Spring Break, Tito and the First Amendment -or- Three Cheers for Justice Alito!

Tito

Charlie arrived home yesterday for spring break. He brought along Tito the Cat who adores Buzzy but is much younger, has no concept of self-restraint and wants to play all day. So, while Buzzy's life has taken a temporary turn for the worse, mine has taken one for the better.

Here is just a small sampling of the benefits:

-The handful of Alleve I take every morning kicks in faster

-Telemarketers are less annoying and even seem kind of cute

-The daily email I receive from the helpful people at the Crohn's Disease Foundation and won't stop coming no matter how many times I click "unsuscribe," is less infuriating

-The female contestants on this season's American Idol seem less like singing hookers

-The Kardashians appear to be a wholesome, fun-loving family

-I am more likely to be polite at a four-way stop

-Charlie Sheen suddenly seems very sensible and well-adjusted

-I no longer seem to care how Johnny Depp dresses

But, despite my benevolent gaze and elevated sense of mercy, the deranged Westboro protestors are as unspeakably appalling as ever and make me want to suspend free speech long enough to throw them all into a windowless cell where they can spew their insanity only at each other while reruns of MTV's "Skins" are shown on a high def TV over and over and over.

I salute Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito, the court's most conservative judge, who argued that our national commitment to free speech and debate does not "convey the right to brutalize private individuals."

Charlie just asked me why I let myself get so worked up over the rantings of a small deranged cult. I told him, that as a parent, I cannot bear the thought of grieving parents having to endure that filth at their child's funeral, adding that I couldn't imagine that our founding fathers had something like this in mind.

As an idealist as well as journalist, my son believes that this is, indeed, what they had in mind and sought to defend when writing the first amendment.

I asked him if it would then defend me when I choose to hurl human turds at them if our paths ever cross and he said no, that this was something entirely unrelated.

Human turd hurling doesn't seem to merit legal protection (and trust me, I've looked into this) which, on so many levels, is a damn shame.

Other than all this, I'm smiling......my baby's home.

Oh, no!  Do I hear Tito?