“Bong Hits” at High Court:

School Free-Speech Case

Heard by Nine U.S. Justices

 

By Joshua B. Good

Monday, March 19, 2007

 

      Kenneth Starr – the man with a $40 million obsession with presidential fellatio – is fixated on another oral taboo.

      Bong hits.

      The former independent counsel stood before the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices Monday (March 19, 2007) and argued a school principal had the full legal authority to rip a sign from a student’s hand that read “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.”

      In fact, it was the pro-drug theme of the banner that gave the Juneau, Alaska,

 principal the duty to censor the message, Starr argued.

      “The message here is, in fact, critical,” the Associated Press quoted Starr as saying.

      The case involved former high school student Joseph Frederick, who

said he just wanted to get on TV when the Olympic torch passed through his town in 2002. He wasn’t advocating drug use or drug legalization or a religious exemption for getting high.

      And he was off campus at the time.

      Frederick’s attorney, Douglas Mertz of Juneau, told the Supreme Court that they should ignore the drug message and view the case as being about free speech.

      Justice Stephen Breyer told Mertz he worried about other students going to extremes to test free speech rights if the Supreme Court rules in Frederick’s favor, the AP reported.

Justice Samuel Alito, on the other hand, worried school administrators would go too far.

"I find that a very, a very disturbing argument," the AP quoted Alito as saying. “Because schools have ... defined their educational mission so broadly that they can suppress all sorts of political speech and speech expressing fundamental values of the students, under the banner of getting rid of speech that's inconsistent with

educational missions."

        Chief Justice John Roberts seemed to back the high school principal, especially on the issue of anti-drug indoctrination.

     "I thought we wanted our schools to teach something, including something besides just basic elements, including the character formation and not to use drugs," Roberts said.

      The high school principal, Deborah Morse, is being supported by the Bush administration, while several religious rights groups wrote friends of the court brief supporting Frederick, according to the New York Times.

      Those groups include the American Center for Law and Justice, founded by Reverend Pat Robertson; the Christian Legal Society; the Alliance Defense Fund; the Rutherford Institute; and the Liberty Legal Institute, the New York Times reported Sunday (March 18, 2007).

      The Liberty Legal Institute’s brief to the Supreme Court contended that it was “gravely concerned that the religious freedom of students in public schools will be damaged” if the court rules in favor of the high school principal.

      Frederick is now 23 and teaches English in China. He did not attend Monday’s hearing. The AP reported he pleaded guilty to selling marijuana while a college student in Texas.

      However, Supreme Court justices are not above getting high. FBI files released after the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist revealed he became delusional because of the use of a powerful sleeping aid in 1981 and imagined he was being targeted for assassination by the CIA, according to the Washington Post.

      Starr led the investigation into former President Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky at a cost of $40 million.

 

(Read previous “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” Story)

 

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