Day By Day© by Chris Muir.

May 15, 2006

Free Speech Threatened in Boulder

Here's hoping Matt Parker and Trey Stone give this one the treatment it deserves on South Park:

Tuesday, the Boulder City Council will take up the matter of allocating public funding for a "hate hotline," which would give residents an opportunity to report incidents in which Boulderites use tactless language.

The ACLU is concerned, of course. But not for the reason you might think.

"Our concern - and there are many - is that there is no confidentiality, no legal confidentiality," explains Judd Golden, chairman of the Boulder American Civil Liberties Union, which has not yet taken an official position on the hate-line. "So it's potentially chilling if people think they are providing this information in confidence and then that information were provided to the government or the government sought access to it. That would chill free speech."

He's worried about the government getting access to the information being called in? What about the fact that the information is being called in at all? Apparently there's no intent for the hate line to forward the complaints to the police or the city council any time soon, but frankly, I have no faith in that. Simply instituting the line is the first step. I can just hear the hate line folks voicing their concerns and sooner than you can make that racial slur, the cops will be beating down your door.

So what the heck is this phone line supposed to do? Will it make the callers feel good knowing they can complain to someone about some dumb blonde joke someone told by the office coffee pot?

Unbelievable.

Crossposted to Lifelike Pundits