Going After the Right of Assembly

by Dave Blount | May 5, 2014 3:46 pm

The right to peaceably assemble is so important that the Founding Fathers put it in the First Amendment, right up there with freedom of speech and free exercise of religion. Like the rest of our constitutional liberties, it is under assault.

James Madison, who drafted the Bill of Rights, was from Virginia. This is what comes out of Virginia now that the state is being drawn into the orbit of the Debt Star:

A plan to ban “frequent and large gatherings at neighborhood homes” is a lawsuit waiting to happen, a Fairfax County supervisor predicts.

Fairfax County is in suburban Washington.

“I believe the county is risking a lawsuit and/or a Constitution challenge by interfering with peoples’ right to assemble,” Supervisor Pat Herrity said in a statement.

The proposed zoning ordinance limits “group assembly” at residences to 49 people a day. Such gatherings “shall not occur more frequently than three times in any 40-day period.”

County officials say they have received complaints about group meetings at homes. But Herrity said “they haven’t even reached 1 percent of the thousands of complaints our Department of Code Compliance investigates a year.”

Public gatherings are not a legitimate problem, but a threat to the Big Government agenda. Officials don’t want private religious or political meetings taking place outside controllable establishment forums.

If the ban stands, it will spread.

James Madison
Are we still living in the same country Madison et al. created?

On a tip from Jimmie C. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

Source URL: https://rightwingnews.com/freedom/going-after-the-right-of-assembly/