Constitution Daily: Constitution Check: Lyle Denniston: Is the First Amendment on The Side of a Pro Football Team’s Name?

This post was originally posted at The New Democrat on WordPress

I’ve sort of gone out of my way to avoid getting into this debate because I quite frankly find it stupid. It’s now 2014 and Americans and the U.S. Government has just discovered that the Redskins is a racist name. Even though the franchise has been around since what, 1933 or 32. Give me a break, if Redskins was a racist name, which is what Nigger would be for people of African descent, that it would’ve been thrown out a long time ago. Saying the Redskins is a racist name, is like calling Bill Maher towards Muslims because he criticizes Islam, even though Muslim is not a race, but Muslims are followers of the Islāmic religion. It’s not even worth considering.

But that is just the practical argument. How about this little thing called the First Amendment that protects all Americans right to free speech and allows for people to call themselves essentially whatever the hell they want to and that includes organizations. But even if you say the federal trademark law about profiting from names that some Americans may tend to find offensive, again where was this 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 years ago. Why is the name Redskins offensive in 2012-13 when this controversy started and not again decades ago. This is really nothing more than pop culture correctness at its worst.

The Redskins are now getting the Bill Maher treatment from the Far-Left and being labeled as racists. Not by Bill Maher who I imagine is on the side of the Redskins here for First Amendment protections. But a man who just back in September was considered a hero on the Far-Left, is now considered to be a “White Devil” or something. But if you put all of this aside, the fact that Congress is not very good at writing laws and people wonder why they are so unpopular, because even when they do pass laws, they don’t write them very well, but lets the trademark law is constitutional for a second. The fact that they didn’t define what is racially offensive in a name, means the Redskins at the very least will probably, win on a technicality.