Obama's new law, Shut Up By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

Last week, President Obama
signed into law the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds
Improvement Act of 2011. This law permits Secret Service agents to
designate any place they wish as a place where free speech, association
and petition of the government are prohibited. And it permits the Secret
Service to make these determinations based on the content of speech.

Thus, federal agents whose work is to
protect public officials and their friends may prohibit the speech and
the gatherings of folks who disagree with those officials or permit the
speech and the gatherings of those who would praise them, even though
the First Amendment condemns content-based speech discrimination by the
government.

The new law also provides that anyone who
gathers in a “restricted” area may be prosecuted. And because the
statute does not require the government to prove intent, a person
accidentally in a restricted area can be charged and prosecuted, as
well.

Permitting people to express publicly their
opinions to the president only at a time and in a place and manner such
that he cannot hear them violates the First Amendment because it
guarantees the right to useful speech; and unheard political speech is
politically useless. The same may be said of the rights to associate and
to petition. If peaceful public assembly and public expression of
political demands on the government can be restricted to places where
government officials cannot be confronted, then those rights, too, have
been neutered.

Political speech is in the highest category
of protected speech. This is not about drowning out the president in the
Oval Office. This is about letting him know what we think of his work
when he leaves the White House. This is speech intended to influence the political process.