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I KNEW They Were In Charge

May 22, 2009
By .
Effluvia, Humor, Law

Four years ago, the Ku Klux Klan won the right to participate in the Missouri Adopt-a-Highway program, prevailing in a Skokie-like First Amendment case. Good for them; it shows that our system is robust and willing to protect the right to hold even the most execrable opinions.

Following in their footsteps, the "National Socialist Movement – Springfield Unit" adopted a stretch of highway this past January. Instead of engaging in a futile court battle, Springfield chose to fight fire with fire.

The NSM-SU is now responsible for a stretch of road on the Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel Memorial Highway.

The name change was passed by the lejewslature, then reported in the jewspaper. Can an 'umble Nazi get any respect in this town?

Last 5 posts by Charles

3 Comments
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3 Comments

  1. Ken  •  May 22, 2009 @10:12 am

    Awesome.

    An atheist group adopted a stretch of freeway near me. The paper gets outraged civic-illiterate letters about if from time to time.

    From what I understand, government tends to hate it when this sort of thing happens. It's not so much that they hate having the Klan's name on the stretch of highway. It's that people express their feelings by throwing the most horrific stuff onto the side of the road along that stretch, and the Klan doesn't clean it up, and it falls to the government. I read about one stretch of bigot-adopted road that had four or five incidents a week of people stopping and taking a dump in the bigots' area of responsibility.

  2. Charles  •  May 22, 2009 @10:32 am

    That sounds like an urban legend, Ken.

    I know that "people will dump extra trash" was part of the State's defense to banning the Nazi's from the program in the earlier litigation. I haven't read anything that indicated that it ended up being true.

    In surfing around I saw evidence that the neo-nazis have done this in a number of states, all of whom now grudgingly accept the applications. Interestingly, I also saw that the tactic was adopted by at least one gay group. It makes me happy to think that the skinheads may be responsible for a Rainbow Mile somewhere.

  3. Patrick  •  May 22, 2009 @3:06 pm

    Beautiful.