Posted 11:48 AM by Floyd

Colby Cosh recently blogged about cross-burning, opining that while cross-burning has a specific and malevolent meaning, we can hardly enshrine specific exceptions to the First Amendment. I concur; however theory is one thing, and practice another.

A few months back I was listening to 60 Minutes in my car -- yes, you can hear 60 Minutes every Sunday night on CBS radio affiliates -- and one segment discussed the Nuremburg Files case. The Nuremburg Files is a website that lists abortion providers' names and addresses, with a line through the ones that have been murdered. Mike Wallace was discussing free speech with someone who wanted the Nuremburg Files shut down. That person's opinion was that the Nuremberg Files constituted a threat, and noted that anti-abortion protesters had been cited for driving Ryder trucks near abortion clinics!

I Googled "Ryder truck abortion", and found a hit on christiangallery.com:

The Associated Press report continued, "Federal prosecutors successfully used that act this week against a bizarre clinic threat. In Little Rock, Ark., J. Fred Hart Jr. was convicted of violating the act (FACE) for parking yellow Ryder rental trucks outside two abortion clinics. Although the trucks contained no explosives, prosecutors said Hart was aware he would cause fear by his placement of the trucks because the bomb that demolished the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995 was left in a yellow Ryder truck."

I think the Nuremburg Files case is a hard one; in my opinion the Nuremburg Files is just short of incitement to murder, but I could be persuaded to change my mind. But the case I cited about Ryder trucks is incredibly wrong-headed. First, a Ryder truck is not a well-known symbol like a burning cross or swastika. Maybe one person in twenty knows that McVeigh's truck full of explosives was a Ryder. Second, the Ryder corporation is a legitimate enterprise; it is slanderous, and a takings, to say that a parked Ryder truck should cause fear for anyone nearby. Finally, if you say that parking a Ryder truck is an attempt to intimidate, because it could contain a bomb, than you could arrest anyone who parked any vehicle anywhere.