In the past few years, it seems the powers that be have found so many devious new ways to restrict our freedoms. They’re reading our e-mails, listening to our phone calls, and calling up incessantly to try to get us to donate to their “Police Athletic Leagues” (hey, we’re on to you!).
So it was heartwarming to learn that, last month, a local federal judge ruled that we’re still entitled to one of our most basic freedoms: Firing off unsolicited mailings containing photos of your enemies doctored to look like the Führer.
Judge Saundra Brown dismissed a case filed against onetime General Electric worker Robert Delsman by Sedgwick Claims Management Services — after Delsman sent out postcards emblazoned with photos of two top Sedgwick executives altered to look like Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler.
Cute, the Republicans have decided to use the Yes we can slogan for their campaign posters. Not really a surprise… the Republican Party is made of people who can’t come up with something original.
#1 Right! Bill Clinton certainly found an original use for a good cigar!
#1, #2, This has NOTHING to do with partisan politics.
#1, #2,
…
#3 is right, listen to him.
This is all about freedom of speech. Something, I think most of us can agree on.
great, now the republicans are chanting free speech. next thing you know they will be burning flags.
The blind following of party politics displayed in this thread would be a lot funnier if it wasn’t so sad.
Good to see. The Repugs find free speech just as important now they are not in control as the Dumbacrats did when they were in the same position. The rule of law was upheld. Yes we can.
Mostly due to the misleading headline, it doesn’t appear that anyone commenting so far has any idea what this is about.
Sedgewick Claims Management is one of those companies in the health management field that routinely deny claims. Delsman became so upset with their illegal denials that he posted inflammatory pictures of the the two top executives at Sedgewick. He also printed some postcards with the execs pictures and WANTED on one side and a brief description of their crimes along with the suggestion the recipient should contact the Attorney General if seen.
Sedgewick sued the guy for using the pictures without permission. Delsman turned around and asked the court to dismiss the suit. The court agreed, the pictures were used under “Fair Use” and Sedgewick was interfering with Delsman’s free speech rights. Those “morphed” into Hitler weren’t even discussed or defended by Sedgewick.
Now, where does this get political? This is the type of health care company that routinely denies benefits. The same type of company that the Republicans want to continue with “Business as Usual”. The same type of company that courts have routinely ordered to provide care and pay lost wages. Only, because most of Sedgewick’s cases are covered by Workers Compensation they can be ordered by a State Court to do something.
I wish Mr. Delsman the best in his suit against Sedgewick. Make them pay.
–This is all about freedom of speech. Something, I think most of us can agree on.–
But that speech has to be peaceful and from individuals. I don’t give a flip about freedom of speech for paid Republican mobs whose only interest is to bring down a president by making the country ungovernable.
Not a single one of these so-called protestors has an ounce of the true American spirit that brought us into the streets against the war. They really are crying “Fire” to panic the rubes.
Free speech is fine if you have something genuine and helpful to say, but this is going too far. I’m glad the President is organizing true Americans to shut these Astroturfers down.
The party of Lincoln has come so far. *sniff*
#10 ortho
“I’m glad the President is organizing true Americans to shut these Astroturfers down.”
This statement makes the actions of the so called Astroturfers seem harmless in comparison.
Treat them like the Bonus Army huh?
Thank God for true Americans like the UAW.
# 10 ortho said,”I don’t give a flip about freedom of speech for paid Republican mobs…”
I take it, then, you approve of paid Democratic mobs?
Jeez, you knee-jerkers from both sides amuse me. Mr Fusion tried, gently, to educate you (since it appears you are too lazy to educate yourselves) that this case was not about political partisanship nor even Hitler images.
But you don’t care. You go on foaming at the mouth like hydrophobic skunks. Hilarious.
Obama’s not paying anyone, he’s letting people know how to go out and make THEIR voices heard over the mob.
This case was about whether you can use Hitler imagery against your enemies. The background will not matter to a judge looking at precedent.
So the rightwing will be putting hitler mustaches on Obama now, in a feeble attempt to discredit him. I think there could be a case to be made that it will a hate-crime, coming as it does from the Racist Right against a black president.
The duplicity here is depressing. Freedom of speech people. Freedom. Paid. Not paid. Repug. Dumbocrat. You have a right to voice your opinion bought or not. Acorn or Limbaugh. Satirical or not.
Everyone is bickering about the rules of discussion versus the issues at hand. Ask questions. Provide answers. Challenge and debate. But instead let decorum drown out debate.
“Yes, we can.” /// Heh, heh. The Repubs were in office destroying everything they touched for 8 years. Their catchphrase along the lines of the above is: “No, you didn’t.”
Sheep.
#9–Fusion==excellent post. Valid overall point.
Now, you say this poster really means only one thing==even with a picture of HITLER on it AND Obamas’s catch phrase.
But its not about politics. And it can’t be used in the future to associate with politics either. Its only about one thing.
What “rule” are you using for one rule here, but Obama as the Joker poster can have any number of associations?
Users of Metaphorvneed to Know.
#14. Take a chill pill, pal. Your “Hate Crime” rhetoric is part of what is taking this country down.
# 14:
“So the rightwing will be putting hitler mustaches on Obama now”…..
Hah! I’m waiting for the LEFT to start doing that! The way he is going, I will get my wish…
This has nothing to do with Obama, Democrats, Republicans, or the man in the moon.
It’s just California law, and here it is in the judge’s own words.
“In 1992, California enacted an anti-SLAPP statute, Code of Civil Procedure section 425.16,
to provide a procedure for a court “to dismiss at an early stage nonmeritorious litigation meant to chill the valid exercise of the constitutional rights of freedom of speech and petition in connection with a public issue.” Sipple v. Foundation for Nat’l Progress, 71 Cal. App. 4th 226, 235 (1999).
This type of nonmeritorious litigation is referred to under the acronym “SLAPP,” or Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation … The archetypal SLAPP complaint is a “generally meritless suit brought by large private interests to deter common citizens from exercising their political or legal rights or to punish them for doing so”
My new Obama Joker posters say:
Bill Illiterate
Medicine Dictator
War Keeper
Feel free to use that.
Everything depends on a context in which we use a symbol. Hitler is a symbol of evil, mass murder, Judes, Poles and many more people extermination. And no one could disagree with that. But some things follow his shadow – our popcultural right to use any symbol we want, to express our feelings. If that picture was use as a respond for other picture, or sentence we should see the first one and than say: that is interesting, or that is awful.
#20 Care to tell us exactly how Obama is like Hitler? Torturing foreigners and his own citizens? No wait, that was Bush. Spying on his own citizens against the law? Wait, Bush again. Starting wars against non-threatening countries to achieve more power? Drat, you guessed it — Bush again.
So please, go ahead… tell me how Obama is so much like Hitler. I’m all ears.
#10 ortho
You may want to read the first amendment again. No where does it say that speech must be peaceable.
Try reading it before you post something so stupid again please.
#17, Bobbo,
You seem to be confusing two posts here. I’ll try to answer.
What “rule” are you using for one rule here, but Obama as the Joker poster can have any number of associations?
I didn’t rule, the Judge did. Sedgewick, the Health Management company, was suing Delsman because he sent out some postcards with plain photos of the top two executives in February. Sedgewick sued for, among other things, defamation of Character, Tortuous Interference, and Copyright Infringement. Although they entered the modified “Hitler pictures into evidence, they did not argue those pictures during their claim. The company copyrighted the photos two weeks before they filed their suit in April.
The Judge ruled that Delsman used the photos under the “Fair Use” guidelines of the Copyright Act. The photos had no commercial value. She also ruled that because the suit did not have a remedy, it was without merit. Her only option was to dismiss the case under the SLAPP provisions of California law.
Now to tie this to the Obama poster. I never suggested that the Obama poster was ever illegal. I fully accept freedom of speech allows this. Here, someone did try to stop that free speech, but even they realized that the “Hitler” pictures were fair use as satire.
Are those pictures racist? Maybe if you are a Concentration Camp survivor you feel any comparison only cheapens or lessens Hitler’s deeds. The Holocaust Museum feels that way. Does that count as racist?
#10 ortho, I have a right to speak of my disagreement with Barak Obama or George Bush or even the local dogcatcher.
“I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration somehow you’re not patriotic. We should stand up and say we are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration.” – a politician said this.
#25, Mr. Diesel,
You may want to read the first amendment again. No where does it say that speech must be peaceable.
You may want to read Ortho’s comment again. No where did he suggest that any speech be stopped.
Other laws upheld by the Supreme Courts disagree with you. Free Speech does not cover “Yelling fire in a crowded theater”, advocating the violent overthrow of the government, or coercing someone to commit a crime. It is those limits that divide our society from total anarchy and peaceful life.
I’m confused which conspiracy theory to follow. Is Obama an Aryan, brown shirted Nazi? Or a black radical Muslim? Or maybe he’s being controlled by the Chinese through a microchip?
One thing you do have to agree on though: systematically killing 6 million Jews is the moral equivalent of trying to provide health to 50 million Americans.
We Americans have such bad luck!
We finally get a black president and he ends up being a neo-Nazi.
… AND a communist!
What are the odds?!?!
#29, qb,
. . . systematically killing 6 million Jews is the moral equivalent of trying to provide health to 50 million Americans.
Excellent summation. Unfortunately, it is way too complicated for some to understand.