Sayonara Amendment One

"Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

On Tuesday, the Roberts (with Alito bonus player) Supreme Court made another landmark decision. Landmark that is if you are on the side of government being protected from whistleblowers. They decided that Richard Ceballos, once deputy district attorney of Los Angeles, had no right to query the affairs of his office in his official capacity as deputy district attorney. Rather, somehow, he can only do this if he holds a public press conference as a private citizen, not in his position as an advocate of justice advocating, well, justice.

This decision is, as The New York Times argued, a break with previous precedents, one of which was even set under the Rehnquist court of 1979. It is also, of course, a decision that likely would have been different had one of the presiding justices been Sandra Day O'Connor and not Samuel Alito. (As a sidenote, I thoroughly enjoyed the brief commentary on this to be found at The Right Honorable Samuel A. Alito, Jr. Blog.)

This decision of this Supreme Court just underlines the Bush administration's control over the Judicial branch. It is an administration who has already violated the Fourth Amendment in its NSA search through the phone records of countless private citizens. Now, its Supreme Court, which will long outlast the Bush administration itself, is in the process of taking apart basic First Amendment protections that would allow an individual to pursue justice through official capacities.

The irony is that this comes just after a time when many immigrants to the USA were joined by allies, many of whom are also of immigrant background, as they actually exercised their First Amendment rights to peaceably assemble and petition this government for a redress of grievances.

While I think the pro-immigration protests were a great thing, I would really like to know what is wrong with us that immigrants can turn out in droves and liberals can turn out in droves for immigrants, but we can't turn out in huge numbers when the most fundamental freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution are being taken away from us.

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The photograph of Samuel Alito when he was a justice with U.S. Court of Appeals Third Circuit is from Wikipedia.

The image of the First Amendment to the USA Constitution is from The National Archives "Charters of Freedom".

The transcript of the First Amendment is taken from The National Archives as well.