Supreme Court: Texas Doesn't Have To Put Your Loser Confederate Flag On License Plates

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the state of Texas doesn't have to make "Sons of Confederate Veterans" license plates available if it don't wanna. The state didn't wanna, the Sons Of Treason thought that was violating their free speech, and the Supremes said, no, dear, a license plate is the government's speech, not yours, and the state has discretion over which groups may receive special tags. We at Wonkette would just like to thank the U.S. Supreme Court for this one, seeing as how the government of Texas really does need positive reinforcement on those rare occasions when it does something right. Perhaps we could give the state a tasty treat to further encourage the desired behavior.

Tell us more about all this, will you, HuffPo?

Texas excluded the group Sons of Confederate Veterans from its vanity plate program in 2011, saying “a significant portion of the public associates the Confederate flag with organizations advocating expressions of hate directed toward people or groups that is demeaning to those people or groups.” The Sons of Confederate Veterans sued, contending the state violated the group's free speech rights.

This is because the Confederate flag is Martin Luther King or something. Ah, but the Supremes disagreed. In a 5-4 vote, the Court decided that Texas, as the producer of license plates, gets to decide what goes on 'em, as Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the majority:

“As a general matter,” Justice Breyer wrote, “when the government speaks it is entitled to promote a program, to espouse a policy or to take a position.” Were this not so, he said, the government would be powerless to encourage vaccinations or promote recycling.

People use specialty license plates to suggest that the government endorses the messages they bear, he wrote. Otherwise, he said, people “could simply display the message in question in larger letters on a bumper sticker right next to the plate.”

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Texas has an infuriatingly large array of specialty plates, including, inexplicably, a recently discontinued plate for Boise State University, an institution that, despite Idaho's politics, is not even located in Texas.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing in dissent, warned that the majority was setting "a precedent that threatens private speech that the government finds displeasing.” He rejected the claim that a plate design like "Rather be Golfing" could be construed as a government endorsement (insert your own "Obama golfs too much" joke here).

Nine other states offer license plates with the Confederate flag: Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. Thursday's Supreme Court decision opens the possibility of those states doing away with their plates as well, should Hell find itself frozen over someday.

In a timely coincidence, do you know Who Else had a license plate with Confederate national flags on it?

That would be Mr. Dylann Roof, posing with his Hyundai and his goddamned Lost Cause flags. And the Confederate battle flag at the South Carolina state Capitol building continues to fly after Roof did his part for White Nationalism, because as Gov. Nikki Haley explained last year during a debate, she's never heard any complaints about it from CEOs. 

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We were a little curious about what our old neo-Confederate pals at the League of the South might have to say about Dylann Roof and whatever he believed his cause was. (According to law enforcement, he has confessedthat his cause was killing black people to start a race war. Shocker.) But neither the group's Blogspot blog, with the catchy title "Rebellion," nor itsSouth Carolina chapter had any mention of it -- though it appears that the South Carolina webpage hasn't been updated since 2012, so perhaps that bunch has lost their ardor for the cause. LOSer president Michael Hill hasn't tweeted anything about the murders in Charleston, either, although on Thursday he did send a tweet that may or may not be his way of saying that it was a False Flag attack:

The current regime understands this. “Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.”--Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

By Friday, Hill had penned an editorial for the League of the South website about the Confederate battle flag at the South Carolina Statehouse. He agrees that a flag needs to be removed from the grounds, all right, and that flag is the U.S. one, the flag imposed on South Carolina by the Yankee Occupiers:

That ugly gridiron now stands for multiculturalism, tolerance, and diversity–the left’s unholy trinity. It also stands for Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner, Rachel Dolezal, and every other fraud and pervert who is held up as an example of “courage” in 2015 America. It represents the homosexual agenda, open borders and Third World immigration, a culture that is an open sewer, perpetual war for perpetual profit, among many other enormities.

In sharp contrast, our beautiful battle flag...stands for the heroic effort our people made 150 years ago to avoid the fate were are experiencing today. And, God willing, it will be the banner that flies over the fight that gains us our liberty in the 21st century!

Would you be astonished that the editorial makes no mention of the nine people murdered in their own church? Not a word? Why would it? It's not like they were Southerners. Also, remember, the Civil War was about tariffs and sovereignty, that's all.

[ NYT / HuffPo / Mother Jones ]