“The Obama regime now has mandated speech codes on all campuses”

“The Obama regime now has mandated speech codes on all campuses” HT: LegalInsurrection.By William A. Jacobson.

The Foundation for Individual Rights In Higher Education (FIRE) is the premier non-partisan organization fighting to protect free speech and other constitutional rights on campus.  The FIRE defends everyone’s rights, regardless of political affiliation.


The FIRE is not an organization prone to hyperbole.
So when I received this email late this afternoon from FIRE Senior Vice President Robert Shibley, it got my attention:

THIS. IS. OUTRAGEOUS. The government has mandated speech codes on all campuses. I hoped I would never see this day, but I feared I would.

This press release was linked in the email:

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT MANDATES UNCONSTITUTIONAL SPEECH CODES AT COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES NATIONWIDE

WASHINGTON, May 10, 2013—In a shocking affront to the United States Constitution, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education have joined together to mandate that virtually every college and university in the United States establish unconstitutional speech codes that violate the First Amendment and decades of legal precedent.
“I am appalled by this attack on free speech on campus from our own government,” said Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which has been leading the fight against unconstitutional speech codes on America’s college campuses since its founding in 1999. “In 2011, the Department of Education took a hatchet to due process protections for students accused of sexual misconduct. Now the Department of Education has enlisted the help of the Department of Justice to mandate campus speech codes so broad that virtually every student will regularly violate them. The DOE and DOJ are ignoring decades of legal decisions, the Constitution, and common sense, and it is time for colleges and the public to push back.”
In a letter sent yesterday to the University of Montana that explicitly states that it is intended as “a blueprint for colleges and universities throughout the country,” the Departments of Justice and Education have mandated a breathtakingly broad definition of sexual harassment that makes virtually every student in the United States a harasser while ignoring the First Amendment. The mandate applies to every college receiving federal funding—virtually every American institution of higher education nationwide, public or private.
The letter states that “sexual harassment should be more broadly defined as ‘any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature’” including “verbal conduct” (that is, speech). It then explicitly states that allegedly harassing expression need not even be offensive to an “objectively reasonable person of the same gender in the same situation”—if the listener takes offense to sexually related speech for any reason, no matter how irrationally or unreasonably, the speaker may be punished.
This result directly contradicts previous Department of Education guidance on sexual harassment. In 2003, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) stated that harassment “must include something beyond the mere expression of views, words, symbols or thoughts that some person finds offensive.” Further, the letter made clear that “OCR’s standards require that the conduct be evaluated from the perspective of a reasonable person in the alleged victim’s position, considering all the circumstances, including the alleged victim’s age.”
Among the forms of expression now punishable on America’s campuses by order of the federal government are:

• Any expression related to sexual topics that offends any person. This leaves a wide range of expressive activity—a campus performance of “The Vagina Monologues,” a presentation on safe sex practices, a debate about sexual morality, a discussion of gay marriage, or a classroom lecture on Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita—subject to discipline.
• Any sexually themed joke overheard by any person who finds that joke offensive for any reason.
• Any request for dates or any flirtation that is not welcomed by the recipient of such a request or flirtation.

There is likely no student on any campus anywhere who is not guilty of at least one of these “offenses.” Any attempt to enforce this rule evenhandedly and comprehensively will be impossible….

Professor Glenn Reynolds also has made the broader point, Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything is a Crime:

Though extensive due process protections apply to the investigation of crimes, and to criminal trials, perhaps the most important part of the criminal process — the decision whether to charge a defendant, and with what — is almost entirely discretionary.  Given the plethora of criminal laws and regulations in today’s society, this due process gap allows prosecutors to charge almost anyone they take a deep interest in.  This Essay discusses the problem in the context of recent prosecutorial controversies involving the cases of Aaron Swartz and David Gregory, and offers some suggested remedies, along with a call for further discussion.

Now everything is a speech crime on campus, and the administrators get to pick and choose who is guilty.Read the full story here.

Letter to Secretary Hagel to Confirm Religious Liberties of American Armed Forces

Letter to Secretary Hagel to Confirm Religious Liberties of American Armed Forces.

Letter from Senators Lee (R-UT), Graham (R-SC), and Cruz (R-TX) sent to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel requesting confirmation of the rights of members of the armed services to practice and share their faith.

Lee, Graham, Cruz Letter on Religious Liberty

"Land of the Free" - FREE SPEECH Suspended in Washington D.C. for Inauguration.

"Land of the Free" - FREE SPEECH Suspended in Washington D.C. for Inauguration.(IW). In a sickening public attempt to trample on your first amendment rights, your right to speak and protest was taken away in Washington D.C. today. Earlier this year congress passed H.R. 347, a bill that allowed them to set up free Speech Zones. Today the Feds enacted that law in an attempt to make the President look like he had the full support of the American people.
Throughout the entire Inauguration route, the Secret Service set up zones where freedom of speech was not allowed. Anyone who wanted to publicly speak in opposition to the President’s Agenda was corralled into “authorized demonstration zones” that were far out of sight of any cameras or media. Those who openly protested faced felony charges that were punishable by up to one year in jail.
There were a number of major demonstrations planned for today, but the National Park Service revoked all permits. Protestors were forced into a 10-yard wide strip of sidewalk that was ironically right near Freedom Plaza. This was the only area where free speech was allowed!Hmmm......Obama: ‘Irony Of The Presidential Office’ Is The Humility It Teaches.Read the full story here.

Another Tack: "The Dearborn omen".

Another Tack: "The Dearborn omen".(JPost).By Sarah Honig.

Nothing that comes out of Dearborn should be dismissed as too trifling to trouble us, especially when underpinned by presidential rhetoric.

Dearborn, Michigan, may have started off as a no-account aggregate of farms and modest homesteads but it would evolve into a singular omen. This once-quintessential emblem of old-time Americana would stand out as a powerful indication of important things to come. Dearborn encapsulates within itself something akin to an ever-unfolding prophesy of America’s future.

It’s perhaps no quirk of fate that the latest episode in Dearborn’s annals is about protecting the honor of a prophet via anti-blasphemy laws – the draconian sort which proliferate in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other centers of Islamic enlightenment. It’s all along the lines of the international ban on anti-Islam speech proposed at the UN General Assembly by Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood and darling of America’s own elected leader, Barack Obama.

This is hardly insignificant because the impetus for the outcry about the supposed insult to Muhammad’s repute was given by no other than Obama himself.

It was he and his administration’s mouthpieces who assiduously disseminated the insult-narrative as the pretext for Muslim violence worldwide. They repeatedly underscored, harshly condemned and profusely apologized for said insult – even if in the same breath they also sanctimoniously preached that rioting isn’t a proper response to what they nevertheless did portray as a genuine grievance.

Obama’s flattery of fanatics constitutes a prime feature of his outreach-to-Islam policy. His premise is that sycophancy from a president boasting the middle name of Hussein should, in and of itself, create an affinity, make Muslims trust him and accept him as a kindred spirit.

But what Obama in fact does is appeal with superficial presumption to Muslim xenophobes, elevating their intransigence to undeserved equality with the West’s carte blanche tolerance.

Thereby Obama reinforces in his Muslim listeners the sense that they are actually wronged and deserve redress. At this point his entreaties for calm are lost in the tempest of unforgiving Islamic indignation which he helps stir up.

This perception of righteous resentment, accentuated by their own favorite president, brought Dearborn’s Muslims out for an extraordinary rally to urge that legal prohibitions be legislated against free speech, if that speech is deemed hurtful to “the religious feelings of Muslims.”

The inescapable subtext is a campaign to silence freedom of expression and effectively submit to Islamic censorship whatever is put out in the public domain.

Needless to stress, in the hallowed name of the First Amendment, America tolerated the massive Dearborn anti-First Amendment protest. It also turned a blind eye last June to the stoning of Christian demonstrators in Dearborn, the American city with the largest proportion of Arabs in its population (estimated at between 40 and 50 percent), as well as home to the nation’s largest mosque and Islamic center – and there are numerous other mosques and competing Islamic centers in Dearborn.

It’s a far cry from what Dearborn once was. The township was catapulted to prominence by Henry Ford, who was born and bred nearby (within today’s city limits), would make it his home, headquarter his automobile manufacturing conglomerate there and in it develop his innovative mass production concept, replete – for better and worse – with the conveyor belt and assembly line.

But Dearborn would imprint a heavy mark on humankind not only in terms of modern industry and labor relations. If Ford could posthumously catch a glimpse of this locale today, he’d apoplectically somersault in his grave. He serially conjured up doomsday visions of ogre Jews taking over WASP dominions. Yet in his direst nightmares he couldn’t imagine that Dearborn would become the most Arab of American cities.

Dearborn, of course, cloaks itself with good intentions in the best of American tradition.

According to rally-organizer, self-proclaimed “moderate” Osama Siblani, “there’s a need for deterrent legal measures against those individuals or groups that want to damage relations between people, spread hate and incite violence.”

And so under the cover of anti-hate laws, one group would seize for itself exclusive rights to silence any opinion which it would denounce as an affront to its religion, and to it alone. Through the distorting prism of Shari’a law, rights which we consider inalienable might certainly be misrepresented as hate-speech. But they are not. Non-fawning appraisal of any aspect of Islam isn’t perforce hate.

On the other hand, hate is what’s propagated blusterously by Hamas, which hardly comes under fire in Dearborn.

Indeed Hamas is highly popular there and is even actively supported via fund-raising for ostensibly charitable causes. Many in Dearborn don’t dispute Hamas’s claims to possess divine rights to annihilate an entire nation – Israel.
There are no rallies in Dearborn against the blunt assertion in the Hamas Charter’s opening section that “Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors.”

Nor is there any quarrel with the definition of Hamas as a “humane movement,” which merely stipulates that “safety and security can only prevail under the shadow of Islam… Members of other religions must desist from struggling against Islam... for if they were to gain the upper hand, fighting, torture and uprooting would follow.”

There is ample backing in Dearborn for the Hamas historiography which maintains that Jews “stood behind the French and Communist Revolutions and behind most all revolutions.... They also used money to establish clandestine organizations... to destroy societies and carry out Zionist interests. Such organizations are: the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, B’nai B’rith, etc. All of them are destructive spying organizations.”

Nobody, contends the Hamas Charter, denies that Jews “stood behind WWI, so as to wipe out the Islamic Caliphate... and established the League of Nations in order to rule the world by means of that organization. They also stood behind WWII....They inspired the establishment of the UN and the Security Council to replace the League of Nations, in order to rule the world by their intermediary.”Read the full story here.

Video - Dead Silence.

HT: Answering Muslims.

Video - Ezra Levant interviews Sam Nunberg about the outrageous judicial overthrow of free speech involving none other than Zombie Mohammed

Ezra interviews Sam Nunberg about the outrageous judicial overthrow of free speech involving none other than Zombie Mohammed.

Video - McConnell: Obama seeking to change First Amendment ‘an act of radicalism’.

HT: DailyCaller.More here @ Breitbart.

Video - Judge Napolitano At His Best......Sounds familiar what he says?

AG Eric Holder, the IRS, and the liberal lawyers at the ACLU to brief black pastors on what may be said during campaign 2012.

AG Eric Holder, the IRS, and the liberal lawyers at the ACLU to brief black pastors on what may be said during campaign 2012.(WE).Attorney General Eric Holder, the IRS, and the liberal lawyers at the ACLU will brief several hundred pastors in the African American community on how to participate in the presidential election -- which the Congressional Black Caucus chair expects will help President Obama's campaign. "We will have representatives from nine denominations who actually pastor somewhere in the neighborhood of about 10 million people, and we're going to first of all equip them with the information they need to know about what they can say and what they cannot say in the church that would violate their 501c3 status with the IRS," Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., told MSNBC today. "In fact, we're going to have the IRS administrator there, we're going to have the Attorney General Eric Holder there, we're going to have the lawyers' organization from around the country, the ACLU -- all giving ministers guidance about what they can and cannot do," he noted. Cleaver said they would not tell pastors which candidate to support. They will let them know who to regard as the bad guys, though (hint: not Democrats). "We're going to talk about some of the draconian laws that have cropped up around the country as a result of the 17 percent increase in African American votes," Cleaver said, describing voter ID laws as a form of Jim Crow-style "poll tax" on seniors and black voters.The CBC chairman is confident that "President Obama is going to get 95 percent of the [African American] vote," and wants to keep that turnout high. "We want to let them know that there is a theological responsibility to participate in the political process, at least in the Judeo-Christian tradition," he said.Hmmmm.....Obama "Don't think we're not keeping score, brother."Read the full story here.

Video - Student Lectured By Teacher About Obama Speaks Out On FOX News.

HT: TundraTabloids.

Leaked U.S. Army Document Outlines Plan For Re-Education Camps In America

Leaked U.S. Army Document Outlines Plan For Re-Education Camps In America.(IW).By Paul Joseph Watson.A leaked U.S. Army document prepared for the Department of Defense contains shocking plans for “political activists” to be pacified by “PSYOP officers” into developing an “appreciation of U.S. policies” while detained in prison camps inside the United States.The document, entitled FM 3-39.40 Internment and Resettlement Operations (PDF) was originally released on a restricted basis to the DoD in February 2010, but has now been leaked online.

The manual outlines policies for processing detainees into internment camps both globally and inside the United States. International agencies like the UN and the Red Cross are named as partners in addition to domestic federal agencies including the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA.

The document makes it clear that the policies apply “within U.S. territory” and involve, “DOD support to U.S. civil authorities for domestic emergencies, and for designated law enforcement and other activities,” including “man-made disasters, accidents, terrorist attacks and incidents in the U.S. and its territories.”

The manual states, “These operations may be performed as domestic civil support operations,” and adds that “The authority to approve resettlement such operations within U.S. territories,” would require a “special exception” to The Posse Comitatus Act, which can be obtained via “the President invoking his executive authority.” The document also makes reference to identifying detainees using their “social security number.”

Aside from enemy combatants and other classifications of detainees, the manual includes the designation of “civilian internees,” in other words citizens who are detained for, “security reasons, for protection, or because he or she committed an offense against the detaining power.”

Once the detainees have been processed into the internment camp, the manual explains how they will be “indoctrinated,” with a particular focus on targeting political dissidents, into expressing support for U.S. policies.

The re-education process is the responsibility of the “Psychological Operations Officer,” whose job it is to design “PSYOP products that are designed to pacify and acclimate detainees or DCs to accept U.S. I/R facility authority and regulations,” according to the document.

The manual lists the following roles that are designated to the “PSYOP team”.

- Identifies malcontents, trained agitators, and political leaders within the facility who may try to organize resistance or create disturbances.

- Develops and executes indoctrination programs to reduce or remove antagonistic attitudes.

- Identifies political activists.

- Provides loudspeaker support (such as administrative announcements and facility instructions when necessary).

- Helps the military police commander control detainee and DC populations during emergencies.

- Plans and executes a PSYOP program that produces an understanding and appreciation of U.S. policies and actions.

Remember, this is not restricted to insurgents in Iraq who are detained in prison camps – the manual makes it clear that the policies also apply “within U.S. territory” under the auspices of the DHS and FEMA. The document adds that, “Resettlement operations may require large groups of civilians to be quartered temporarily (less than 6 months) or semipermanently (more than 6 months).”The historical significance of states using internment camps to re-educate detainees centers around the fact that it is almost exclusively practiced by repressive and dictatorial regimes like the former Soviet Union and Stalinist regimes like modern day North Korea.

We have exhaustively documented preparations for the mass internment of citizens inside America, but this is the first time that language concerning the re-education of detainees, in particular political activists, has cropped up in our research.Hmmm........When I said, “change we can believe in,” I didn’t say “change we can believe in tomorrow.” (Laughter.) Not “change we can believe in next week.” We knew this was going to take time, because we’ve got this big, messy, tough democracy.Read the full story here.

"CAIR" - Police Shut-down Event Promoting U.S. Constitution -- Thomas More Law Center Files Lawsuit Against CAIR-Michigan.; Allegan Officials

"CAIR" - Police Shut-down Event Promoting U.S. Constitution -- Thomas More Law Center Files Lawsuit Against CAIR-Michigan; Allegan Officials.(CNW).ANN ARBOR, Mich.-- In the middle of an event to extol the virtues of the U.S. Constitution and "American Laws For American Courts," the audience learned first-hand how easy it is to lose their freedom of Speech and Assembly. Amid shouts of "What about free speech?" from the audience, the Allegan Police Department ordered the event shut-down. School officials notified police that they had received a letter complaining about the event from Dawud Walid, Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI). The letter asked the school to disallow the event despite an existing contract. CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism funding trial in U. S. history, U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation. As a result, the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, announced today that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR- MI), its Executive Director, the City of Allegan, the Allegan Police Department and the School District were named as defendants in a thirty-four page civil rights lawsuit filed in the Federal District Court for the Western District of Michigan, this morning. The claims included constitutional and contract violations. Click here for copy of federal complaint.
Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Law Center commented, "It's amazing how much clout CAIR has with the political establishment of both parties in Lansing and throughout Michigan and the nation. This, despite the fact that CAIR has its roots in the Muslim Brotherhood, was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, and the FBI's former chief of counterterrorism, noted that CAIR, its leaders, and its activities effectively give aid to international terrorist groups." Continued Thompson, "Press accounts make it clear that an indictment naming CAIR as a defendant in the Holy Land Foundation trial was squelched by Attorney General Holder's office despite vehement objections by FBI agents and the federal prosecutors in Dallas."
 TMLC's federal lawsuit was brought on behalf of State Representative David Agema; a chapter leader of ACT! for America, Elizabeth Griffin; Allegan County Commissioner, Willis Sage; and Mark Gurley, one of the event sponsors. The event in question, entitled, "Constituting Michigan – Founding Principles Act" took place on January 26, 2012 at an Allegan High School auditorium which had been rented by Willis Sage. The purpose of the event was to inform the public about the importance of honoring the United States Constitution, to recognize the internal threat to America posed by radical Muslims and the dangers to our free society caused by the imposition of Sharia law. At first the Allegan police chief police indicated he shut down the event because of threats to one of the speakers, Kamal Saleem; however, shortly thereafter, the chief admitted to a reporter that there was no specific threat to the event and no real danger at all. In fact, no specific threats of violence relating to the event were received by the City of Allegan, its police department, the Allegan Public School District or Allegan Public High School. Police gave as their reason, the appearance of one of the featured speakers, Kamal Saleem, a former Muslim terrorist who converted to Christianity. Saleem has spoken at numerous high schools and universities, Christian churches and Jewish temples across the nation. He has also spoken at the U. S. Air Force Academy, Michigan's State Capital, and Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan. At no time before the Allegan event or afterwards has an event where he has spoken been shut down by law enforcement. Sage notified the Allegan police chief ten days before the event and invited him to check out the background of Saleem, which he never did. Erin Mersino is the TMLC attorney handling the case.Contact: Kathleen Lynch, Thomas More Law Center, 734-827-2001.Read the full story here.

Video - Judge Andrew Napolitano: "Obama Makes Free Speech A Felony."

“Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship.” ~ Bruce Coville

Obama signs anti-protest Trespass Bill, essentially criminalizing protest in the United States.

Obama signs anti-protest Trespass Bill, essentially criminalizing protest in the United States.(RT).
Only days after clearing Congress, US President Barack Obama signed his name to H.R. 347 on Thursday, officially making it a federal offense to cause a disturbance at certain political events — essentially criminalizing protest in the States.
RT broke the news last month that H.R. 347, the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011, had overwhelmingly passed the US House of Representatives after only three lawmakers voted against it. On Thursday this week, President Obama inked his name to the legislation and authorized the government to start enforcing a law that has many Americans concerned over how the bill could bury the rights to assemble and protest as guaranteed in the US Constitution.
Under H.R. 347, which has more commonly been labeled the Trespass Bill by Congress, knowingly entering a restricted area that is under the jurisdiction of Secret Service protection can garner an arrest. The law is actually only a slight change to earlier legislation that made it an offense to knowingly and willfully commit such a crime. Under the Trespass Bill’s latest language chance, however, someone could end up in law enforcement custody for entering an area that they don’t realize is Secret Service protected and “engages in disorderly or disruptive conduct” or “impede[s] or disrupt[s] the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions.”
The Secret Service serves as the police that protects not just current and former American presidents, but are also dispatched to monitor special events of national significance, a category with a broad cast of qualifiers. In the past, sporting events, state funerals, inaugural addresses and NATO and G-8 Summits have been designated as such by the US Department of Homeland Security, the division that decides when and where the Secret Service are needed outside of their normal coverage.
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund tells the International Business Times that the Trespass Bill in its current form “means it's easier to prosecute under 'knowingly,'” instead of both knowingly and willfully, “which is an issue because someone could knowingly enter a restricted but not necessarily realize they are committing a crime.” Speaking with IB Times, Verheyden-Hilliard tries to lay to rest claims that the Constitution will be crippled by the Trespass Bill, but acknowledges that it does indeed allow law enforcement to have added incentive to arrest protesters who could be causing a disturbance.
"[HR 347] has been described as a death knell for the First Amendment, but that isn't supported by the facts," Verheyden-Hilliard adds. "This has always been a bad law."
Gabe Rottman of the American Civil Liberties Union adds to IB Times, "Bottom line, it doesn't create any new violations of the law.” So far, however, it has raised awareness of the levels that the US government are willing to go to in order to make it harder to express ones’ self.
Under the act, protesting in areas covered by Secret Service could land a demonstrator behind bars, and the thing about the Secret Service (in case you couldn’t tell by their name), is that they don’t always make it clear where they are. You could even say that the service they provide, at times, is kept secret.
Presidential hopefuls Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are now officially covered under Secret Service protection, making it a federal offense to disrupt a campaign stop. That means whether it’s by way of a glitter bomb protest or causing a disturbance on the same Holiday Inn hotel floor that Santorum is staying in, doing such could cause a bit of a legal battle for the persons involved.
Although the G-8 Summit originally scheduled for Chicago this spring would have made much of the Windy City a protected area where crimes could easily be tacked on to arrested protesters, the event was moved this week to the presidential retreat at Camp David. In turn, many have suggested that the White House is only going out of their way to limit protesting rights. While a Chicago summit would have meant the Trespass Bill could have been enforced in the same area where thousands of demonstrators were expected to protest, moving the event to a heavily fortified rural location will instead deter protesters from likely coming close atto the meeting at all.
And before you forget, the president can now detain you for getting too close to his front yard, order your assassination if the country considers you a threat and lock you away for life with no charge if you’re alleged to be a terrorist. You, on the other hand, can’t yell obscenities at Newt Gingrich without risking arrest..Hmmmm...............Obama Blames "Founding Fathers" For Making It Difficult For Him To "Bring Change"But..."I will keep plotting"."Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty". ~ Plato.Read the full story here.

'Go to hell Barack': Row over Washington Metro ad

'Go to hell Barack': Row over Washington Metro ad.(Yahoo).In the heat of a US presidential election year, with Americans immune to the polarized and bitter nature of political discourse, it takes a lot to shock them, especially in Washington.
But one ad at a DC Metro station -- which starts off criticizing Obama's health care reforms and ends up telling the president to "go to hell" -- goes beyond the pale, says Jim Moran, a Democratic congressman from Virginia.
The advertisement is for "Sick and Sicker: When the Government Becomes Your Doctor," a documentary that interviews Canadian doctors and patients in the hope of showing how dangerous "Obamacare" is for the American people.
"Barack Obama wants politicians and bureaucrats to control America’s entire medical system. Go to hell Barack," the ad says.Moran wrote a letter to Metro general manager Richard Sarles calling for the removal of the advertisement."The ad is deeply disrespectful of the President of the United States and does not belong in the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) network," he wrote.
It turns out that such language is within the accepted limits of American law and such advertisements are protected under the First Amendment of the US constitution, guaranteeing free speech."WMATA advertising has been ruled by the courts as a public forum protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution, and we may not decline ads based on their political content," the Metro authority said in a written statement.
"WMATA does not endorse the advertising on our system, and ads do not reflect the position of the Authority."Read the full story here.