Saturday, November 19, 2011

Occupy Quinlivan's Computer!

Combine the pointless performance art of OWS with the Democrats' sweep of the Cincinnati City Council election (Winburn as the lone non-Democrat is like have ten Democratic votes on the nine-member City Council), and what do you get?

A member of the Council majority suing the city because the restriction of her use of a city computer on a city internet connection for campaign purposes is, in the view of her lawyers, a violation of her free speech rights.

We are not making this up. The councilwoman in question is Laurie Quinlivan, ardent supporter of Mayor Mallory, shrill shill for the streetcar, and former TV reporter distinguished for a certain entitled pushiness in conducting investigative reporting (that last remark is based on a troubling encounter that we once had with her as she sought to attribute to us information that we thought we were giving on background, using the incentive, "My pastor told me that you could help me").

The story is here.

Attention, Councilwoman Quinlivan and OWS denizens: the right to free speech includes reasonable restrictions on time, place and manner. Citizens have the inalienable right to say anything they think, especially anything political. They don't have the right to do it any time, anywhere, by any means. This is so settled a matter of constitutional law that one wonders that anyone in government or with an eighth-grade education operates without the assumption.

Yet we are told that a city-owned, taxpayer funded computer should be free for use in a partisan political campaign, and that a public park with reasonable restrictions on access and use should be available for constant use without restriction for aggrieved citizens to express symbolically their grievances.

But individuals shouldn't be allowed to give a lot of money to a political campaign, and groups of individuals organized to do business (i.e. corporations) shouldn't be allowed to give any.

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