Texas cops are scouring the streets to find the identity of a driver with an obscene anti-Trump message on his truck. And they’re making a mistake.
https://www.facebook.com/SheriffTNehls/photos/a.1432629380323155.1073741828.1431647400421353/1954765468109541/?type=3&theater
Look, I get it. Scribbling F*CK Trump on the back of your car is sophomoric. It’s rude. What it’s not, however, is illegal. Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls overstepped his boundaries by treating the driver as the suspect in a crime.
“Our Prosecutor has informed us she would accept Disorderly Conduct charges regarding [the sticker], but I feel [police and the driver] could come to an agreement regarding a modification to it,” he wrote.
This battle has already been fought and lost. The Supreme Court decided decades ago that the right to free speech includes the right to curse.
“Absent a more particularized and compelling reason for its actions, the State may not, consistently with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, make the simple public display of this single four-letter expletive a criminal offense,” the court ruled in 1971.
Posts like Sheriff Nehls’ provide fodder for the Democrats. The town sheriff should understand the law better than random people on the internet, but Nehls apparently really believed that he would be able to charge the unknown driver.
Americans aren’t thrown in jail for their political opinions. Disrespecting the president is pretty immature, but Americans have the right to do it. Sheriff Nehls allowed his zeal to outpace his reason.
Facebook users quickly tore Nehls’ post apart. The truck driver was elevated from nameless punk to liberal hero because of the attention.
(Source: Daily Mail)