12-17-2008, 12:29 AM
The US legal definition is extremely broad and I'm not a lawyer so don't care. It is common for common usage and dictionary definitions to differ substantially from legal definitions. Definitions are all over the map, depending on the source...in many cases, exercising free speech by yelling at someone is "assault", in which case your original statement "assault is not freedom of speech" falls apart. By any reasonable measure, and I'd argue in most people's parlance, the term "assault" refers to what is legally called "aggravated assault" and what Bush received was an "insult", not an "assault". It's abundantly clear from his comments that the "victim" ( Bush) didn't consider this an assault of any consequence since he compared it to yelling or flipping the bird, and in fact took it as a sign that his goal of a free society was being met.