WHILE most of us would agree that religious fundamentalists, foreign and domestic, sometimes do serious harm to our society, there are other kinds of fundamentalists who are also dangerous: I refer to legal fundamentalists.
More precisely, the tranche of lawyers, academicians, journalists and publishers who, over the years, have developed into First Amendment fundamentalists and have become a powerful influence on our government. Currently, they appear to have persuaded our attorney general that the amendment bars him from taking action against Inspire magazine, published on the Internet by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
The organization is a sworn enemy of the United States, and its web publication is available throughout the land. The online magazine proclaims its goals of providing inspiration and justification to inflict harm on the United States as well as Britain, France and other countries, by killing its citizens, preferably in large numbers. It encourages its readers to engage in attacks.
The magazine has given instructions for building car bombs as well as pressure-cooker bombs using material from a kitchen or a hardware store. Those instructions were followed to the letter by the Tsarnaev brothers, who murdered three and sent 264 to hospitals in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
This post was edited by WM BARR . =ABSOLUTE TRASH at December 21, 2016 7:00 AM MST
The magazine you mention is banned here (unless you have a very good reason for having one) and being convicted of it's possession means you will go to jail.
Perhaps this is one of the issues surrounding the choice between written and unwritten constitutions. While I don't know the arguments used on Holder, or whether he was particularly good or bad at his job, I presume the arguments were legal and based on an understanding of the US Constitution. That being so, it highlights to some extent the danger of allowing law to be so imprinted that it becomes excessively inflexible. I think the US is fairly unique among developed countries in allowing the magazine, and the only reason I can think of is the First Amendment.
Whether this is mostly due to an inflexible model or to groups with special interests I don't know - probably it's a complex mix of these and other issues. It does seem clear to me that legal principle should only be pushed so far without public consent and I suspect most Joe Publics, if asked, would want to see this publication made illegal.
WM BARR . =ABSOLUTE TRASH 