The DC: Palin clarifies statement on Supreme Court ruling

“I wasn’t calling for any limit on free speech"
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Sarah Palin has clarified the meaning of her tweet earlier this week in response to the Supreme Court's 8-1 decision upholding the free speech rights of members of Westboro Baptist Church who protest at the funerals of members of the military.

In a statement to The Daily Caller, Gov. Palin said that she actually agrees with the high court's decision:

“Obviously my comment meant that when we’re told we can’t say ‘God bless you’ in graduation speeches or pray before a local football game but these wackos can invoke God’s name in their hate speech while picketing our military funerals, it shows ridiculous inconsistency,” Palin told TheDC. “I wasn’t calling for any limit on free speech, and it’s a shame some folks tried to twist my comment in that way. I was simply pointing out the irony of an often selective interpretation of free speech rights.”

Encouraged by the decision in its favor, the group has vowed to "quadruple" the number of protests it stages at military funerals around the country.

For the record, we disagree with Gov. Palin and the court's majority on the free speech issue. The right of free speech is not absolute, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in 1919. We agree with Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote in his dissent:

Petitioner Albert Snyder is not a public figure. He is simply a parent whose son, Marine Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder, was killed in Iraq. Mr. Snyder wanted what is surely the right of any parent who experiences such an incalculable loss: to bury his son in peace. But respondents, members of the Westboro Baptist Church, deprived him of that elementary right. They first issued a press release and thus turned Matthew's funeral into a tumultuous media event. They then appeared at the church, approached as closely as they could without trespassing, and launched a malevolent verbal attack on Matthew and his family at a time of acute emotional vulnerability. As a result, Albert Snyder suffered severe and lasting emotional injury. The Court now holds that the First Amendment protected respondents' right to brutalize Mr. Snyder. I cannot agree.

[...]

Respondents’ outrageous conduct caused petitioner great injury, and the Court now compounds that injury by depriving petitioner of a judgment that acknowledges the wrong he suffered.

In order to have a society in which public issues can be openly and vigorously debated, it is not necessary to allow the brutalization of innocent victims like petitioner. I therefore respectfully dissent.

Does this in any way diminish our support for Sarah Palin? Of course not. This is not the only issue on which we don't see eye to with the governor. But across the board, we agree with her on the great majority of the issues. In our opinion, no other candidate or potential candidate for president comes close to matching her commitment to Reagan principles, her courage and her strength of character. And she fights for what is right harder than all of her potential rivals put together.

Analysis: Jonah Goldberg: Between Garbage and Gold

- JP

Quote of the Day (March 2, 2011)

Supreme Court screws up military funerals
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Don Surber at the Charleston Daily Mail:

"The court is almost as nutty as Fred Phelps on this one."

- JP

Updated: Actually, Gov. Palin says she agrees with SCOTUS decision

"Common sense and decency absent" in decision
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Sarah Palin tweeted her disappointment with today's Supreme Court decision which upholds the First Amendment rights of anti-gay protesters at military funerals:

“Common sense & decency absent as wacko ‘church’ allowed hate msgs spewed@ soldiers' funerals but we can't invoke God's name in public square”

From Politico:

The court voted 8-1 in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church’s right to protest outside the funerals — though the court recognized the right of local authorities to put restrictions on how close to a proceeding the group can protest.

The opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts found that while the protests may “inflict great pain,” the group is constitutional protected to engage in the demonstrations.

Writing the lone dissenting opinion, Samuel Alito contended that “our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case.

Related: Dissenting Justice: Westboro Ruling Goes Too Far

Update: In a statement to The Daily Caller, Palin said she agreed with the ruling in favor of the church.

“Obviously my comment meant that when we’re told we can’t say ‘God bless you’ in graduation speeches or pray before a local football game but these wackos can invoke God’s name in their hate speech while picketing our military funerals, it shows ridiculous inconsistency. I wasn’t calling for any limit on free speech, and it’s a shame some folks tried to twist my comment in that way. I was simply pointing out the irony of an often selective interpretation of free speech rights.”

- JP

Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Alaska Mining

From Reuters:

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday for Coeur d'Alene Mines Corp by upholding a government permit that will allow the company's Alaska gold mine to deposit rock waste into a lake on federal land.

In a closely watched environmental case, the justices overturned a U.S. appeals court ruling that had invalidated the permit for Coeur's underground Kensington Gold Mine northwest of Juneau.

In 2005, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers granted the company's Alaska unit a permit to put 4.5 million tons of rock waste, or mine tailings, into the lake over a decade.

The Corps of Engineers, not the federal Environmental Protection Agency, has the authority to permit the slurry discharge, and the Corps acted in accordance with the law in issuing the discharge permit to Coeur, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the Supreme Court's majority opinion.

Earlier today, Governor Sarah Palin, in anticipation of the high court's decision, had tweeted:

"U.S. Supreme Court ruling comes down on Kensington Mine project today; stand by for good news on responsible development & great jobs for AK"

The case is a complicated one and deals with several issues, including whether the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit issued to Coeur was valid, and what the definition of "fill" is. Basically, the slurry that the company will pump into the lake is z mixture of water and crushed rock.

Coeur did not have many other options to dispose of the fill, as pumping it into a nearby stream or onto the area's wetlands were both obviously poor alternatives to using the lake as the repository for the material.

Environmentalists will be howling in anger over this decision. You will hear them talk of killing "all of the fish" in the lake, for example, though they have never shown that this would happen. Expect to hear them throw word "toxic" around also, even though the slurry will contain only trace elements of anything other than rock and water. The crushed rock, of course, will settle to the bottom of the lake, and shouldn't contain anything that isn't already found on the lake's floor.

Alaska has over three million lakes. The mining operation only affects one of them. In so doing, it will create jobs and pump badly needed money into the local economy.

When the governor issues a statement on the decision, it will be posted here. The full Supreme Court Decision (PDF) is here.

Update: The governor's response to the ruling, via Twitter:

Court's ruling a green light for responsible resource dvpmt. Kensington to produce up to 370 needed jobs for AKns. http://tinyurl.com/mbnd2j"

- JP