A closer look
New Hampshire famously stamps its state license plates with the wildly aggressive motto "Live Free or Die", which ironically is manufactured by actual prisoners making pennies an hour. In nineteen seventy-seven, an angry citizen sued the state because he disagreed with the motto and covered it up with tape, leading to a landmark Supreme Court case affirming his right to obscure the slogan on First Amendment grounds. So this deeply patriotic, rebel-yelling piece of metal is legally optional, produced by the least free population in the country, and entirely bolted to the bumper of a beige Honda Civic stuck in rush hour traffic
