national anthem makes strange references to the enslaved and the composer was known to not think of too highly of black folks, calling us a distinct and inferior race. so it s not hard to imagine not wanting to pay respect to that. by the way, cancun cruz, aren t you supposed to be a constitutional conservative? what could be more american than exercising your right to protest? a freedom so important to the founding fathers they literally made it the first amendment to the constitution. listen to how berry responded this week on the black news channel. i never said that i hated the country. never said that. all i said was, i respect my people enough to not stand or acknowledge something that disrespects them. i love my people, point blank
fundamentally unconstitutional, the legislators themselves will go back and try to repeal the state laws on their own. if not, we re prepared to litigate in every state that has one of these laws to vindicate the first amendment rights of the first american citizens. alan, i hate to ask you this, but let s say the paper action is unsuccessful in court, and you ve made a point about it right now. do you plan on signing that pledge, or what does that mean for the future of your newspaper, should you lose? that is a really, really difficult question. we have been pretty much break even since about 2007. we are in the newspaper business. and if we lose our state advertising and we re already at a break even or maybe a little bit below break even right now, i don t know what s going to happen. so i really can t i haven t gone there yet, but that s something that will be a very, very difficult very, very difficult decision for me. yeah, can t emphasize the importance of local media
and frankly, i find it offensive. something else that the law puts forth is that if we don t sign it, we can still do business with the state of arkansas. but we have to cut our rates by 20%. now, where is the fundamental principle behind that, that they ll go ahead and let us do this without signing. they will let us boycott, but they want us to make them a deal. the whole thing just smells, and it s offensive. so brian, explain to us why you believe that this is unconstitutional. well, as i think alan s case demonstrates, you don t have to be participating in a boycott of israel to find these anti boycott laws fundamentally unamerican. the right to boycott is squarely protected by the first amendment to the constitution, and also protects the right not to be forced to sign a loyalty oath. and these are really the rights at stake here. so when we look at the outline that the senate is trying to pass something more