accepting the endorsement of a group that honored Linda Sarsour (an admirer of Louis Farrakhan).

Mr. Malinowski should provide the public with a full and honest explanation of his defense of Garlasco’s Nazi souvenir collection as well as HRW’s campaign against Israel. It’s what any normal, decent person would do.”

Well, well, all you Democrats who lost your ass over that band banner in 2017, what say you now?  Crickets?  Well here’s a heads up, you are not going to get away with saying nothing.  We’re going to get you all on the record on this and on Booker… so beware next time someone comes up to you and says those dreaded words:  “Pardon me…”

The Star-Ledger asks: Are establishment liberals funny?

There is a reason why Jimmy Kimmel manages to get just around 3 million viewers a night while -- back when America had a much smaller population -- Johnny Carson got 19 million.  Jimmy's humor appeals to a much smaller audience, even though that audience owns everything, runs everything, and tells us what to eat, what to wear, and how to think.

In a recent opinion piece published in the Star-Ledger -- the house organ of the Newhouse Media Empire -- a dreary, oh so earnest lady, by the name of Jennifer The Moe, passed an insight in which she claimed that liberals were funny.  Forget the "funnier than" bit, we couldn't get past the "liberals being funny" piece. 

Sure, they used to be.  When they were actually "liberals" -- but not now, not today, they're not allowed to be.  In the world of the "establishment" liberal, humor (like everything else) is highly regulated.  And the list of "safe" things to be humorous about grows smaller every year.  And if you don't know that list by heart, you might just end up having to make an apology tour, or face social exclusion and public shamming, the loss of status, job, income, the means of life even.

Think of a guy like Phil Murphy trying to add a little humor into a speech.  Pity the poor bugger as he bounces around checking it with everyone he can think of who might be offended.  No wonder he has that thousand-yard-stare of someone with PTSD.  Trying not to offend can be debilitating.

Now here is a guy who is funny, effortlessly so, and who has made quite a career of it (and an international career, mind you).  Here, he is speaking seriously on a topic, while poking some fun at the censoriousness of modern "establishment" liberals (i.e. those who have actually forgotten what being a "liberal" means).

Here is another funny guy making the same point, but in a more directly comedic way:

Writing elsewhere, Jennifer The Moe provides this insight into the creative process:  "I mean, get real: you think that Henry James or Edith Wharton or Leo Tolstoy or Alice Adams wrote all those great books by themselves? Call it what you will—creative inspiration, God, Jesus, Buddha, the muses, Satan, flow, presence, or Zen—but the great stuff always comes out only when 'you' get out of the way and allow it to come."

Satan, huh?  What is it with Satan and these new liberals?  Hate Nazis but love Satan.  And the difference?  Didn't they realize that conservatives were just kidding when they teased them about being Satan-worshippers?  Who would have thought that they would double-down and now include Satan in all their lists of "supreme" beings?

We miss the old liberals.  They were a lot of fun -- and they joined with us in dissing both Nazis and Satan.  They weren't much good at balancing budgets, but damn did they make us laugh.  They were the yin to our yang.  We'd love to have them back -- instead of this hateful, prudish, stick-up-the-bunghole crowd that calls themselves "liberal" now.

There still are a few around though.  Bill Maher is still carrying on the tradition.  And wow does he ever nail it...

And how about this guy?  Monty Python anyone?

Josh Gottheimer's Tea Party connections

From our friends at Sussex County Watchdog

Last night, Josh Gottheimer's political campaign sent out an email blast that attacked Scott Garrett and Steve Lonegan.  Gottheimer called Scott Garrett a "Tea Party incumbent" and Steve Lonegan a "Tea Partier" and a "Tea Party darling." 

Gottheimer should know.  He's been wooing the Tea Party since he got elected and a lot of people believe they've consummated their illicit relationship. 

Gottheimer is a public relations professional who worked for Bill "I did not have sex..." Clinton, Ford Motor Corporation (Gottheimer sold the sizzle after Ford screwed 44,000 working men and women out of their jobs) , and was a global spin doctor for some of the biggest scumbags on the planet.  Gottheimer is a "progressive" in the way that Bernie Madoff was a "philanthropist"  -- they put on a good show, but hold on to your wallet!

Josh Gottheimer has been at work schmoozing the GOP in full on straw-up-the-backside mode.  He has sucked up to Republican mayors and Republican activists, insisting that he ain't a "real Democrat" and that he shares their values.  Now that's a joke for a start because Josh ain't got much in the way of "values" to begin with (aside from making dough and getting power and celebrity and attention and being the guy with the cool shoes).  Hey, we get it, there are a lot of sociopaths in politics.

He even sent a nice Democrat lady -- lawyer Jennifer Hamilton -- to help schmooze the Tea Party for him.  And it looks like it worked.  Recently, Tea Partier Nathan Orr (who ran as a kind of alt-right primary candidate in June) posted on Facebook that he wants to vote for Josh Gottheimer. Now how is that for having it both ways?

In Washington, Josh Gottheimer hangs out with Nancy Pelosi and trash-talks the Tea Party and the GOP.  Calls them all Nazis and racists.  But when Gottheimer visits Sussex County (he's not from here, you know) he brings with him some extra heavy duty straws for the schmooze-fest. 

Hey "progressives" -- the joke is on you. 

Winston Churchill on dealing with National Socialists

As the weak, irresolute rhetoric flows, let us stop for a moment and consider the words of the leader who stood against the Nazi state... alone.  At a time when the Leftist Soviet Union was feasting on half of Poland, through a deal made with the Nazis, a Conservative Prime Minister rallied his people to oppose Hitler.

Here are his words:

To discuss Sir Winston Churchill,  here is Boris Johnson, journalist and writer, the former Mayor of London, Her Majesty's Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, and the Conservative Member of Parliament for Uxbridge and South Ruislip:

A Democrat asks: "Where does free speech end?"

A Democrat activist wrote:  "Where does free speech end?  Certainly at the grill of a Dodge Challenger.  KKK and confederate flags have always been around in my lifetime, protected as free speech, but nazi (sic) flags?  With a war in living memory that killed millions and a movement that killed millions more, I thought swastikas were a red line.  Are nazi (sic) flags free speech?  I know/hope that republicans (sic) don't support this but will they speak up, or are they entirely spineless?"

Purposefully running down somebody with an automobile isn't free speech.  It is murder.  Because it happened in Virginia, with its Republican Legislature (the GOP controls the Senate 21 to 19 and the House of Delegates 66 to 34), if convicted the perpetrator will get the death penalty and will be executed for his crime. 

This wouldn't happen in New Jersey, with its Democrat-controlled Legislature.  Here the perpetrator would be coddled at taxpayer expense and would, perhaps, sue the state because he wasn't receiving enough benefits.  It wasn't long ago that a convicted rapist sued the state so that he could have a sex-change operation and serve the remainder of his sentence as a "woman".  Of course, James Randall Smith, who was convicted of kidnapping and raping a 17-year-old girl, expected the state's taxpayers to pay for his sex-change operation.

As for Nazi flags, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has argued that a Nazi flag is as much an element of free speech as is burning the American flag.  On its website, the ACLU explains why it defended Nazis:

"In 1978, the ACLU took a controversial stand for free speech by defending a neo-Nazi group that wanted to march through the Chicago suburb of Skokie , where many Holocaust survivors lived. The notoriety of the case caused some ACLU members to resign, but to many others the case has come to represent the ACLU's unwavering commitment to principle. In fact, many of the laws the ACLU cited to defend the group's right to free speech and assembly were the same laws it had invoked during the Civil Rights era, when Southern cities tried to shut down civil rights marches with similar claims about the violence and disruption the protests would cause."

The ACLU makes its arguments for all to read, on its website, and we encourage everyone to visit the website (www.aclu.org):

"Freedom of speech, of the press, of association, of assembly and petition -- this set of guarantees, protected by the First Amendment, comprises what we refer to as freedom of expression. The Supreme Court has written that this freedom is 'the matrix, the indispensable condition of nearly every other form of freedom.'

Without it, other fundamental rights, like the right to vote, would wither and die. 

But in spite of its 'preferred position' in our constitutional hierarchy, the nation's commitment to freedom of expression has been tested over and over again. Especially during times of national stress, like war abroad or social upheaval at home, people exercising their First Amendment rights have been censored, fined, even jailed. Those with unpopular political ideas have always borne the brunt of government repression. It was during WWI -- hardly ancient history -- that a person could be jailed just for giving out anti-war leaflets. Out of those early cases, modern First Amendment law evolved. Many struggles and many cases later, ours is the most speech-protective country in the world.

The path to freedom was long and arduous. It took nearly 200 years to establish firm constitutional limits on the government's power to punish 'seditious'  and 'subversive' speech. Many people suffered along the way, such as labor leader Eugene V. Debs, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison under the Espionage Act just for telling a rally of peaceful workers to realize they were 'fit for something better than slavery and cannon fodder.'  Or Sidney Street, jailed in 1969 for burning an American flag on a Harlem street corner to protest the shooting of civil rights figure James Meredith...

Early Americans enjoyed great freedom compared to citizens of other nations. Nevertheless, once in power, even the Constitution's framers were guilty of overstepping the First Amendment they had so recently adopted. In 1798, during the French-Indian War, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Act, which made it a crime for anyone to publish 'any false, scandalous and malicious writing' against the government. It was used by the then-dominant Federalist Party to prosecute prominent Republican newspaper editors during the late 18th century.

Throughout the 19th century, sedition, criminal anarchy and criminal conspiracy laws were used to suppress the speech of abolitionists, religious minorities, suffragists, labor organizers, and pacifists. In Virginia prior to the Civil War, for example, anyone who 'by speaking or writing maintains that owners have no right of property in slaves'  was subject to a one-year prison sentence.

The early 20th century was not much better. In 1912, feminist Margaret Sanger was arrested for giving a lecture on birth control. Trade union meetings were banned and courts routinely granted injunctions prohibiting strikes and other labor protests. Violators were sentenced to prison. Peaceful protesters opposing U. S. entry into World War I were jailed for expressing their opinions. In the early 1920s, many states outlawed the display of red or black flags, symbols of communism and anarchism. In 1923, author Upton Sinclair was arrested for trying to read the text of the First Amendment at a union rally. Many people were arrested merely for membership in groups regarded as 'radical' by the government. It was in response to the excesses of this period that the ACLU was founded in 1920.

...The ACLU has often been at the center of controversy for defending the free speech rights of groups that spew hate, such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis. But if only popular ideas were protected, we wouldn't need a First Amendment. History teaches that the first target of government repression is never the last. If we do not come to the defense of the free speech rights of the most unpopular among us, even if their views are antithetical to the very freedom the First Amendment stands for, then no one's liberty will be secure. In that sense, all First Amendment rights are 'indivisible.'

Censoring so-called hate speech also runs counter to the long-term interests of the most frequent victims of hate: racial, ethnic, religious and sexual minorities. We should not give the government the power to decide which opinions are hateful, for history has taught us that government is more apt to use this power to prosecute minorities than to protect them. As one federal judge has put it, tolerating hateful speech is 'the best protection we have against any Nazi-type regime in this country.'"

Everyone should ask themselves the question, "Where does free speech end?"  And then follow that question with another:  "When do you want it to end?"

Tea Party leader calls Nazi beer hall "charming"

Douglas Amedeo, a New York attorney and leader in the Skylands Tea Party, recently posted the following on social media:

We respectfully disagree with attorney Amedeo.  No less than the top Nazi architect himself, Albert Speer, held that National Socialist (Nazi) architecture was reflective of its ideological attitudes.  We suggest attorney Amedeo read "Inside the Third Reich", written by Speer while serving a prison sentence for crimes against humanity. 

For our part, we can find nothing "charming" in National Socialist architecture, although we do understand that taste is a very subjective and often personal matter.

To the leaders of Andover Township we have a question and a suggestion.

The Question:  Why hasn't Andover Township placed a plaque on the property to honor the victims of the ideology that was practiced at the American National Socialist Bund's Camp Nordland (what attorney Amedeo refers to as the "Barn in Hillside Park")?

The Suggestion:  That Andover Township place a plaque at the site of the American National Socialist Bund's Camp Nordland, to honor the victims of the ideology practiced there; and that Andover Township donate all proceeds from events held at the former Nazi Beer Hall to organizations representing the victims of the Holocaust and their families.

As for Tea Party leader Amedeo's suggestion that Great Britain's constitutional monarchy was somehow equivalent to the dictatorship of Adolph Hitler... well, that is simply preposterous.  America owes its democratic roots to English Common Law and our representative system of government to "the mother of parliaments" -- British representative democracy.

Perhaps we could arrange a public debate on the Tea Party's assertion that the British monarch is an equivalent to the Nazi dictator.  Attorney Amedeo could argue for the proposition, and perhaps Professor Murray Sabrin, who lost family in the Holocaust, could argue against.

And far from being "an administrative seat of King George's colonial government," Independence Hall was constructed in 1753 as buildings to house the colonial Legislature of the Province of Pennsylvania.  The refining simplicity of its construction and its layout are the very essence of representative democracy. 

To compare Independence Hall to a Nazi beer hall is asinine.  We trust that the Tea Party and its leadership will further their reading on this.  We can recommend several good authors on the subject, although "Philadelphia, A 300-Year History" (edited by Russell F. Weigley, published in 1982) is a good place to start.  For more in-depth reading, we recommend beginning with "Watson's Annals of Philadelphia" (John F. Watson, 1884).

A scene from Camp Nordland, Andover Township, New Jersey.