To be fair, I admit that I created this in Photoshop. However, it is not difficult to Google similar authentic SC plates flying the Stars and Bars instead of the Hackenkreuz.
Ilya Shapiro is traditional Jewish liberal lawyer, what I now call a lace curtain liberal yid, who puts his own interests and the law in the way of justice. These talented individuals remind me of a relative of mine, a corporate attorney, who once explained to me that in her job the truth did not matter. We were discussing an issue of intellectual property where the right decision probably belonged to her opponent. My relative did not care. She explained that she was paid to cause the other side to spend so much money that it was easier to give up.
Mr. Shapiro is cut from this same mold, the mold I call legal thuggery. He has become a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute and in that capacity filed a brief on behalf of P.J. O’Rourke, Lenny Bruce’s lawyer, and several other First Amendment defenders in Walker v. Sons of Confederate Veterans.
From The Daily Beast: Allowing the Confederate flag on Texas license plates would offend a lot of people, but Texas’s decision to nix the Stars and Bars tramples the First Amendment.
The racist fraternity chant in Oklahoma has unified people of all political stripes around a very American response: condemning the speech while recognizing that it’s protected by the First Amendment. Unlike in most countries, our Constitution prohibits the government—including a state college—from punishing people for the content of their expression.
Coincidentally, on March 23, the Supreme Court will hear a case that raises just this issue. This case, out of neighboring Texas, involves a group whose design for a specialty license plate was denied because it included a Confederate flag.
Although the Lone Star State recognizes April as Confederate History Month and spends January 19 celebrating Confederate Heroes Day, it would spare its citizens in this one context the sight of a flag it otherwise venerates: Texas has empowered its Department of Motor Vehicles to prevent people from being offended.
I wonder how far Mr. Shapiro would go or whether he ever gives a thought to the implicit endorsement his client (Cato) is making of racism? Would this lawyer defend the rights of Nazis to print the swastika on their plates? How about the KKK?
Obviously, there are boundaries to what states can be compelled to allow on their state-issued license plates. Once that principle is established, the question becomes how and where the line is drawn. Some sort of reasonable person standard should apply.