Monday Musings

Like the alliteration?  Yeah.

FIRST on the agenda.  Someone said that my open distain for Michael Savage is hypocritical, since I support the first amendment's social liberties.  It's VERY common for people to make this argument; in fact, Savage himself has a "donate money to me and keep the first amendment protected," which, to me, translates to "donate money to me so that my lawsuits are covered whenever I take it too far."

Don't get me wrong.  I'm all about the free speech.  I mean, I'm totally appreciative of the fact that we can have this blog and say what we think without having to worry about getting thrown in jail or shot or something.

But I truly don't believe that the things Savage says should be protected.  In a journalism class I took last semester, we learned that there are actually different levels of protection for various kinds of speech.  Obscenity is the least protected.  I mean, Savage once took a gay caller, didn't let the man get two words in, and yelled at him for being a "pig" and a "sodomite."  A private citizen.  Technically, isn't that slander?  Yeah, folks, it is.

And there's where the line is drawn.  Freedom of speech is limited when it violates others' rights or is considered slander.

The man is a hypocrite himself, anyway.  He's always yelling about how people shouldn't be gay, or that Muslims are all terrorists, or that autistic children are "brats."  And yet things like religion are protected under the same amendment that he so brazenly abuses.  He makes me sick.

Here's a sample of him being ridiculous:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpmTivdGl54

Okay!  On to the news.

People.  I can't believe this is still an issue.  If President Obama doesn't want to wear his suit jacket, he doesn't have to.  People do their best work while they're comfortable.  Give it a rest.  It's not even that big of a deal.

There's a lot of debate recently about whether or not Obama is giving Republican senators higher offices so that their positions in the Senate can be filled with Democrats, giving them a filibuster-proof majority.  I don't know if that's true, necessarily, but I know that I wouldn't MIND it if that were one of Obama's motives.

Filibusters are cheap and completely illegitimate.  I'm not even going to go into it.  If you've got any sense about you, you understand that talking a bill to death is absurd.

A lot of people criticized Obama for having a Superbowl shindig.  McCain ditched, for whatever reason, but was on the invite list.  I don't see any problems with him taking a few hours away from his job to participate in one of the biggest events in American culture of the year.  I, personally, don't follow sports or anything, but I think it's great that Americans make a day of Superbowl Sunday.

Women are starting to take a stand in Iraq, running for council seats in regional elections.  I'm pretty excited about that.  Hopefully these women won't be murdered, like so many have for doing similar things.  Oh, gender.

Well, that's Monday.