I'm actually not sure if there was a court ruling that blowing up pipelines wouldn't be protected by 2(b). As long as no one was around to get hurt, it wouldn't seem to be the violence / threats of violence standard from
Irwin Toy /
Dolphin Delivery. I'm not sure if there's a ruling to the contrary - just because I haven't seen it obviously doesn't mean it doesn't exist, of course.
The attempt to exclude people you don't like from protection by the constitution is an awful instinct and it's not at all surprising to see Belisarius be one of the people who's engaged in that sort of behaviour - there's a reason I have him on ignore. There are a lot of people who do a lot worse things than those convoy people who are afforded 2(b) protection for their expression. Everyone has to play by the same rules - if you want to legally sanction the convoy participants, organizers, whoever, you need to be onside section 1. And in my view, that's a bar that shouldn't be that tough to clear here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Yamer
I have difficulty recognizing the convoy as a protest for a few reasons, but most importantly is that a not insignificant portion of the movement made it clear they weren't going to leave until the democratically elected federal government were usurped in favor of some kind of frankensteined coalition of the stupid. They were pretty open that they intended it to be an occupation from the start.
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Removing a democratically elected government - provided you're doing it by demanding the government step down and not by running in there with weapons - is a perfectly valid aim of a political protest. It's politically motivated by definition. It's very obviously stupid - they were trying to accomplish something idiotic by means that would never work for reasons that make no sense - but a stupid political protest is still a political protest.