Who Needs the First Amendment? Not Arizona!

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Oh Arizona, you never cease to amaze me when it comes to passing idiotic legislation that will ultimately land the state in court, costing the taxpayers an obscene amount of money, only to find out that the law was completely unconstitutional. I just don’t understand why you keep doing this.  

Now I’m sure you are wondering what in the hell I’m talking about. I am talking about Arizona House Bill 2549. This bill has now passed through the legislation and is sitting on Good old Governor Jan Brewer’s desk awaiting a signature.

Arizona Bill 2549 is a bill, which under the guise of preventing cyber bullying and stalking, will rip away the first amendment rights of those in Arizona via the internet.  The bill will update a previous law that makes it illegal to harass or stalk someone via telephone, and it will now include any electronic or digital device. OK, that doesn’t sound so bad. Right? Wrong. Here is what the bill really does.

                   This law would make it illegal to use any electronic device to communicate if done with the intent to "terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend."  What is so bad about that? Well, I’m glad you asked. The problem is that most protected speech is meant to annoy or offend. If this bill passes, all political speech will be illegal; this could also include much of the satire that many of us love so much, or maybe I just happen to use the word Fuck. All of those are meant to offend somebody. Am I going to get fined or tossed in jail because I happen to say that those damn Tea baggers are ruining the country? Well, doesn’t that offend those Tea baggers?

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And now for the big question; who decides if the language is meant to be offensive? Who does it need to offend?  We can't even seem to get the Westboro Baptist Church to shut the hell up because we need to protect their first amendment right to harass military widows and parents who have lost their children at war, we protect their right to spew their hate against homosexuals and well, just about everything, but if I hurt someone's feelings online in Arizona I will be guilty of a crime? This doesn't make any sense at all.

It just seems like Arizona will be wasting more money fighting lawsuits with money that the state really doesn’t have. Maybe this is the real reason that Jan Brewer started her “Death Panels”. If the legislature in this state would stop passing laws that will ultimately end up in court, costing the taxpayers way too much money and eventually being told that the law was completely unconstitutional in the first place, they wouldn’t need to take so much money away from the state Medicaid program to fight these lawsuits.

I have an idea, if any member of the state legislature puts their name on or votes for more than one piece of unconstitutional legislation, they are fired. If they are too lazy or incompetent to read the legislation and make sure that it is worded in a manner that does not violate the people’s rights, they are in the wrong line of work.