Personally I think the woman cursing near an open window should be punished.

We're back to the assumption about freedom that leads to tyranny. Freedom isn't the ability to force your actions on others. Freedom is the ability to not have others force their actions upon you.

Same goes with the canoe case. But here you have the courts again writing legislation. The assumption that a law is vague is jsut silly. Not because of the fact of it, because of it's use to nullify a law. Any given law must perforce be vague since you can't track exactly and specifically the path of the electric signals in the brains of both the offender and the offended. If you think about that last sentence you can see that using this argument is a threat to all law since by extension it results in no law.

People who curse need to learn to keep their mouths shut around other people's children. It is vulgur and obsene. You may ask, "How do I know it is vulgur and obsene?" Because it is cursing. Simple as that. It is an act intended to transmit one's rage in a shocking fashion to another person.

Freedom of speech is there to protect specifically political speech. It has nothing to do with offensive language and pornography. That is just silly. When you include the banal into such an important right you destroy the right, you don't enhance it.

Joel.