Preservation of the First Amendment

Emily Baugh
Calendar Editor

On December 14, 2008, an Iraqi journalist threw a pair of shoes at President Bush at a press conference.

With reason, the Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, was extremely embarrassed and asked all of the news networks that were at the conference to hand over their tapes of the event. Talabani didn’t want anyone to think badly of the Iraqi people.

However, the U.S. government decided that they would let their news networks keep the tapes they had. A smart move really, if the government had confiscated the tapes, it would have been a violation of the First Amendment.

If the news networks had had their tapes confiscated, hopefully people would have protested. Hopefully people would have been angry. Hopefully people would be afraid for their Constitutional rights.

But in the United States today, only a handful of people still hold their Constitutional rights near and dear to them. Many people would be only too willing to give up their rights for a little “security”.

That would give our government and our leaders too much power, making them pretty much a dictator or tyrant. Our founding fathers didn’t want that to happen, that’s why they created the Constitution and broke away from England.

So the next time you feel like your Constitutional rights are being violated, take a stand and protect your rights.