hypercrites

Quote from: RWE on August 03, 2012, 06:29:13 pm

Quote from: clistensprechen on August 03, 2012, 06:17:01 pm

Nobody's saying that the president can't speak freely.

You're just saying "If you speak freely and say something the government doesn't like, then its OK if the government makes you pay for it." That will teach everyone in the country not to speak freely won't it. Exactly what you left-wing Stalinists want. Everyone afraid to speak freely.

Umm, you're confusing local government with federal government. This isn't a federal case because the First Amendment isn't even remotely involved in the local issuing of permits unless the business is a publication. Restaurants don't qualify as the Press. No single business president does, either.

There are consequences for everything everybody says. That's life.

The concept you are missing is called "incorporation".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_Rights

The incorporation of the Bill of Rights (or incorporation for short) is the process by which American courts have applied portions of the U.S. Bill of Rights to the states. Prior to the 1890s, the Bill of Rights was held only to apply to the federal government. Under the incorporation doctrine, most provisions of the Bill of Rights now also apply to the state and local governments, by virtue of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.

Prior to the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment and the development of the incorporation doctrine, the Supreme Court in 1833 held in Barron v. Baltimore that the Bill of Rights applied only to the federal, but not any state governments. Even years after the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court in United States v. Cruikshank still held that the First and Second Amendment did not apply to state governments. However, beginning in the 1920s, a series of United States Supreme Court decisions interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment to "incorporate" most portions of the Bill of Rights, making these portions, for the first time, enforceable against the state governments.

The specific case which incorporated the free speech clause of the First Amendment against state and local governments was Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652.

If you think a local government can deny permits based upon the exercise of protected speech, you are either nuts or a liberal.