{"id":5784,"date":"2011-04-23T21:27:21","date_gmt":"2011-04-23T21:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=5784"},"modified":"2011-04-24T22:40:17","modified_gmt":"2011-04-24T22:40:17","slug":"first-amendment-burned-in-michigan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/first-amendment-burned-in-michigan\/","title":{"rendered":"First Amendment Burned in Michigan?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Cross-posted on the Corner<\/a>:<\/p>\n

On the face of it, the First Amendment does not seem to be in terribly good shape in Dearborn, Michigan:<\/p>\n

DEARBORN, Mich., April 23 (UPI<\/a>) \u2014 A constitutional law professor says a trial and the brief jailing of two Florida pastors who wanted to demonstrate outside a Michigan mosque is \u201cbizarre.\u201d<\/p>\n

Florida pastors Terry Jones and Wayne Sapp were briefly jailed Friday in Dearborn after refusing to pay a $1 peace bond following a trial that found they would breach the peace if allowed to hold a rally outside the Islamic Center of America, the Detroit Free Press reported Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe judge should have thrown out the case,\u201d said Robert Sedler, constitutional law professor at Wayne State University.<\/p>\n

Sedler said the entire process was \u201cbizarre\u201d and that \u201cthe whole thing is unconstitutional.\u201d He cited U.S. Supreme Court cases backing up Jones\u2019 right to protest. The Michigan ACLU also criticized the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a complete abuse of the court process, and all those involved should be ashamed,\u201d said Rana Elmir of the ACLU Michigan office. \u201cThe prosecutor\u2019s office and the Dearborn court turned the First Amendment on its head. What happened today should never have happened. This is a true miscarriage of Justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

As so often with anything involving Jones, there\u2019s plenty of confusion to go round. Volokh has more here<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Meanwhile in Indonesia, there is this <\/a>(via the Daily Telegraph): <\/p>\n

Islamic militants involved in a plot to bomb an Indonesian cathedral ahead of Easter celebrations planned to film and broadcast the inferno. Indonesian police said 19 suspects, who had planted bombs beneath a gas pipeline at the Christ Cathedral near Jakarta, were part of a new terrorist cell inspired by al-Qaeda. <\/p>\n

The bombs, which were defused in a 10-hour operation on Thursday, had been rigged to go off just as services at the 3,000-seat Roman Catholic church were taking place for Good Friday. Maj. Gen. Anton Bachrul Alam, spokesman for the national police, said the 19 suspects who led authorities to bombs planted beneath a gas pipeline near the Christ Cathedral Church just outside of Jakarta did not appear to be part of any large, existing terrorist organisation. Other bombs were left in bags not far from the entrance. <\/p>\n

\u201cAt this moment, it looks like a new cell,\u201d Maj Gen Alam said, adding that the suspects, all in their 30s and many of them university graduates, told police they had been planning to film the fiery explosion. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey wanted to make a movie and then broadcast it \u2026 that was the plan,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted on the Corner: On the face of it, the First Amendment does not seem to be in terribly good shape in Dearborn, Michigan: DEARBORN, Mich., April 23 (UPI) \u2014 A constitutional law professor says a trial and the brief … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[51,760,363,712,50,759,684,758],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5784"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5784"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5790,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5784\/revisions\/5790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}