more crap from the supreme court

Yesterday, the Court released its opinion in the case Garcetti v. Ceballos. Watch yer mouths, gov'mint employees - you got no right talkin' 'bout the boss, even if everything you say is true and would potentially facilitate the administration of justice. Whistleblowers - be gone! The Court states its holding as such:

"When public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, they are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline."

Please allow me to make an obvious point: This holding does not say "may not insulate" or even "usually does not insulate." When is a public employee's right to criticize something related to the job protected by the Constitution? Never, friends, never.

Justice Souter got it right in his dissent. "This significant, albeit qualified, protection of public employees who irritate the government is understood to flow from the First Amendment, in part, because a government paycheck does nothing to eliminate the value to an individual of speaking on public matters, and there is no good reason for categorically discounting a speaker's interest in commenting on a matter of public concern just because the government employs him. Still, the First Amendment safeguard rests on something more, being the value to the public of receiving the opinions and information that a public employee may disclose. 'Government employees are often in the best position to know what ails the agencies for which they work.' Waters v. Churchill, 511 U. S. 661, 674 (1994)."

And, thus, we begin to see the new 5-4 Court.