After more than two days of deliberation, an Orange County jury on Friday found 10 Muslim students guilty of two misdemeanors to conspire and then disrupt a February 2010 speech at UC Irvine last year by the Israeli ambassador to the United States...Hopefully it will chill the idea that you can do whatever you want, claiming 1st Amendment protection.
A guilty verdict, the defense had said during the trial, could chill student activism and the free exchange of ideas at colleges nationwide.
I find the comments at the end of the article interesting, especially those by people I assume (based on their names) are Muslim. They don't like this decision at all.
The key is exactly what the defense said during the trial. These individuals stifled the free exchange of ideas. The would not let the other side present their idea, doing exactly what the defense was afraid a conviction would bring.
ReplyDeleteWhy weren't there ushers available to eject unruly spectators, just like people talking on cell phones in movie theaters? That would have solved the problem much more cheaply.
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