Human rights on the march:
A homeless man who was arrested after asking a policeman for a dollar got a judge to throw out the case by arguing that begging is a form of free speech.
Judge Gail Rice made the ruling after Eric Hoffstead had his lawyer cite a 15-year-old federal court decision saying New York state's loitering law violated First Amendment protections.
"This is a great victory for freedom of speech," said Hoffstead's lawyer, Carl Birman.
Of course, as James Taranto points out (keep scrolling down), if the homeless guy had given the dollar to a politician, creating "political speech," he might have been in real trouble. We are succeeding in making the First Amendment a meaningless jumble of mush.
