Reader Pat Riotic alerts one to the following insanity:
An elected official charged with falsely claiming he earned the military’s highest honor has filed a motion to dismiss the federal case against him on free speech grounds.
The motion argues that the Stolen Valor Act of 2005, under which water board member Xavier Alvarez was charged, is incompatible with the First Amendment because it restricts free speech by criminalizing false claims of military honors.
Cool! So, I don’t see why my pretending to be a doctor or lawyer ought to be of any concern to anybody, next time I dispense fraudulent medical or legal advice: I’m simply exercising my right to defraud.
There’s more, here.
UPDATE: Feel free to offer bad professional advice of any sort in the thread.
I say skip the legal proceedings and han him over to the Marines for about 25 years.
Lying on any resume should be considered freedom of expression as well, eh?
I like the way css thinks.
I don’t see what the all the hubbub is all about.
Sean M., my credential trumps all of yours.
Dude’s a member of the Water Board?
TORTURER!!!
I guess free speech then protects perjury. Give Bill back his law license!
And it protects lies so George is off the impeachment hook for lying us into war!
Free Speech! Is there anything it can’t do? Other than survive in Canada.
I say – False speech is not always protected. The government clearly has an interest in protecting the significance of military honors. Alvarez’s intentional false claim was not in the realm of ideas or a subjective, debatable or even mistaken premise. The truth or falsity is a matter of fact; only evidence that Alvarez was not lying, but mistaken or delusional, would protect his speech. Here, he lied for personal gain by claiming the honor made him fit for public office.
A lot of medals are just handed out–heck, I got some and I was just average. But when you get closer to the top, to the DSC and ultimately the Medal of Honor, those are vetted so closely and those guys are true heroes. In fact, I almost get a tear in my eye when I think about what MOH winners did.
Cover this guy in raw chorizo and put weasels in his trousers.
It just seems that all that medal stuff should be checkable… I don’t think you need a database of people so much as you’d want to assign a number to each medal and just be able to check that. The military brought a lot of this problem about with their medal inflation and also basically they just weren’t thinking. Whatever but they should be able to track the medals they’ve given out so that way if someone claims one you can plug in the number on it and see who it went to. Meaning I don’t think you should be able to search by name.
From the perspective of the liar this is all coming from the same place as the sort of resume padding which is sort of a continuum of wrongness that a lot of people do and I don’t think they really mean to steal any valor, just borrow it. If people didn’t want to do this then that would mean military honors weren’t very meaningful or even a negative thing really.
It just seems that Xavier for all we know could be a real genuine force for good in the world except for the part where he steals valor and also he’s probably someone’s dad.
You don’t know the power of the dark side.
I say General Doctor Constable Sir Sean M wins the thread.
I say General Doctor Constable Sir Sean M wins the thread.
Yeah Jeffersonian, pretty much.
As a top lawyer and High Court Judge,my advice to Mr Alvarez is to join my class action suit in which a large number of former non-members of the US military are suing the US Govenment for failure to award appropriate medals, including the CMH.
This elitist behaviour in which such honors are only awarded to so-called soldiers doing brave things is responsible for all the woes of society today.
So if Mr Alvarez, (or, indeed, any of you), which to share in the trillion dollar awards sure to be forthcoming for the military’s disdain in fostering the dreadful loss of self-esteem we have all suffered, please send US$500 to the following Cayman Islands address.
Your obedient servant
Lord Fauntleroy
“Cover this guy in raw chorizo and put weasels in his trousers.”
Brings me back to the old fraternity daze….sweet.
Couldn’t he just claim he’s an “undocumented medal winner”?
As a certified analrapist, my services are available to all, for very reasonable fees.
I don’t think you need a database of people so much as you’d want to assign a number to each medal and just be able to check that.
The Medal of Honor is a numbered medal. There are websites where you can go and check each individual awardee. Like this one: http://www.homeofheroes.com/moh/war/1_a_main.html
Did I mention I’m a Nobel Peace Prize winner, had a New York Times bestseller, and my blog has been quoted on the Senate floor?
Oh see I didn’t know that, Ted. In my world that completely solves the problem. I guess it’s different, you know, out there.
Why do military haters and deserters always show up as wannebe hero’s? I just pulled my DD 214 to make sure what is mine is really mine. Just an MSM and BS among the normal 22 years worth of awards. Couldn’t find a C M of H that I didn’t earn.
You don’t know the power of the dark side.
Yes, I do.
There are many types of speech that the 1st amendment does not protect. “Knowing falsehood” is just one of them.
I think Percy’s got the winning comment. The rest of you aspiring funny-people can go home, now.
What!?
<frostily> Do you know who I am??? </frostily>
That was kind of dismissive.
I’ll be over here.
I don’t know. Percy pretty much won the thread, so to speak.
“Undocumented Medal Winner.” Win.
Come on, guys. Commenting at PW is like the Special Olympics: everyone wins.
Especially for andy, and dogmadave, and semanticlueless, and…
Scrapiron – yeah, I seemed to have missed out on the MoH and DSC too. And I never even got elected yo a Water Board…
Maybe now my wife, Morgan Fairchild, will drop the defamation lawsuit. I was just expressing myself, freely. Yeah, that’s the ticket.