for a new house for lance corporal huffman paralyzed from waist down in afghanistan. a guy that has put about 500 miles on this ford shelby special edition. super snake. there you go. lieutenant general. thanks for having us and letting us come out with the wuned warrior family support team and tell america about what we re doing. come on over here, general and come on over here, ted. we see on the hood, you have this big purple heart and right there is a signature of the fella that we re talking about, tyler huffman. tell us about him. young marine lance corporal tyler huffman wounded very, very seriously in afghanistan and paralyzed from the waist down. we re going to build a home for him in jefferson city, missouri. and in concert with the gary sinise foundation and we hope with the proceeds of this trip that we re not only going to build this home for him but a bunch of other youngster as
pentagon. i believe a lot in the house, next morning we are he going to wake up and enlist in the marine corps and military and waking up the next morning and realize that patriotism has been driven into me my whole life and i was an able bodied american anytime you stand up for your country you do that and enlisted in the marine corps. and ended up involved taking part in the 2003 invasion of iraq. i did. brian: and your unit deployed to afghanistan where something happened to you, which everybody fears. it was, now, at that age, you always think that you re invincible and especially as a marine, a young marine, i got there and we had done our tour to iraq and 111 missions and we thought, you know, the one thing that s going to hurt us if the marines come without one of us, corporal ron payne, one of the first marines killed, was my best friend and shortly half that i broke my back l-1 to l5.
cry at the bedside of the young marine was a sobering experience for he, hal, and for the president of the united states. and you ve got to wonder what impact that had on barack obama yesterday. at least i do. well, that s also on the front page of the washington post, which was the picture that caught my eye because we talked about this yesterday. and we ve been talking about whether or not this will ever become as big an issue as anything else we discuss on this show across the board in the media. and i hope it does. i hope the conversation during the campaign focuses around whether or not we should remain in afghanistan long term. and the question is, willie, we ve been talking about this, obviously, for several years now. but sometimes it feels like there aren t a lot of other people focusing. you have this terrible tragedy, 30 americans die.
politician or a person who has entered the public arena, but as an ordinary american who in this case gave his life in the service of his country. and i think the issue for the court will be whether there s a buffer zone that surrounds funerals and memorial services and the other rights in which we say goodbye to the people that we love with dignity and honor, in which the message of this church is simply not allowed to intrude. i don t think that anyone is arguing that this group must be silenced. the question is whether they can be forced to remain a respectful distance from this family in its moment of grief. it will be interesting to see. jenna: let me jump in there. we were talking about that sacred space and you talk about that buffer zone and that s why some have made comparisons to ground zero, the site of the terrorist attacks, the site of many innocent lives being lost. so do you think the ruling on this case, then, could be ruled for other cases that could be brought to the
subject to personal attacks, by hate and injustice at matt s funeral. jenna: our next guest says he sees similarities from the west borough case and the emotionally charged debate over the mosque at ground zero. a first amendment scholar, also the president of fuhrman university in greenville, south carolina. rodney, what are the similarities you see here? jenna, i think the first thing to emphasize is that in my view, the issue in the supreme court today is not whether this west borough group has the right to express its highly offensive message. it clearly does have that right. the real issue is whether they have the right to do it in a manner that intrudes on the privacy and dignity of this family who are laying to rest one of their sons or daughters, in this case, a young marine, who was not a public figure, not a famous military leader, not a