Mayor’s free‘dumb’ of speech

This is the full text of the First Amendment to the Constitution: “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.”

It is printed here for the benefit of Mayor Bloomberg, who continues to be baffled about what those words mean. He invokes the First Amendment, and calls himself a great defender of it, to explain his refusal to enforce criminal laws in and around Zuccotti Park.

“The right to protest, people say, ‘Oh, I understand it, but.’ There’s no but. There’s no but when it comes to the right to express yourself,” Bloomberg said.

Of course, there is a but. Lots of them. No right is absolute. Moreover, there is nothing in the First Amendment that gives political protesters immunity from ordinary laws.

New York routinely arrests people for the use of illegal drugs, public urination, disorderly conduct, excessive noise, fighting, open cooking, sexual assault and theft. Yet, at the direction of the mayor, Zuccotti Park largely has been turned into a sovereign nation of vagabonds, a legal free zone where almost anything goes.

Bloomberg’s explanation is that he doesn’t want to infringe on the First Amendment.

It’s a daffy defense that has no basis in law or fact, but it’s not the first time the mayor has revealed a flawed understanding of free-speech rights. His ardent defense of the proposed Ground Zero mosque was built on a misguided claim that it was “an important test of the separation of church and state.” He said opponents “ought to be ashamed of themselves” and accused them of denying Muslims “the right to pray.”

He was fundamentally wrong on two counts. First, the mosque is a land-use issue, and opponents have every right to speak out against it, as they do on any issue. While it would violate the First Amendment for a government entity to deny religious freedom to any group, it is not a violation for private citizens to oppose a building, even a house of worship.

Second, it turns out Bloomberg himself probably violated the First Amendment principle of separation of church and state because his aides were secretly using government authority to fast-track the religious project.

E-mails the mayor was forced to release under the Freedom of Information Act showed that regulators controlled by Bloomberg were told to quickly approve the mosque. Aides also pressed the local community board to support the project so the Landmarks Preservation Commission would have “political cover” to allow the existing building to be demolished.