Justice Department censors Supreme Court ruling discussing dissent

[unixronin]

[Credit:  Various]

In its ongoing legal battle with the ACLU overthe Patriot Act, the Justice Department has seen fit to censor a portion of a freely publicly-available 1972 Supreme Court ruling which calls into question the validity of stifling dissent under the vague justification of "national security".

The Justice Department tipped its hand in its ongoing legal war with the ACLU over the Patriot Act.  Because the matter is so sensitive, the Justice Dept is allowed to black out those passages in the ACLU's court filings that it feels should not be publicly released.

Ostensibly, they would use their powers of censorship only to remove material that truly could jeopardize US operations.  But in reality, what did they do?  They blacked out a quotation from a Supreme Court decision:

"The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect 'domestic security.'  Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent."

The mind reels at such a blatant abuse of power (and at the sheer chutzpah of using national security as an excuse to censor a quotation about using national security as an excuse to stifle dissent).

The Memory Hole article includes links to many other documents in which the Justice Department has censored innocuous passages claiming the excuse of national security.  All you liberals who insist that the Second Amendment is unimportant and irrelevant, and it's the First Amendment that really protects all our freedoms, and they could never take that away?  Well, here's another salvo in that attack on the First Amendment that you keep saying could never happen.

Think hard about it, and do your dissenting while it's still legal to do so.

Comments

[jmkelly.livejournal.com]

p.s.: You have me thinking and thinking about the Second Amendment. I'm still inclined to think that the people's-defense-against-government-tyranny rationale was a fantasy even back in 1787--I think at least some of the framers thought so too--but I'm also inclined to think that most gun-control groups' methods of intepreting it into impotence are fantasies too. Like I said, I'm thinking about it, and I owe thanks to anyone who gets this old brain revolving about anything.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I think it was a lot more reasonable back then, when the government was small and did not own a standing army and multiple armed police agencies.

That said, I think there's fantasists on both sides of the issue. I've seen some ostensibly pro-2nd-amendment arguments that so obviously don't hold water they give everyone else involved in the debate a bad name.