I am glad to see an Actual Lawyer confirming that the First Amendment has six clauses, not the five that Sasse and Barrett cited, since that's the way I've been teaching it for decades.
From a half-remembered law journal article I read sometime in the last century: Each of the six clauses in the First Amendment builds on the one that precedes it, so that if you remove any of the six, the ones that follow it collapse.
Freedom of belief, free exercise, freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of assembly, freedom of petition. Swipe anything from that list, and everything after it is hollowed out and rendered meaningless.
The article was "Reading the Bill of Rights as a Poem," or something similar, by Burt Neuborne. Apparently he expanded it into a book a few years ago. law.nyu.edu/news/ideas/Bur…
(I am pleased to learn that I have been remembering it right all these years.)
As I explain it to my students, if you don't have the freedom to believe what you want, you can't have the freedom to practice your faith. If you don't have freedom of conscience, you don't have freedom of speech.
Without freedom of speech there can be no freedom of the press. And without freedom of speech and press there can be no freedom of assembly. And with no freedom of speech, press, and assembly there can be no petitioning of the government for redress of grievances.

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More from @studentactivism

14 Oct
I don't know much about much, but it's kind of looking like the Trump camp somehow got their hands on some raunchy sex-and-drugs photos and video of Biden's kid, then ginned up fake documentation and a bogus provenance to make it look like a corruption story.
The photos and video (one drug pic in today's paper, more apparently to come) are both to get people to look and to lend the other stuff a vague air of authenticity, but the whole thing doesn't actually seem to make any sense.
(I had the phrase "Biden's addict kid" in the first tweet in this thread, to indicate that there's no news in the photos, and to point out that they're trying to shame him for his addiction, but some folks thought the wording was too glib, so I rephrased.)
Read 4 tweets
13 Oct
This polling really elegantly illustrates something I've been thinking a lot about the state of the race as it pertains to the electoral college. (Super quick thread to follow.)
The states and districts in blue on this map are those where Biden is leading by 7.5 points or more. The states in red are those where Trump is leading by 2 points or more (plus Iowa, which we'll get to in a second.) Now look at the brown states.
Every one of the brown states on the map is at least 11 electoral votes, and Biden is at 259 without any of them. That means that if Biden holds the blue states, a victory in ANY ONE of the brown states gives him the White House.
Read 11 tweets
10 Oct
I don't understand this impulse. It's not like there are a bunch of Good Militias out there whose name is being sullied by the association of "militia" with white supremacist domestic terrorism. Why not call them militias?
They call themselves militias. the public understands them as militias. Seems to me "militias are bad" is a much simpler project than "militias are good, actually, but something completely different than every militia you've ever heard of."
(And if that project puts a little more stink on the public perception of The Second Amendment As Currently Construed By The GOP ... oh well.)
Read 13 tweets
9 Oct
This is actually a great article about rich jerks who want to escape from society because they have no idea what society actually is or how being a part of it works. nytimes.com/2020/10/09/rea…
"I want to buy an island that's a zillion miles from anything but also has all the amenities I'm used to at the tips of my fingers. And no climate change."
"I'd like to escape from everything forever, but I'm not willing to quarantine in a luxury hotel for two weeks to make it happen."
Read 5 tweets
9 Oct
A thought experiment on "eradicating Trumpism" for wistful Republicans: Is there a scenario in which Trump is alive and not imprisoned in which he is not a speaker at the 2024 Republican National Convention?
I just don't see a mechanism by which Trump is so decisively repudiated that his supporters don't remain an essential component of the GOP base. When he (eventually) dies, that problem can be papered over. But not until.
To put it another way, a LOT of elected Republicans tried to tank the 2016 election after Access Hollywood. They were 100% ready to take the L, put Trump in the trash, and regroup to beat Hillary in 2020. But their base wouldn't let them.
Read 5 tweets
9 Oct
Biden's got the Duke of Earl. This thing is over.
(One of the most thrilling live recordings ever, IMO:)
The Boomers for Biden Rock 'n' Doo-Wop Party starts at 5PM and lasts for 45 minutes, and I could not be more enthralled. mobilize.us/joebiden/event…
Read 17 tweets

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