A Fundamental Misunderstanding of Free Speech

"After the Citizens United decision on free speech and political spending, he found a way 'to save the court's credibility.'"

Here's a question: Why was the court's credibility in any danger? Citizen's United, at the most basic level, says people are free to associate together and spend their personal money as a collective enterprise to engage in Free Speech. Why, exactly, is that bad thing? I'm big on free speech, and if we restrict people's ability to work as a group to attain political speech, then we don't have free speech.

That is the fundamental misunderstanding: That we can restrict political speech because more than one person contributed to it. Private citizens should have the ability to coordinate together and put out political messages. The answer to bad speech is more speech. If you don't like the political movie, don't pay to see it, or kickstart a counter-documentary. In today's connected world, there is no excuse for quashing unpopular political speech just because it is unpopular.

Right, back to not blogging as I head home for Thanksgiving.

Actual Supreme Court Decision

"It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices." This is probably the most important quote from Roberts' opinion for the Court. Now, this isn't a law blog, so I'm going to spare you a lot of details. But, after joking on the Supreme Court yesterday, I figured I'd give you a quick run down of my thoughts on the matter. If you don't care about the Supreme Court case, then uh, don't click below.

Official Supreme Court Predictions

Ok. My official prediction. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court finds in favor of Predator in Alien v Predator. Kennedy writes for the majority, as always, noting that "They've got lasers and space ships. Game, set and match." Concurring, in full, Thomas writes that "We cannot overlook the technological superiority and ranged combat power of the Predator."

Ginsburg dissents, citing Aliens "superior numbers and acid blood."  Scalia concurs in part, but dissents in part, noting that "It would not be a total curb stomp. Some of those ugly mother f****** are going down."

No decision will be reached in Batman v Superman, with it dismissed for lack of standing. Roberts, writing for the court, notes: "This shit'll never happen. Now, Lex Luthor v Joker, that is a ripe issue for the court." Sotomayor, in addition, noted that "If an evil doppelganger Batman or Superman were to challenge his good opposite, we would be able to revisit the case. However, this would not be a precedent setting case, as the evil nature of the alternate universe Batman or Superman would, necessarily, differentiate them from their good counterpart."

Also, on the legal question, "Who you gonna call?", the Court will remand the decision to New York, with Kagan noting while reading the decision that "Cats and dogs living together is a matter for local state regulations." On the second legal issue, in a per curiam decision, the Court finds that the answer is "Yes" to the question: "Are you a god?"

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P.S.,

Inspired by Tapper's #otherSCOTUSpredictions Twitter hash tag.

Have We Out Grown MMOs?

That's a question that came up last week or so. Johnson makes some good points and arguments, and I don't want to piggy back too much off of what he says. So, go read it, come back, then go below the fold. Underneath is one of my rambling "thoughts on game design" posts. So, keep that in mind. It is rambling and not proofed.

Oh, before you go read it though. Remember, June 27 is a GW2 stress test. Some of us will be at work, or something close to work, so we won't be able to play it. You could say that we've out grown mid-day stress tests.