Thread: OPINION:Free speech takes a hit at UNC

Rosemary Roberts: Free speech takes a hit at UNC
Friday, April 17, 2009
By Rosemary Roberts
Freelance columnist

At Chapel Hill, the glow of winning the 2009 NCAA basketball championship still radiates, and the university can understandably puff with pride. Until Tuesday, that is, when UNC’s reputation was badly tarnished.

That’s when a bunch of student rabble-rousers muzzled a controversial speaker and thus trampled the principle of free speech.

Here’s what happened: Tom Tancredo, a former Republican presidential candidate and former congressman from Colorado, was scheduled to speak at UNC’s Bingham Hall.

Tancredo is a fierce opponent of illegal immigration. So fierce, in fact, that when he was in Congress, he asked federal immigration officials to raid a Capitol Hill news conference being held by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill.

Durbin was sponsoring a bill helpful to immigrants. Tancredo told immigration officials that illegal immigrants would be present at Durbin’s news conference and should be arrested on the spot.

The immigration service did not comply. Three immigrants did attend the news conference. All were legal.

Durbin was furious. He accused Tancredo of using tactics employed by the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the “Red Scareâ€

I have to wonder why the college didn't cart the trouble maker students off to jail and allow Tom Tancredo to speak.

PS

Do these left-wingers really think they can supress the will of the Ameican people? Foolish.