Keane fails to distinguish between the speech rights guaranteed to persons by the Constitution, and the pseudo "speech rights" that corporations have tacked onto the Constitution by going through the back door aka court decisions that have redefined corporations as people and money as speech, most notably and with great harm to our Democracy though the Supreme Court's Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision of 2010. None of our best friends are ATM machines and the avalanches of money being spent in the presidential nomination campaigns are burying what should be the primary role of voters in our Republic.

Free speech? If I am not mistaken, you can be found guilty of causing panic if you scream Fire in a crowded room. http://tobacco.ucsf.edu/research/marketing-and-prevention "The tobacco industry is like an intelligent and aggressive ever-evolving pathogen that accounts for one-third of all cancer and nearly two-thirds of heart disease among people under 55." There is a virulent ad campaign by the tobacco industry aimed at teenagers whose brains and capacity to exercise good judgement is not properly developed yet. Free speech? To twist the minds of kids? Someone very close to me had a brush with death due to over 50 years of smoking. This person grew up in second hand smoke: His parents smoked heavily inside the house. He went to a science based stop smoking program and I tagged along to learn about what they do to help a person to stop smoking. THIS PROGRAM IS COMPLETELY BASED ON THE SCIENCE BASED RESEARCH. What I learned is that tobacco companies, whose "free speech" rights are being violated, according to you, have the lobbying power to prevent the public from knowing what they are doing to cigarettes to make them so much more addictive than ever before. Tobacco companies have successfully lobbied to keep their research results quiet, not well advertised, in the general media. There are now 7,000 chemicals in one cigarette, and they are there to make you never want to stop smoking. It is worse than it was 20 years ago. The "hit" is fast and like any addictive drug. It is proven that it is more difficult to stop smoking without assistance (i.e. the use of assisting drugs) than it is to stop using heroin or cocaine. This is what the data has shown. Do not say I am wrong: Go look up the research and you will find I am correct. If we are going to have a free nation let's free ourselves of tobacco lobbyists who pay many millions to silence our government about the reality of what a cigarette is today: a powerful, highly addictive drug. Want free speech? Let's hear about the chemicals put into modern cigarettes.

This is not a speech issue, it's a health issue. If one is free to act (smoke cigarettes), we, acting as a community through the government, are allowed to graphically warn smokers of the undeniable dangers of smoking to the individual, especially since, one way or another, we, as a community, will have to pay for the health consequences via higher insurance costs. UNLESS we support Ron Paul and let people smoke to their heart's (or lung's) content (or discontent) and then die in agony in a gutter someplace, taking complete personal responsibility for their actions. Frankly, the required warning is a middle-of-the-road solution, balancing between freedom of individual action and freedom of a community to look after its interests.