Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren was invited to speak  to about 500 students at University of California at Irvine on Feb. 8.

About 6 minutes into the presentation a number of protesters from the Muslim Student Union rose and began chanting, “MR. OREN! MASS MURDER IS NOT FREE SPEECH!” as well as allegedly yelling “Killers!” “How many Palestinians did you kill?”

Mr. Oren left the stage but eventually came back out and finished his presentation. The protesters were removed from the venue by security.  11 were arrested for disrupting a public proceeding and the students among them face university discipline.

There has been debate over whether the students who were engaging in what is being called a “heckler’s veto” should be punished. Were the students engaging in protected free speech which would preempt any type of discipline?  Has the the line between free speech and the academic freedom needed to put on such presentations without disruption been blurred beyond recognition?  In coming to any conclusion it is important to keep in mind that UC-Irvine is a State University.  This was a University sponsored event.  Both the Federal 1st Amendment and the California 1st Amendment would therefore be in play.

While I  disagree that there is no right to a heckler’s veto as an absolute, I am on the side of Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the UC Irvine School of Law in his editorial published in the L.A. Times and Professor Alan Dershowitz in his Huffington Post editorial.  This was not spirited political debate in which a response was expected or allowed. It was coordinated censorship.  What’s the point of academic freedom if it can not be exercised to the benefit of the student body to the same extent as the protesters would expect if someone they admired was speaking.

From a practical spectator standpoint, I would also be pissed as hell if I was sitting in that auditorium unable to hear because of obnoxious students. I don’t care if they are Muslims, Jews, Hindus or Hare-Krishna’s.They are ruining the experience I have a right to enjoy and engage if I so choose.  Let’s be clear.  This was a structured event. It was not a “free for all come-all” in a public square. Unlike a public square, the protesters got into the event to the exclusion of other protesters and spectators. That is not open free speech as if they were in the square and anyone could chime in.   It implies rules of conduct and a level of respect and decorum.

I understand that free and unpopular speech does not always occur in convenient places. One of the the points of protest is to do it in a manner to make a point.  As obnoxious as these kids were, that can not be brushed off.  Free speech sparing is not always done by the Marquess Of Queensbury Rules.  We can only protest if we are nice and polite?  Were the framers always polite in their dissent of the crown?  They never shouted down the King’s emissaries as they addressed the colonies on new taxes?

In the end, the video speaks for itself to the detriment of the motives of the yelling students. This was not a spirited debate. This was an attempt to silence by screaming.  The epitome of verbal terrorism. It was an attempt to stifle the academic freedom rights of Ambassador Oren and other students on the same level they claim their rights were snuffed out.  This was not a come all campus wide  protest on the University Green.  This was an invited speaker, organized event in which the attendees had a right of reasonable quiet enjoyment and Ambassador Oren had a right to retort to any protest.  This  was not an open public square available to all who want to shout down the shouters.  The hecklers should have been escorted out.

The statute under which the hecklers were arrested reads as follows:

“Every person, who, without authority of law, willfully disturbs or breaks up any assembly or meeting that is not unlawful in its character, other than an assembly or meeting referred to in Section 302 of the Penal Code….. is guilty of a misdemeanor”

In Hill v. Colorado the court held that the First Amendment right to free speech was not violated by a Colorado law limiting protest, education, distribution of literature or counseling within eight feet of a person entering a health-care facility.

What this tells me is that the University and city can establish reasonable content neutral rules that prohibit acts that endanger the safety of the speaker or the other members of the audience. They however can not regulate based on the content of the speech.  It does not end there.  I take issue with the California statute as applied here.   What does “disturb” or “break-up” mean?  Would it even be possible to craft a jury instruction?  There is an argument that these words as applied to the protesters are so vague as to be unenforceable and therefore unconstitutional as applied to the protesters.

In the end, I am glad the protesters were escorted out.  I have the same right to listen that they have to be heard.  They can be heard outside the event.  They do not have the 1st amendment right to shout down to the exclusion of all others in the room. This is not a public square.  I however am uncomfortable with any academic discipline or legal action against the protesters.  They wrere not inciting either the speaker or the crowd to violence against the speaker or other members of the crowd.  We should be arresting the dangerous, not the obnoxious.

The federal statute that makes it a crime to threaten the President is 18 U.S. Code § 871(a). It provides as follows:

Whoever knowingly and willfully deposits for conveyance in the mail or for a delivery from any post office or by any letter carrier any letter, paper, writing, print, missive, or document containing any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States. . . shall be fined . . . or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

This group  is currently on Facebook. “Kill Obama” This speaks for itself.  As of the posting of this blog it was still up and has apparently been up since at least November 2009

There are 122 members of this group.

**Update  As of this morning, the Kill Obama Page Has Been Removed By Facebook.  If the Secret Service is going to investigate a “Should President Obama Be Assassinated” Facebook Poll, I do not see how they can let this go.

**Update 1/6/10  Yesterday I spoke with the local Dallas office of the Secret Service and The Washington D.C office. I subsequently provided them the screen-caps of the group and the individual FB pages of the group administrators.  This morning I received an email from Facebook’s Washington D.C. spokesperson Andrew Noyes stating that Facebook reported the threat to the Secret Service Tuesday evening.  Will update if anything further develops.

Al-Qaeda carries off a new series of attacks in New York City. First there is the bombing of a NYC MTA Transit Bus killing all hostages and a terrorist. The FBI determines that there is a cell of 5 involved. Next is a subway bombing. The 3rd is a Broadway bombing killing everyone in the packed theater.

Intelligence develops that it is a cell out of Yemen. The FBI is unable to locate it and seems powerless to stop the next attack.

The last explosion is the FBI building itself killing hundreds. Panic grips the nation. Pursuant to the War Powers Resolution, and executive authority to use military domestically in emergency situations, President Obama acts. He declares a state of national emergency. The National Guard and regular military are called in. The next morning, tanks are rolling down Broadway and across the Brooklyn Bridge. In response to outcry from the ACLU and human rights groups, President Obama releases the following statement:

“We are in a time of national emergency. Extraordinary measures are needed to ensure the security of our nation and prevent further loss of life. Furthermore,domestic use of the military against Al-Qaeda is legal because it serves a national security, rather than a law enforcement, purpose. I have constitutional and statutory authority to deploy the military against international or foreign terrorists operating within the United States”

Military intelligence further determines that they are looking for 4 Muslim males between 18-30 living somewhere in Brooklyn. Nothing more is known.

The military begins house to house rounding up all Muslims fitting that profile and putting them in the new Yankee Stadium for interrogation. The U.S. borders are closed to anyone flying in from selected “Muslim Countries”.

In “ripple in the water panic reaction” localities such as Deaborn Michigan with large Muslim populations begin rounding up all Muslims and placing them in their own detention facilities for interrogation and questioning.

Constitutional? Outrageous? Reasonable given the fact scenario?

When we are afraid it becomes all so disturbingly easy for us to dismiss out of hand the blood, sweat and tears that were put into the Constitutional rights we have today . Our rights when we are at peace and feel safe. Our rights when we are at war and/or a large portion of us are living in fear. Should it make a difference? It certainly has made a difference in our past. Who can forget The Sedition Acts of 1798 and 1918, The McCarthy Hearings or Korematsu v. United States where Justice Black writing for the majority stated that:

“Korematsu was not excluded from the Military Area because of hostility to him or his race. He was excluded because we are at war with the Japanese Empire”

While it has been frowned on publicly in every sense, it should be noted that Korematsu has never been overruled. Are we at war now? Certainly not in the traditional Congressional declared sense. If we are, how easy would it be to substitute names and nationality in Justice Black’s statement. There is no doubt that we have trended towards more power to the executive during times of “war” and national emergency.

No one wants to live in fear. That is what terrorists want but on a much broader scale than you and I. They want chaos at airports. They want us to engage in pure racial and ethnic profiling. They want us to round people up and put them in stadiums. They want our Constitution to change for the worse so that we feel less afraid, lulled by into a false state of calm by our new “Fear Based Constitution” They know that it’s always easier to justify a Fear Based Constitution when we are on the outside of the barbed wire looking in.

THAT is the fear they shoot for when bringing down planes. That is how they win. By bringing about fundamental changes to our way of life. What is a more fundamental than a change in our Constitutional Rights solely out of fear.

As we stand united this moment , Is our “Cup Of Constititional Rights” half-full or half-empty? One thing is certain. Whether the “water-level” rises or falls in the near future will be impacted by whether voices of calm and reason or voices of knee-jerk fear are doing the pouring.

Our Constitution has been around for well over 200 years and while getting its edges torn now and then has always managed to withstand moments in history of and moments of great fear. I hope it will escape this fearful moment in-tact.

I was watching Al Gore on Fox news the other night.  The debate was Global Warming.  Al Gore was on the defensive trying to defend is his position that man-made Global Warming was real and imminent. He then went on to call all those who disagreed with him “Global Warming Deniers”  I must be living in a cave because I had never heard that term used before.

I immediately got a knot in my stomach. It was a knot of history.  A knot of irritation at Al Gore for his ignorance of history and the power of the spoken word.

It had nothing to do with my views on Global Warming.  I got the knot in my stomach because I felt that Al Gore has intentionally attached the word “denier” to call up either conscious or sub-conscious images of the Holocaust.  Drawing on a subtle context and back of the mind imagery specifically designed to cause a subtle,  parallel inference in the viewer/listener.

I do not dispute that the term “denier” has been around for a long time pre-dating its attachment to Holocaust Denial,  a discredited revisionist historical theory that has been around since the 60’s.

There however, is also no disputing that in modern times the term “denier”, when attached to a scientific or other theory has become inextricably entwined with the Holocaust.  Attached to discredit those who are “denying the obvious”  I do not dispute Al Gore’s right to use it.  But why use it?  Why use it unless you are intentionally trying to draw up subtle inferences parallel with the Holocaust. THAT, in my  mind is inappropriate.

Is the highly educated Mr Gore claiming that in his entire internal linguistics  database there is no other appropriate way to make his point with the same force?

Am I being too sensitive? Possibly.  I still do not like it. When I feel like the term is purposely being used to draw on the Holocaust I feel like my history is being denied.  Regardless of my views on Global Warming, I view it as a desperation move on Mr. Gores part.  A move that is beneath his intellect and intent.

I wish he would stop.  Mr. Gore, please stop using that term