Loading ...Good Riddance to Bad Law
The only thing better than when a bad law is tossed out from the courts as unconstitutional is when a stupid law is thrown out.
U.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker said a state law that would have forced stores and retailers to pay $250 to register if they sold sexually explicit material was vague and too broad (insert Beavis and Butthead laughter here).
Judge Barker said, “the new law could have applied to lawful and non-obscene materials such as R-rated DVDs or a widow selling a collection of old Playboy magazines at a garage sale.”
There is nothing worse than when lawmakers find a stupid idea and jump on it (insert more Beavis and Butthead laughter here).
Laws like this need to narrowly tailored and well-written; this was neither.
If lawmakers are trying to protect us from obscenity, I can think of a lot better ways and they don’t involve adult-oriented material.
July 1st, 2008 at 9:41 pm
So it is better to have one Federal justice writing it? I know she didn’t write a law here. But why should a Federal justice be determining the validity of an Indiana law?
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While I agree that this law is stupid, I am a bit concerned with 1) the use of the court system as a determiner of law and 2) the abdication of legislatures and executives to LET a law like this go to court. They should have censored themselves.
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Why was this is Federal courts rather than State courts?
July 1st, 2008 at 11:01 pm
It was in federal court because it was a 1st Amendment issue.
July 2nd, 2008 at 2:07 am
Can we get a law passed to protect us from the lawmakers?
July 2nd, 2008 at 6:35 am
I want to know why our black-robed lawyers ALWAYS give judicial preference to our legislators when someone challenges a law.
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These ‘judges’ typically preface their mumblings with flowery prose, such as ‘presuming that legislators write constitutional laws’, and We the People have a high bar to hurdle to overcome the products (LAWS) of these so-called ‘lawmakers’.
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Yeah…CAN we get a law to protect us from legislators? We do! It’s called the Indiana Constitution. If only we could get government to explicitly follow it!!
July 2nd, 2008 at 7:58 am
Our elitist lawmakers have adopted Obama’s slogan long before Obama made it popular: “Yes, we can”. That is the theme that our legislators use that they can pass most anything they wish, and then later let the courts overturn it if challenged. Personally, I don’t want a prono shop down the block from where I live anymore than a filling station or tattoo parlor but if they abide within the Constitution, so be it. But the constant restrictions from made-up laws that jeapordize our Constitution may be high minded political grandstanding by lawmakers but that itself is obscene. We have just witnessed the Supreme Court overturning the District of Columbia’s handgun rule. And the League of women voters in Indiana may have a case against the State that requires a ‘photo’ in order to vote (a requirement unheard of in the 1850s). Now comes still another infringement of 1st amendment rights. Our renegade legislature is the reason we have a property tax delimma and their refusal to permanently fix it has resulted in a rush to judgment that they would have us amend the Constitution to permanently bind us in a 1-2-3, woe is me,slavery that would forever hold our homes hostage in a still broken system where assessment bills are merely ransom notes. Either pay or get kicked out! This will also be constitutionally challenged as not ‘uniform and equal’. Indiana is becoming shredded because our freedoms are being eroded by stupid laws invented by control freeks called lawmakers. If you ask one of them why they do this, don’t be surprised if they answer ‘yes,we can’.
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:32 am
Every year, legislative bodies create new laws, ostensibly to ‘improve’ upon the Federal and State Constitutions.
This has two effects: (1) Define more specific law to close loopholes and (2) Create still more loopholes.
After 230 years we now have such a collection of laws that no one person can BEGIN to understand them all, and any TWO people can argue ad inifinitum about what an law means.
Nowhere is this more true than in the tax law, where common taxpayers often must pay a professional interpreter to translate. And any two translations seldom are the same.
I think the goal is to make taxation so complicated that noone can ever understand it and to anticipate the taxpayer to ‘err on the side of caution’, meaning ‘pay more than they rightfully should.’
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:50 am
Abdul, according to the news article, the law was rejected because it was “vague and too broad”. I guess “too broad” could have been referring to the first amendment, but I doubt it. The “vague” has nothing to do with the first amendment.
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So even if it was brought to federal court based on the first amendment, it was not decided on the first amendment. That is a scary prospect.
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As bad as this law was, this solution scares me more.
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:43 am
The judge who ruled on this case is one of the most-conservative in America, appointed by that dope Ronald Reagan.
Just a little FYI.
She recognized a true first amendment case when she saw it.
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:12 am
I’m reading through this ruling too. I begin by agreeing that it is awful law. But the question to begin with is what makes this a “free speech” case? So far the most compelling argument that I can see is that they chose $250 for the filing fee rather than $90.