Why Sheehan should be allowed to wear whatever she wants in the Capitol during the State of the Union address

I can see I'm the only person on the right side of the blogging world who thinks people in the Capitol to watch the SOTUA should be allowed to wear t-shirts with politically-charged messages. The fact that someone was taken out for wearing "Support Our Troops" shows how sticky it is to decide what is and what is not a politically-charged message. One could pretty easily make the case that "Support Our Troops" is a very nonpartisan message. Democrats in public office want you to think it is. Joel Stein and the Kos are the only two people in America who openly oppose our troops. And yet someone thought "Support Our Troops" was a political message. Maybe "I [heart] Freedom" would be a political message. Perhaps "Obey the Constitution" would get unde a lot of congressional skin. Who is deciding what is a political message and what isn't?

Maybe someone will make the case that among the House of Reps' many rules is a "no t-shirt" dress code. That's not what I read. I read Sheehan and Mrs. Young were escorted out for "protesting," which is especially ludicrous in Young's case. And if it's a matter of banning clothes with words on them, I would support abolishing that rule. As long as someone is silent, and not physically interfering with anyone, she is not disrupting the address or anything else. If TV cameras want to focus on an audience member's t-shirt, that just shows where they are. I don't think wearing a t-shirt, even the most wildly partisan one, should be prohibited in the nation's Capitol.

Going back for a moment to the woman who was asked to get off a plane because she had a t-shirt that was wildly partisan and also obscene, I think that was completely within the airline's rights. The Constitution does not hold airlines or any other business to the free speech standard. That's only for the government (which includes the House of Representatives). Businesses set their own rules (or at least they should be allowed to), and the Constitution is not binding on them, nor should it be. As I noted in an earlier article about companies "invading their employees' privacy" by making sure they weren't smokers, it's a violation of a business' rights and freedoms to have government come force it to allow its customers and employees all the same freedoms they would (or should) be afforded in a government facility. If potential airline passengers don't want to patronize airlines that have a decency standard for what you wear on their airplanes, they don't have to. If you don't want to work for a company that goes to great lengths to keep its employees from smoking, you don't have to (or at least, you wouldn't as long as it's not federal law that requires businesses to discriminate against smokers).

Freedom: learn it, live it, love it.

SRS