Today we bring you an amicus brief that will make you laugh out loud — which shouldn’t be surprising, given that it’s being submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of a leading humorist….
On Friday, the Cato Institute submitted an amicus brief on behalf of itself and one of its fellows, legendary political satirist P.J. O’Rourke, in the case of Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus. The case involves a First Amendment challenge to an Ohio law that makes it a crime to “disseminate a false statement concerning a candidate, either knowing the same to be false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false.”
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That’s all the background you need; let’s now turn to the brief. [...]
[W]here would we be without the knowledge that Democrats are pinko-communist flag-burners who want to tax churches and use the money to fund abortions so they can use the fetal stem cells to create pot-smoking lesbian ATF agents who will steal all the guns and invite the UN to take over America?
Voters have to decide whether we’d be better off electing Republicans, those hateful, assault-weapon-wielding maniacs who believe that George Washington and Jesus Christ incorporated the nation after a Gettysburg reenactment and that the only thing wrong with the death penalty is that it isn’t administered quickly enough to secular-humanist professors of Chicano studies.
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The full brief overflows with comic gems — see, e.g., footnotes 14 and 15 — but it also makes some important points about free speech in the political sphere, supported by rich historical research and citation to relevant precedent. You can, and should, read the brief in its entirety over
here (PDF). Enjoy!
