JUDGE'S WORD ISN'T LAW

JUDGE TRASHES THE 1st AMENDMENT

Boston police raided the Occupy site (Dec. 10) after Judge Frances McIntyre ruled that “occupying” constituted “seizing” public property. She made that ruling while occupying a chair owned by the state, while occupying the position of judge, after having occupied a hotel room on occasion, occupying a seat on an airplane, and maybe even flicking the Occupied sign on a toilet door. How that beyond-stupid-woman could have so totally screwed up is hard to fathom. But in doing so she blithely ignored the 1^st Amendment of our constitution which guarantees the people's right to assemble peacefully to seek “redress of grievances.” And the Constitution does not limit that right to assemble where, when, or for only as long as the local authority approves.

I suggest that before the Occupy folks go to court to get her witless ruling overturned they buy her a copy of the Oxford Dictionary of the English language. To justify her bizarre ruling she may want to seize on the Latin root of the English word which combines ob – to move toward, and capere - to seize, but, as noted above, no English speaker (except foolish Ms. McIntyre) uses the word to mean “to steal,” “to take permanent possession of another's property,” or “to lay claim to.”

The dotty Ms. McIntyre is not, tragically, the only one who has ignored the Constitution to shoo Occupiers out of public parks and off campus. Multibillionaire Mayor Bloomberg did it, so did suck-up-to-the-banks Oakland Mayor Quan, and semi-English speaking Chancellor of the Davis campus of the University of California. Linda Katehi. (For whom our Constitution may be “all Greek to her.”)
The Occupy movement began as an effort to call attention to Wall Street's usurpation of power and the tragic effects of the wealth gap in the U.S. But now, due to the violent acts of police and the venality of local governments, it has became a true civil rights movement. Imagine what things would have been like had the McIntyre view prevailed when people marched to Selma. They could have been routed for “seizing” a public bridge, and poor old Glenn Beck's crowd would have been ordered to vacate the Washington mall or face pepper spraying. .