Joe Obenberger

And you think that a three-minute limit for oral comments to the city council in a city of 310,651 is so unreasonable as to violated the fundamental rights of human beings? Were every resident of that City to show up and speak for the three minutes permitted under the rule, the public comments portion of the meeting would extend 931,953 minutes, or 15,532 hours or something over 647 continuous days. Lots of luck finding anyone to sit in those chairs who'd take two years out of their lives to conduct one meeting! And I say that as one who was elected twice Alderman and who served as Mayor pro tem of my town. Even in a town of 6,000, sometimes hundreds would show up for important meetings, and sometimes we had to move the meeting to a gym. It does not violate the fundamental rights of man if there is no right at all to address a sitting legislative body. Try showing up at Congress or Parliament and demand unlimited time - or for that matter, any time at all to address the body. This lady would be escorted to a security cell in the Capitol before she spoke her first word to the US Senate and that hardly makes the First Amendment a sham nor does it render our government a tyranny. It does not take three minutes to speak any basic sentiment and hand over a detailed writing that lays the matter out in detail with evidence - and that kind of limit is a reasonable rule for big cities and it offends the sense of justice of very few. No one resident has an unlimited right to hijack a public meeting to speak as long as they wish and hold up public business.

Our Bill of Rights was written by practical men rather than doctrinaire absolutists and all of its protections have limits. It's where those limits lie that is the battleground - and this lady's claim to have the right to unlimited time isn't, in my opinion, even close to the front lines.

__________________


Extremism in the defense of Liberty is no vice. . . Restraint in the pursuit of Justice is no virtue.
Senator Barry Goldwater, 1964