Marion County has some volunteers for roadside beautification. They do trash pickup twice a year and in return, they get an pair of Adopt-a-Highway signs at taxpayer expense. No biggie, right? Yeah, well...
Too bad they're Nazis.
CNN has it here. Lady Cascadia chimed in a few choice words on her blog after seeing it on KOIN TV. Her thesis, in brief?
Pathetic if you ask me. More than pathetic...it is an OUTRAGE!
MacDiva, writing over on Silver Rights provides a comprehensive review of the current Oregon story (sourcing her work from a Reuters piece, so I suppose this means we've gone global...) and connects some more dots concerning a similar incident in Missouri with the KKK.
In 2001, a U.S. District Court held that Missouri could not reject an application by the Ku Klux Klan to participate in its Adopt-a-Highway program. Missouri had argued that accepting the Klan into its program implied approval of the group's white supremacist views by the state government. The court disagreed, saying that barring the KKK from participation in Adopt-A-Highway would impinge its right to free speech. The case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but rejected by it without a hearing, in Yarnell v. Cuffley, 00-289 (2001) (writ of certiorari denied). The decision is the controlling one in regard to inclusion of hate groups in state sponsored activities. Absent different grounds for appeal, Marion County has no legal basis to exclude the Nazis and NSM from its Adopt-A-Road program.As is also noted on Silver Rights, the signs were up this morning but are now gone. I expect someone living in Marion County decided they personally didn't need a legal basis to exclude the groups from getting posted credit for their efforts. I expect there was a line of folks ready to help on that score. When I lived up in Shaw, you can bet I'd have been driving to Keizer with my ratchet and sockets to see what help I could be.
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