Sean should consider sticking with acting
First Amendment be damned . . . If Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn had his way, any journalist who called Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez a dictator would quickly find himself behind bars.
Penn, appearing on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" on Friday, defended Chavez during a segment in which he detailed his work with the JP Haitian Relief Organization, which he co-founded.
"Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it" said Penn, winner of two Best Actor Academy Awards. "And this is mainstream media, who should -- truly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies."
It was just the beginning of a busy weekend for Penn. When asked on CBS' "Sunday Morning" about those who question his motives for his humanitarian work in Haiti, he said:
"Do I hope that those people die screaming of rectal cancer? Yeah. You know, but I'm not going to spend a lot of energy on it."
Judge Andrew Napolitano, Fox News' senior judicial analyst, said the same constitutional protection that applies to journalists also applies to Penn, who can say pretty much anything he wants in the "political arena" -- aside from an immediate incitement of violence.
"What he is saying is protected, as wacky and weird as it is," Napolitano told FoxNews.com. "But the substance of what he's saying would be absolutely contrary to the First Amendment, which fully protects all political opinions. So if a journalist says Dick Cheney should go to jail, the journalist is privileged to say that."
"Mr. Penn is calling for a communist-like regime in which journalists who criticize the government are sent to jail because of that criticism," Napolitano added. "That is utterly un-American and hasn't happened here since the Civil War."...
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Here is the part about voting Chavez in by use of "stormtroopers" and threats seems to have been missed by Penn. I work with a Venezuelan and I got the non-Marxist viewpoint that Penn provided above:
