Gainesville’s Pastor Terry Jones, who abandoned plans to burn Qurans on his church property, will be fined $180,000 for the security costs the city endured. And yet the Westboro Baptist Church never gets a bill. [CNN]
troll toll
Pastor Terry Jones Faces 6-Figure Fee For Becoming Media Sensation
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Kevin
Nice to see that local governments remain willing to protect your First Amendment right to free expression… for a reasonable fee.
Chris
@Kevin: Agreed.
Flipper
@Kevin: They’re not billing him for protecting his FA rights – they’re billing him for the massive police presence that was required all over town (at his church, at the stadium where UF was playing a game, at the mall) and for the fire services that were at the ready. These things don’t come cheap (obviously), and as a taxpayer in Gainesville, I’m not willing to foot the bill just so this asshat could promote his particularly kooky brand of Christianity. If he’s got as much support for his “message” as he claims, then surely it should be no problem to raise the $200K to pay this bill before he leaves Gainesville (for which we’re all grateful here).
Nigel Puerasch
I link to your website from my blog. Only problem is, though the initial link clicks through perfectly, if you then click on any of the items in the “You Might Like” section they don’t load properly, at least not in Firefox. They work fine in IE, but I **HATE** IE. The traffic to my blog is now around 40% from Firefox and 50% from IE.
Nigel
angel
Yep . Karma suck’s sometime’s don’t it đ
declanto
Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving scumbag. Now if Weston baptists could just be sorted out in the same manner. The Phelps fam. are eagerly litigacious. Any pro bono out there???
B
Note to headline writers: my first impression (until I read the article) was that this idiot was getting paid a six-figure sum for becoming a media-sensation (e.g., some time on the talk-show circuit).
They can send him a bill (the CNN article did not say he is being fined), but if he didn’t do anything illegal, even though he may have intended to burn the books without a fire permit, they are not likely to collect. So far, and as far as I know, he has merely exercised his First Amendment right to make a fool of himself and set himself up as David Letterman/Jay Leno/Jon Stewart/Steven Colbert fodder.
richardporter
Can Shariah Law Save A Marriage? – Press Here