One the funniest starts to a Sioux Falls City Council meeting
l3wis Poops was a comedian tonight, though I don’t think he realized it. After the invocation (in which a pastor did a nice job of speaking about immigrants) Paul read a NEW statement about public input (Let’s call it the Sierra rule);
The city has an interest in maintaining civility and decorum during the public comment sessions of its meetings and has adopted rules to achieve the dual goals of ensuring the efficient conduct of the people’s business and fostering citizen participation in that discussion, part of these rules require any presenter from making any personal, pertinent or slanderous remarks which include making any personal attacks on any previous presenters.
Why do politicians always confuse the 1st Amendment with the 2nd Amendment? The 2nd Amendment is the only Amendment you can regulate (it’s in the language), not so much with the 1st. he cannot control what anyone says, that is a violation of their constitutional rights. As for slander or libel, that is ON the person standing at the podium. If they say something that is libelous about a city employee, the city can sue that individual. If they something libelous about another constituent, that person can sue them. It is NOT on this body if someone says something libelous at the podium, it is ON the constituent. And further more how can you predetermine if what is said is true or not? I see all kinds of lies coming from the podium, but sometimes it is hard to distinguish (mostly occurs when directors are at the podium). You can put policies in place until you are blue in the face, the 1st Amendment remains unchanged, and conservative and liberal judges have agreed since it was put on paper.
There were also two incidents in recent weeks of 1st Amendment violations in SD. A person at a Pennington County Commission meeting and a person at a Canton City Council meeting were threatened with removal and arrest. The citizens fought back. At the commission meeting, the constituent even threatened to do a citizens arrest of the chair for violating Federal law 🙂
We need to knock this crap off. With a wannabe dictator in DC, this is NO time for local governments to be squashing FREE speech, quite the opposite.
I have made it a priority to tell ALL mayoral candidates that I will be up their asses if they don’t embrace transparency and open the books when they become mayor.
