Bong Hits 4 Jesus

Washington D.C.-The Supreme Court hacks have cracked a rim again in their ongoing decidership of America. Students constitutional right to free speech will now be taxed when they are in school. It all began 5 years ago when former Alaska high school student Joseph Fredrick unfurled a 14-foot banner displaying “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” on a prank. The local principal Deborah Morse suspended Fredrick for 10 days, on the theory that the banner somehow endorsed drug use.
Last Monday, the court narrowly decided to support the principal Morse on the grounds that school officials have the right to censor speech that runs contrary to the educational mission of the school. That was the ruling of the justices Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito. Meanwhile, the justices John Paul Stevens, Stephen J. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and David H. Souter dissented saying that censoring this speech effectively amounted to making a special First Amendment.
They are right, and liberals and conservatives across the country ought to be fuming! The First Amendment was never established to serve the educational mission of the public schools. It was founded to guarantee every American the right to express their opinion without fear of censorship or punishment. Once you start down the path of allowing schools to punish or censor speech that they dislike, education becomes political. Do conservatives want their kids to be disciplined in a school because they might say, “Jesus is my Patriot”? Do liberals want their kids suspended in a public school because they might say, “Weed is my vegetable”? Free Speech must be defended, even when you are defending somebody else’s right to say something that you would spend a lifetime opposing.