Its about time somebody put a stop to those crusading, civic do-gooders who maliciously expose our corrupt, fat-ass bureaucrats for what they are!! How dare they. WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court scaled back protections for government workers who blow the whistle on official misconduct Tuesday, a 5-4 decision in which new Justice Samuel alit cast the deciding vote. In a victory for the Bush administration, justices said the 20 million public employees do not have free-speech protections for what they say as part of their jobs. Critics predicted the impact would be sweeping, from silencing police officers who fear retribution for reporting department corruption, to subduing federal employees who want to reveal problems with government hurricane preparedness or terrorist-related security. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060530/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_free_speech Its comforting to know the endless reams of frivolous lawsuits tabled by the millions of 'mistreated' Government workers (that we never seem to hear about) will finally take precedence over exposing issues far more important to our collective national saftey!! Like our Governments unpreparedness for Hurricanes, or terror attacks, or the trillions missing from the Pentagon. Or Sibel Edmonds testimony FBI higher ups were complicit in PROTECTING known 9/11 accomplices from prosecution. Or the hundreds of illegal Arabs flowing in from mexico our Border agents are told to shut up about. List goes on and on. oh well. Good riddance to the whistler blowers like Colleen Rowley and Robert Wright. Those selfless patriots are a bunch of shit disturbers anyway. Who needs unchecked Government power anyway??! Fuck the founding fathers. (end bitter, sarcastic rant).
I would have rather seen them just say you can't write a book and/or appear on every damn TV show you can promoting same!
Sure. But does that mean we should short circuit the only credible avenue we have to uncover Government corruption and willful negligence? No.
Interesting case. All the Court held was that a government employee does not have constitutional protection for communications made in connection with his job. This is not exactly earth shaking. There are state and federal laws protecting whistleblowers and these remain unaffected. The Court was obviously concerned about the potential for chaos if government employees were granted a constitutional right to say whatever they wanted on whatever subject. No doubt the recent CIA leaks weighed on their decision. Ironically, the NY Times and Washington Post probably contributed to a result that they will no doubt find fault with.