Thursday Must Reads

THE SUPREMES AFFIRM THE FREE SPEECH RIGHTS OF THE HIDEOUSLY HATEFUL, WESTBORO-ITES

Just speaking personally, Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church gay haters almost make me wish there was a hell just so they could be consigned to it.

All that said, of course the Supreme Court made the right decision on Wednesday when, in an 8 to 1 decision, it affirmed Phelps and Co’s constitutional right to preach their insanely hurtful crap, even outside the funerals of young men and women who have died in the service of our country.

There honestly shouldn’t have been a doubt.

The one hold out on the court was Samuel Alito.

The AP reports his reasoning:

The rest of the court relied on the First Amendment to say that the father of a dead Marine could not prevail in a lawsuit against members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., who picketed his son’s funeral.

Alito countered that church members have countless ways to express their belief that the deaths of U.S. soldiers are God’s way of punishing the nation for its tolerance of homosexuality.

“It does not follow, however, that they may intentionally inflict severe emotional injury on private persons at a time of intense emotional sensitivity by launching vicious verbal attacks that make no contribution to public debate,” Alito wrote.

We all get Alito’s point. And, emotionally, most of us agree with him. But our wiser selves—and eight wiser SCOTUS justices—understand that there is a far more important principle at stake here. And it is one that—should we disregard it—would cause all of us a much more fundamental, less repairable harm than the awful emotional injury that the ghastly Westboro Baptist people seem intent on inflicting.

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TWENTY YEARS AFTER RODNEY KING – THE LA TIMES REFLECTS ON THE CHANGE IN LAPD’S ATTITUDE TOWARD YOU AND YOUR VIDEO CAMERA

A nice story by Andrew Blankstein, Joel Rubin and Scott Gold.

Here’s how it opens:

It was shortly after midnight, 20 years ago Thursday, when George Holliday awoke to the sounds of police sirens outside his Lake View Terrace apartment. Grabbing his clunky Sony Handycam, he stepped out on his balcony and changed the Los Angeles Police Department forever.

The nine minutes of grainy video footage he captured of Los Angeles police beating Rodney King helped to spur dramatic reforms in a department that many felt operated with impunity. The video played a central role in the criminal trial of four officers, whose not-guilty verdicts in 1992 triggered days of rioting in Los Angeles in which more than 50 people died.

The simple existence of the video was something unusual in itself. Relatively few people then had video cameras, Holliday did — and had the wherewithal to turn it on.

“It was just coincidence,” Holliday reflected in an interview a decade ago. “Or luck.”

Today, things are far different and the tape that so tainted the LAPD has a clear legacy in how officers think about their jobs. Police now work in a YouTube world….

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TRUTANICH’S INSISTENCE ON HARSHER PENALTIES FOR PROTESTERS—HAS BROUGHT UNRELATED PROTESTERS TOGETHER (AND HAS CAUSED A SERIOUS IRONY OUTBREAK)

Kevin Grant at Neon Tommy has a good story about the City Attorney’s very vexing actions.

Here’s a clip:

Frank Mateljan, a Trutanich spokesman, confirmed policies are different under his boss.

“We’ve certainly upped the ante a bit,” he said. “Criminal charges are being filed. There was an unwritten rule that [civil disobedience] charges were treated like an infraction. You’d pay a fine and be off to the beach.”

Mateljan said his office wasn’t trying to limit Angelenos’ right to expression.

“Our intention is not to violate the First Amendment,” he said. “We look at protesters’ conduct, not the content of their speech. Our ability to express our opinions is to be celebrated but we live in a world of ordered liberty.”

Oh, well isn’t that reassuring.

Dear Mr. Mateljan—dude—look up the definition of civil disobedience. It doesn’t just involve speech, it involves action, an essential American tradition you and your boss are trying to criminalize.

By the way, does all this criminalizing protesters stuff seem a tad ironic in the light of Wednesday’s Supreme Court decision?

Let’s review: the highest court in the nation protects the right of hateful loonies to ruin the funeral for the parents of a young American servoce man killed in the line of duty, but our good city attorney wants to legally chase after a group of student protesters who locked arms in the middle of Wilshire Blvd. in support of the DREAM Act?

Gene Maddaus of the LA Weekly also has a worthwhile story/interview about Trutanich in which “Nuch” assured the reporter, “I’m not a thug.”

Once again, we find this soreassuring.

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ALSO AT NEON TOMMY, A HARROWING TALE IN WHICH AN ANNENBERG STUDENT/REPORTER TELLS ABOUT WHAT SHE SAW IN LIBYA TWO YEARS AGO

NT reporter Tasbeeh Herwees writes about her family’s 2009 experience with a terrible prison massacre that the Libyan government covered up for years.

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LA TIMES REPORT ON INCAPACITATED PRISONERS REQUIRING $800,000 A YEAR ROUND-THE-CLOCK CARE HAS PROMPTED ACTION ON THE PART OF THE CDCR & THE FEDERAL RECEIVER

Sometimes reporting actually matters. Go Jack Dolan!

Here’s the gist of the issue:

Ten of California’s sickest and most costly inmates — some are in comas, some are paralyzed — will be promptly scheduled for parole hearings, corrections authorities announced Wednesday.

An article in Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times detailed how, despite being chained to bed frames, such inmates are guarded around the clock by multiple corrections officers at an annual cost to taxpayers of roughly $800,000 per inmate.

“You look at these inmates and say, ‘This person is not going anywhere,'” said J. Clark Kelso, the receiver appointed by a federal court to oversee California’s troubled prison health services.

Kelso said he met with Corrections Department Secretary Matthew Cate on Wednesday morning and the two agreed to schedule parole hearings for the 10, who are no longer deemed a threat to public safety.