Except it's never been LESS expensive to get your speech out in front of millions of people. If you really want the unconstitutional law back in place, what you're really saying is that you are afraid that your own message is too unconvincing, too bankrupt to be swept up and passed along and echoed by honest people, and that you'd prefer that the government limit the speech of your opponents so that what you stand for isn't held up to scrutiny. If you prefer the unconstitutional law that was in place, it means you prefer that companies like NBC or the New York Times are allowed to put all of their resources into political speech in the period before an election while your opponents are muzzled by the government.

That's the end result YOU prefer, and which we were facing until the court correctly weighed the law against the plain language of the constitution. As with every one of your posts, the only way you can pretend you're being honest is to pretend you're so dumb that you completely misunderstand the constitution and turn it exactly upside down. You think the first amendment is meant to limit the speech of people you don't like, rather than what it's really for, which is to prevent exactly that.

Well, I get that "evil money is speech!" is the rallying cry of those who want a bigger, more powerful government limiting what some people (but not everyone) can say.

But money isn't speech. Speech is speech. If the people who say they're mad that "money is speech" had their way, the new complaint would be "control is speech."

If the court hadn't struck down the unconstitutional law, we'd still be in a position where you, personally, couldn't run an ad expressing your opinion about your local congressional race a week before an election expressing your opinion ... even while the editorial staff at, say, NBC or NPR or Fox or CNN are allowed to shape and air all the opinions they want, or certain exempted groups could. Just not you. The first amendment was no longer protecting you (or 10,000 of you and your like-minded friends who wanted to pool your time and other resources to express your opinions together).

So what's your suggestion? The government "shall make no law ... abridging speech" except when it's abridging the speech of people who buy ads? It's never been less expensive to get a message out in front of huge numbers of people. Money doesn't equal speech, well-crafted messages equal memorable speech - and you can get it out there for free, with people who think like you passing the word. But the Nanny State types even want to control that. They only want the mostly lefter-leaning media operations to have a free hand with their audiences prior to an election, because they know which candidates such media entities will back. And they'd prefer that you couldn't even be allowed to run a politically-oriented blog that might interfere with that orchestrated message. People who want control over political speech really want control over particular types of political speech, and they're making a calculated gamble that they can skew that control in their favor. The court was right to deny them that power over your freedom of expression.

The "perverse idea" that's on the table isn't that money = speech. It's that control = liberty. Thankfully the first amendment is still very much in place.

Who said money is the equivalent of speech? We're talking about the striking down of a law that was prohibiting political speech (only by some groups and companies, not others) whether it cost any money or not. The law was about political communication, not about whether or how much it cost. The first amendment doesn't say that government is prohibited from interfering with speech as long as it's done on a low budget. It says it can make no law abridging speech.

It means they're ignorant and incorrect, yes. About the First Amendment.

So if that gyrocopter developed trouble on his approach, and veered 20 degrees to the left on its way down, which would have put him into a crowd of kids and tourists, no big deal?

Granted, only a few hundred people have died in gyro accidents since they became popular.

Oh, OK. So if were to have crashed that machine into the group of school kids he flew past, it probably wouldn't have hurt anybody.

So I have the right to say something political during an election. And you have the right to do so. Each of us can, say, run an ad in the newspaper to express ourselves about politics, and the first amendment protects us from the government controlling our speech. Right?

But if we also engage in our protected right to assemble as a group, and do something horrific like ... sharing the cost of running that exact same ad because we realize that we're on the same page ... then suddenly we lose the rights protected by the first amendment?

The amendment says: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Explain where, in that very clear language, it says that the government CAN make a law abridging the freedom of speech of two people who say the same thing together as a group. Be specific.

OK, so what IS his message? That he thinks the government should NOT interfere with political speech? Because that's the opposite of what he's saying. He thinks that the government should control who gets to say what. That's the bottom line of his position. Just because you don't like it being boiled down to its essence and said out loud doesn't mean that doing so is trolling. It's just calling it what it is.

Wow, you are really missing the point. You have it backwards. The law wasn't "loosened," it was struck down, in part, because it allowed some groups to do things like run political ads on TV while barring other groups from doing so. Regardless of that unequal treatment under the law, which favored some groups and companies over others, the main issue remains: telling people that they're not allowed to say things during an election is a direct violation of the first amendment. Period. The court came to the same inevitable conclusion. If you don't like the groups like Greenpeace or a labor union or the NRA can run opinion pieces on cable TV or in a newspaper ad, then you need to figure out how to let the government stop those people from saying what they think while not violating the first amendment. And then you have to apply that new speech-inhibiting law evenly to everyone.

So when you join a labor union or incorporate your business, you think you're surrendering your rights to free speech? What if you incorporate a landscaping business in your town, and some local politician says he's going to make it the focus of his term as mayor to prohibit all gasoline powered landscaping equipment in town. Do you really think that the would-be mayor should be allowed to say what he thinks about your business practices and equipment, but you and your fellow landscapers in town shouldn't be allowed to run an ad saying, "Don't elect Mr. Smith, because all of your local landscaping companies will end up out of business." Why do you think such political speech should be banned, but only when it's the business owners who speak it?

No, most Americans do not think that the government be allowed to stop you from expressing your opinion about politics. That's what the First Amendment is there to prevent the government from doing.

What? His message is that he wants the government to limit your ability to engage in free speech. Ironically, he wants to the right to make a highly dangerous (to other people), theatrical exhibition of political speech ... in support of limiting other people's constitutionally protected speech. That sort of irrational position on free speech may indeed be in keeping with someone who thinks he's doing others a favor by risking their deaths in a publicity stunt.

So, you've got no problem with flying a gyrocopter over a public tourist location, and landing there? Without any sort of control of the airspace, no provision for safety on the ground, etc? So, you'd be cool with that guy landing on the road right in front of you any time he wants. Or right next to you while you're having a picnic. Seems like you'd be fine with him, say, driving a 10-ton tracked earth mover onto the Capital grounds, to "petition" the government? So public spaces, like, say, the front lawn of the White House ... should be available to you for any use you see fit, at any time you see fit, as you operate any vehicle you please to make some theatrical point, as long as it's political? Regardless, I love the irony. You're defending his actions as an example of someone using his right to free speech, and ignoring the fact that his complaint is that there IS free political speech. He wants the government to limit political speech, not protect the freedom to make it.

Here you go. Some of these guys have six-figure camera rigs riding on a Segway. There are practical reasons for that in some situations, even with very large budget productions. Not every physical space lends itself to traditional full-sized cranes and dollies on rails, etc.

https://www.google.com/search?...

Really. You're comparing a protest against a monarchy that was suppressing free speech (among many other very bad things), to a guy who decided to fly a dodgy piece of dangerous equipment with high speed rotors past crowds of tourists in order to register his complaint that we have a constitutional guarantee of free speech?

The first amendment is the #1 problem? This guy is complaining because he doesn't like a court ruling that diminished the ability of labor unions (like his) to be allowed to spend money on political ads when other people weren't allowed to. He's upset about a court correctly finding that unequal protection under the law, and the government directly limiting political speech, was unconstitutional.

Yeah, by violating militarily enforced air space that could have involved the use of heavy weapons while he flies his cheeseball gyrocopter over crowds including bunches of children. In other words, he was willing to seriously risk other people's lives in a political stunt.

I'm not apathetic about the first amendment, are you?

Which doesn't excuse him from honoring the DC FRZ (which also means you can't fly toy airplanes or plastic toy multirotors, etc) within a 30-mile circle around where he flew. And it certainly won't change the fine (at least) he's going to pay.