Two comments:
- The problem with free speech on military PX and BX stores: the military gets all kinds of exemptions from the constitution: look at military justice (an oxymoron). Jury? Hahahaha. Free speech? Try protesting in uniform. I'm not a constitutional scholor or attorney, but I suspect some specific exemptions for the military exist in the constitution.
- Charities and Political speech vs. commercial speech: the supreme court has frequently afforded fewer protections to commercial speech than to charitiable or political speech. See the lead editorial in todays Wall Street Journal (Sept. 29th).
There is a significant conflict between privacy rights and free speech rights which the Judge is attempting to navigate. I believe he erred, but others disagree. For example, you may request that the post office not deliver certain commercial AND charity mail and they will apparently do so and tell the organization to remove you from their lists. It must be done on an organization by organization basis; I don't know if there is a penalty for non-compliance. The key here is that there is no blanket "don't deliver any commercial junk mail to my house," but rather a selective blocking. Pretty hard to stop everything that way since oranziations change all the time. But even charities and politial organizations can't drive a sound truck down a residential street blasting their message away. Your city government has the right to prohibit such speech as long as they prohibiit ALL of it.
Congress probably has to rewrite the law to somehow include charities and politico's with the emphaisis on individual privacy. Will politicians act to prevent themselves from bombarding you with useless and unwanted "vote for me?" messages? Hmmmmmmm.
Ed. in article snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, Mike Tennent at snipped-for-privacy@darientel.net wrote on 9/29/03 5:24 AM: