Don’t call

And take your foot away from the door

NO RESPONSIBLE newspaper prejudges a case still in court, but that doesn’t mean it can’t root for one side or the other. Loudly. So here goes. The question now before federal Judge Leon Holmes is whether this state’s TSA, or Telephone Solicitation by Automation act, is constitutional.

This act prohibits those pesky robocalls many of us get night and day. It bans any calls “for the purpose . . . of soliciting information, gathering data, or for any other purpose in connection with a political campaign when the use involves an automated system or the selection of dialing of telephone numbers and the playing of recorded messages when a message is completed to the called number . . .” All of which sounds like just the business one Victor Gresham, political consultant, conducts under the all too appropriate name of Conquest Communications.

Who is being conquered by Conquest Communications, or at least being held hostage in their own home? Every household in Arkansas with a phone. According to its own website, Conquest Communications can gin up “millions of automated messages every day” to unsuspecting households. Believe it or not, this is mentioned as something to be proud of.

Any attempt to stop Conquest from bothering the rest of us, it claims, is a violation of its constitutional right to free speech. There’s something worse than someone who keeps calling and won’t go away—and that’s hiding behind the First Amendment when caught.

But there’s a more basic right than free speech involved here. Louis D. Brandeis is still one of the more honored names in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court, and well it should be. The founding fathers, he wrote in one of his many celebrated opinions, were out “to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations . . .” And as part of that effort, they “conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone—the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.” But now we’re all told that Conquest Communications’ right to hector us takes priority over our own right to privacy.

Confronted by these conflicting arguments, Judge Holmes said he would leave the record in this case open for 28 days so that learned counsel could respond to each other’s arguments. Maybe he just wanted to give each side a chance to pause and think without interruption. In this increasingly hectic world, such a chance is rare as it is precious. And should be as protected by law as it is by the simple code of good manners. Quiet, please, some of us are trying to think.

Oops. Pardon us. That’s our phone ringing again.

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