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  • Congress Bars Funeral Protesters

    Congress Bars Funeral Protesters
    Associated Press | May 25, 2006

    WASHINGTON - Demonstrators would be barred from disrupting military funerals at national cemeteries under Legislation approved by Congress and sent to the White House Wednesday.

    The measure, passed by voice vote in the House hours after the Senate passed an amended version, specifically targets a Kansas church group that has staged protests at military funerals around the country, claiming that the deaths were a sign of God's anger at U.S. tolerance of homosexuals.

    The act "will protect the sanctity of all 122 of our national cemeteries as shrines to their gallant dead," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said prior to the Senate vote.

    "It's a sad but necessary measure to protect what should be recognized by all reasonable people as a solemn, private and deeply sacred occasion," he said.

    Under the Senate bill, approved without objection by the House with no recorded vote, the "Respect for America's Fallen Heroes Act" would bar protests within 300 feet of the entrance of a cemetery and within 150 feet of a road into the cemetery from 60 minutes before to 60 minutes after a funeral. Those violating the act would face up to a $100,000 fine and up to a year in prison.

    The sponsor of the House bill, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said he took up the issue after attending a military funeral in his home state, where mourners were greeted by "chants and taunting and some of the most vile things I have ever heard."

    "Families deserve the time to bury their American heroes with dignity and in peace," Rogers said Wednesday before the Hosue vote.

    The demonstrators are led by the Rev. Fred Phelps of Topeka, Kan., who has previously organized protests against those who died of AIDS and gay murder victim Matthew Shepard.

    In an interview when the House bill passed, Phelps said Congress was "blatantly violating the First Amendment" rights to free speech in passing the bill. He said that if the bill becomes law he will continue to demonstrate but would abide by the restrictions.

    Sen. Pat Roberts, a Republican from Kansas, said the loved ones of those who die have already sacrificed for the nation and "we must allow them the right to mourn without being thrust into a political circus."

    In response to the demonstrations, the Patriot Guard Riders, a motorcyle group including many veterans, has begun appearing at military funerals to pay respects to the fallen service member and protect the family from disruptions.

    More than a dozen states are considering similar laws to restrict protests at nonfederal cemeteries. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against a new Kentucky law, saying it goes too far in limiting freedom of speech and expression.

    http://www.military.com/NewsContent/...,98546,00.html
    To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

  • #2
    awesome.

    Comment


    • #3
      Why haven't any of these idiots had the living crap beaten out of them?
      sigpicUSS North Dakota

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by 2DREZQ
        Why haven't any of these idiots had the living crap beaten out of them?
        I was wondering the same thing.

        Comment


        • #5
          Yay!!!!!!
          No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
          I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
          even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
          He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by 2DREZQ
            Why haven't any of these idiots had the living crap beaten out of them?
            Because the biker groups that shield the next of kin families from those...people...have exercised an incredible amount of restraint.
            “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

            Comment


            • #7
              Don't they give 21 gun salutes anymore?...
              sigpicUSS North Dakota

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              • #8
                Hi Guys,

                While protesting at a funeral is, IMO, best described as exceedingly distasteful at best, there might be some bigger, more important issues at stake.

                At the risk of sounding contrarion and/or unpopular, I think that:

                First Amendment issues and issues of public property must trump issues of taste. We must examine this law very closely as the founding principles of the Republic benefit all whereas the peculiarities of military funerary ritual are a more exclusive affair and of benefit to a few.

                I do not have the right to privacy in a public place and would feel quite snubbed by the anti-American, anti-Freedom crowd if someone else was granted that right over me.

                In the grand scheme of things, dead soldiers as vehicles for demagoguery are probably more highly prized by the pro war crowd than its opposition and that should tell us something about what the backers of this bill are up to.

                The attempt to package and market Corporal Tillman by those who sought to exploit his tragic loss for their own means smacked of the elvevation of Horst Wessel to martyrdom and made me want to vomit.

                Regards,

                William
                Pharoh was pimp but now he is dead. What are you going to do today?

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by 2DREZQ
                  Don't they give 21 gun salutes anymore?...

                  I fully support 21 gun salutes, with these twits in the guns.
                  Karmani Vyapurutham Dhanuhu

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                  • #10
                    Having Fred Phelps demonstrate at any funeral is the ultimate in bad taste. If I lost a son in Iraq, I would ask for a grave side funeral in the dark of night without any mourners allowed.

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by 2DREZQ
                      Don't they give 21 gun salutes anymore?...
                      Certainly.

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                      • #12
                        Originally posted by TopHatter
                        Because the biker groups that shield the next of kin families from those...people...have exercised an incredible amount of restraint.
                        I joined that group.(Patriot riders).

                        If there's a philly area funeral i'll be giving escort personally.

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                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Swift Sword
                          First Amendment issues and issues of public property must trump issues of taste.
                          The first ammendment does not give you the right to be heard.
                          Originally posted by Swift Sword
                          The attempt to package and market Corporal Tillman
                          And it changed nothing, Pat Tillman is still one of the greatest heros this world has had to offer...
                          No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
                          I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
                          even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
                          He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Confed999
                            The first ammendment does not give you the right to be heard.
                            Yet it does allow for peaceable assembly.

                            Restricting access of protesters, no matter how abhorent I personally find them to be, to publically funded facilities and thouraghfares is not a particularly good precedent, especially when those restrictions are being put in place to allow private parties to hijack those facilities for their own private religious use.

                            I suspect that a lot of the legal wrangling will stem from assembly and protest issues viz abortion clinics.

                            All in all, I do not think that the Reverand Phelps' shenanigans rise to the level of a Congressional Act. I beleive in the enforcement of existing laws where applicable rather than the knee jerk, feel good legislation that Conservatives and Liberals both flock to when the T.V. cameras are pointed in the right direction.

                            If you cannot find a Sherrif, Constable or other police officer to keep a funeral from being disrupted under existing laws, I would be quite suprised.

                            And it changed nothing, Pat Tillman is still one of the greatest heros this world has had to offer...
                            That is what the post production team would certainly have one beleive but in this case there appears to be a certain amount of substance to the claim.
                            Pharoh was pimp but now he is dead. What are you going to do today?

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by Swift Sword


                              That is what the post production team would certainly have one beleive but in this case there appears to be a certain amount of substance to the claim.
                              Tillman is a hero for what he did in GETTING and going to A-Stan, not what he did once there.

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