At long last, Ward Churchill is on his way to the unemployment office (I wish--I'm sure that some wacko college is just slavering to pick him up, if he can just burnish his native American creds).

I wish that reporters would call his lawyers on this kind of nonsense, though:

"We're going to a real court because we can trust juries to do the right thing," said Churchill's attorney David Lane. "Churchill says this all completely bogus. Let's see if a jury and a Federal District Court agrees with the committee. Or see if everything that's happened here is retaliation for Ward Churchill's First Amendment free speech relating to 9/11."

...When his essay was brought to light in January 2005, Gov. Bill Owens, state lawmakers and relatives of Sept. 11, 2001 victims in New York immediately denounced it. University officials concluded Churchill could not be fired for the essay, but in March 2005 they launched an investigation into allegations of plagiarism and other research misconduct.

"A committee last year began to look at his writings including his essay on 9/11," said DiStefano. "We determined his writings were protected under the First Amendment. However, during that process there were allegations of research misconduct."

Instead of wrapping himself in a flag, Chuch has wrapped himself in the First Amendment, and thus despoiled it. And unfortunately, the university has aided and abetted this misconception.

There are no First Amendment issues at stake here, at all. Churchill has the right to say whatever he wants, but the First Amendment does not grant him the right to remain a university professor (any more than it protects the New York Times from prosecution for violating the law regarding disclosure of secrets, should Alberto Gonzales grow a pair and decide to prosecute Bill Keller and company).

Contra the findings of the university committee, Churchill has no "First Amendment right" to say whatever he wants and suffer no repercussions. If they wanted to fire him for his "little Eichmanns" statement, they'd be perfectly within their constitutional rights to do so. The only thing preventing it is his contract that goes along with tenure.

Fortunately, while that contract does in fact allow him to say the vile things he chooses to say, it doesn't extend so far as to protect him against his repeated and egregious acts of academic fraud. I hope that this case does go to trial, so that both he and his attorney can waste their time and money in fighting a pointless case, in futile support of a truly disgusting human being.

Having a Right to a specific freedom, is not a freedom to suffer the repercussions of the excercise of that right.

Ammendments 9 and 10.

Do they know that there is more than one ammendment?

ACK!

I SUCK! is not a freedom to suffer the repercussions of the excercise of that right.

is not a freedom fromthe repercussions of the exercise of those rights applied in contradiction to the rights of others.

Italics are corrections, for some reason I mean to edit, only to just hit post and then re-edit.

I SUCK! Sorry.

I think he certainly has the right to say whatever he wants. He can accuse anyone of being anything, but he may get sued for libel. He does not, however, have a constitutional right to lie about his progenitors, or to plagarize, or to violate his employers work place rules.

Personally I don't think free speech gives you the right to yell "Eichman" on a college campus. Isn't it usually super liberal people like Weird Churchill who say Conservatives blame the victim? Because that is certainly what he's done.

He'll get another job for sure, at some super lib California school, Berkeley probably.

Yet another leftist who wants to tear down our laws, talk a bunch of smack about our government and then hide from his statements using the constitution as a shield!

To quote Bugs Bunny, "...what an ultra maroon!"

Personally I don't think free speech gives you the right to yell "Eichman" on a college campus.

That's chilling.

Personally, I think Churchill was an A$$ for calling 9/11 family survivors "Eichmans", but he has the right to say it. He should, and is, losing his job because he is an academic fraud in the sense that he committed perjury and embellished his heritage. Where the 1st Amendment protects him is from ramifications by the government. The 1st Amendment does not protect him from scrutiny from his employer.

Leland,
I wasn't trying to be chilling. I was attemting to show how utterly stupid a statement it is to just say something like Eichman. Unless we are discussing WWII, Nazism, the Holocaust, and ADOLPH Eichman, its a throw away word.

People like this boneheaded professor throw this stuff around and it creates followers out of other boneheads who know nothing. He is dangerous, mostly because HE knows better, and still insists on telling lies to further himself and his cause du jour. He needs to be teaching in Cuba or North Korea where his anti-American diatribes will be believed, if not appreciated.

Churchill does have the right as a private citizen to say what he wishes on a college campus or anywhere else, but as an employee of the college his employer also has the right to dismiss him should his speech become an embarrassment to the college. At a certain level of employment one becomes seen (rightly or wrongly) as a representative of your employer and what you say and do publicly reflects on the employer.

I bet if he had made some racial remark he would have been out on his ear long ago.

Re-write.

You have the right to say whatever you feel.

The people, and the state, and the federalism, has the right, based on representative law, to hold you accountable.

The first Ammendment isn't a get out of treason free card, just like the second isn't a get out of murder free card.