Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has kept his streak going by announcing he is on the side of the jack-booted thugs in the rape of the James Madison University Breeze newsroom last week.The streak involves being on the wrong side of issues. His record is perfect and we haven't even had a major abortion question come up yet. Last week, Cuccinelli told a country club crowd that he was on the side of the Harrisonburg commonwealth's attorney who stormed the offices of the James Madison University school paper and took a number of photo files. The commonwealth's attorney insists she has the right to ignore the First Amendment to the Constitution and Cuccinelli agrees with her accounting of it.
The photos she sought were of a riot that the college paper covered. The paper's editor, Katie Thisdale of Roanoke, stood up to the police state tactics (which seem to be popular these days, considering Arizona's new immigration law). Most journalism organizations and newspaper editorial writers are on the side of the students in this one. "Outrage" is a word many use.
Here is a report on Cuccinelli's stance in the JMU paper, the Breeze. It is far more even-handed and mature than the position of the dope in the AG's office.
The first sentence of Cuccinelli's quote in The Breeze stops me – “I support any and all legal means to gather information” – my thoughts are the First Amendment. I am reminded of Pastor Martin Niemöller famous quote: "THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
ReplyDeleteand I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up."