Speech limit workable
In Linda Campbell’s column (Dec. 24) she described our courts’ current difficulty in establishing limits on threatening speech. The Supreme Court has decided there are limits on speech that libels, threatens or defrauds, but there apparently isn’t a very bright line.
In trying to deal with obscenity and pornography in 1964, Justice Potter Stewart declared that defining the terms was difficult, but “I know it when I see it.”
That would seem to be a reasonable standard to apply to people like Hal Turner and William White. It is unlikely that such a standard would encroach on what most of us recognize as reasonable and appropriate.
Bob Wynhausen
Sandpoint