Hey Garry Meier: Ole Miss is Freer Than Chicago

I genuinely like WGN radio's Garry Meier. I think he is one of only two genuinely funny jocks on the Chicago airwaves and I genuinely hope he blows away his backstabbing ex-partner, Roe Conn, in the arbitron ratings.

But last week Meier made the mistake of trying to make a serious observation and he showed his obvious 60's timewarp in the process.

He tried to do a bit on the inanity of some obscure North Mississippi High School, which cancelled its prom so as to not allow an overt lesbian couple to attend.

He then concluded that Mississippi was a repressive place and he was sure glad he lived in much freer Chicago.

Think again Garry. This isn't 1964 and Sheriff Clarke is long dead. Chicago today is vastly more repressive than that old bastion of the Confederacy.

Old black men in Mississippi are free to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to defend their homes and families with firearms. Not so in King Daley's fiefdom, where an elderly black man named MacDonald had to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to secure that civil right in the face of Chicago's onerous and unconstitutional violation of his 2nd Amendment rights.

The free adults of Mississippi are free to partake of legal adult tobacco products when they sip beer in a pub or play blackjack in one of the Gulf Coast casinos.

And in the enlightened libertarian utopia of Lucedale, MS, they can smoke anywhere they wish -- even in workplaces.

Not so in the Chicago nanny state where adults must hunker down in the cold 15 feet from the entrance of a tavern in order to enjoy a puff on a cigarette. They can't even smoke on Chicago's windswept beaches for Chrissakes!

Mississippi citizens can face their accusers when alleged to have run a red light. They have no autamotonic revenue generating red light machines there as those that torment Daley's serfs.

And while the actions of an obscure Mississippi High School may seem petty and onerous to the libertarian minded, they pale in comparison to the outright neo-fascism of the speech codes at all of the major universities in the Chicago area.

Northwestern, De Paul, UIC and the University of Chicago are all on the red light watch list of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a potent civil rights advocacy group, for their outrageously unconsitutional "Speech Codes."

These purportedly "liberal" Chicago institutions have conspired to violate their adult students' civil right to free speech for decades now. The University of Chicago even went so far as to attempt to discipline an adult student for his private Facebook postings. The UC book burners had to back down when threated by a FIRE lawsuit, but the petty, pusillanimous academic bugaboo chasers there remained unrepenetant.

As I mentioned, the notorious Mississippi Sheriff Clarke of the civil rights era is long gone. His police state tactics have been resurrected however by people with names like Burge and Abbate. And they are from enlightened Northern Chicago, not Mississippi.

So please stick to your funny bits, Garry and don't lecture us on how relatively free Chicago is. It is a civil rights backwash by comparison to Mississippi.

I briefly dated a fetching belle from the Mississippi Delta and a friend dated a total knockout who had been Miss "Ole Miss."

We both can attest that the girls are freer there too.

U of Chicago Thought Police Threaten Pro-Israel Student

For the second time in two years, the University of Chicago has threatened a student with disciplinary action over comments posted on the student's personal Facebook page.

This time, they launched a police investigation into controversial Pro-Israeli tongue-in-cheek comments posted by an undergraduate campus radio host.

This time the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a civil rights advocacy group, may take legal action against the UC (which formerly employed both Mr. and Mrs. Barack Obama.)

Here is the report from the FIRE website:



University of Chicago Repeatedly Censors Student Facebook Posts:

Joke about 'Israel Lobby' Author's Assassination Leads to Police Investigation


CHICAGO, March 24, 2010—For the second time in two years, the University of Chicago has censored a student's post on a private Facebook page. Undergraduate Joseph "Tex" Dozier posted a joke that he had had a dream about assassinating University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer "for a secret Israeli organization." Mearsheimer is co-author of the controversial book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. This post prompted an investigator from the university's police department to question Dozier about his political views, suggest that he would investigate Dozier's comments on his university radio show, and demand that Dozier remove the post or else have the post reported to Mearsheimer, one of his professors. Dozier came to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help.

"Any reasonable person would recognize that Dozier's post was unquestionably a joke," said FIRE Vice President Robert Shibley. "If Dozier worked for a secret Israeli organization, would he have announced it via Facebook? And if the University of Chicago truly believed that Dozier presented a threat to a professor's life, how would merely censoring the student have solved the problem? The U of C is making a joke of itself by policing and censoring student comments on Facebook."

On December 6, 2009, Dozier wrote on his personal Facebook page, "Dreamt that I assassinated [University of Chicago professor] John Mearsheimer for a secret Israeli organization - there was a hidden closet w/ Nazi paraphanelia [sic]. Haha! :-)" Mearsheimer is popularly known for his 2007 book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy with co-author Stephen Walt. According to the authors, the book "focuses primarily on the lobby's influence on U.S. foreign policy and its negative effect on American interests."

University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) officer Abraham Martinez phoned Dozier on December 7. According to Dozier, Martinez called the post a "death threat" and asked if Dozier disagreed with Mearsheimer politically. Martinez also asked if he had made "controversial comments" about Mearsheimer in the past that the UCPD should be aware of.

Martinez even told Dozier that he had "researched" Dozier and his weekly radio show The Boiling Point, which is broadcast on university-hosted station WHPK. When Martinez said that he was required to contact Mearsheimer to inform him of Dozier's comment, Dozier replied that Mearsheimer had been one of his professors and that he feared negative repercussions if his innocent comment was reported to Mearsheimer. Martinez responded that if Dozier deleted the comment within 30 minutes, Martinez would include the removal in his official report and not contact Mearsheimer. Dozier negotiated a two-hour window and then deleted his comment.

Neither the University of Chicago nor the UCPD has challenged FIRE's or Dozier's account of this conversation.

FIRE wrote University of Chicago President Robert J. Zimmer on March 2 about the violation of Dozier's expression rights. While the University of Chicago is a private institution not bound by the First Amendment, it explicitly promises students freedom of speech in its Student Manual, which also states that "The ideas of different members of the University community will frequently conflict and we do not attempt to shield people from ideas that they may find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even offensive. Nor, as a general rule, does the University intervene to enforce social standards of civility." The university has not responded.

This is the second time the University of Chicago has censored a student's Facebook post in violation of the university's promises to its students. In 2009, undergraduate Andrew Thompson posted a photograph album on his personal Facebook page under the title, "[Name of ex-girlfriend] cheated on me, and you're next!" The photos were of various persons and were unremarkable, though some of Thompson's Facebook "friends" posted negative statements about the ex-girlfriend.

The next day, after the ex-girlfriend complained, Susan Art, Dean of Students in the College, demanded that Thompson "remove her name and remove the pictures you have posted of her" because of an alleged Student Manual prohibition against "disrespectful" speech.

"Can you let me know when her name and her pictures are removed from your [F]acebook page?" Art wrote. "I expect this to happen right away." Fearing university punishment, Thompson complied with Art's censorship demands, but turned to FIRE for help.

FIRE wrote President Zimmer on February 23, 2009, but the university eventually replied that since FIRE was not threatening litigation, the University of Chicago did not want to engage in any further discussion regarding the issue.

"The University of Chicago had a chance to reverse course last year and start respecting students' free speech rights, but it has continued to monitor students' off-campus Internet speech and censor innocuous comments," said Adam Kissel, Director of FIRE's Individual Rights Defense Program. "The university has failed to fulfill its own promises once again."

FIRE is a nonprofit educational foundation that unites civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals from across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of individual rights, due process, freedom of expression, academic freedom, and rights of conscience at our nation's colleges and universities. FIRE's efforts to preserve liberty on campuses across America can be viewed at www.thefire.org.





Tell the University of Chicago to respect student rights. Send a letter to President Zimmer here.