Showing posts with label First Amendment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label First Amendment. Show all posts

Micah J Fleck: New York’s “Misgendering” Law Is Wrong

Another slap at free speech.     The Republic just published a very informative report on a new civil rights guideline that could end up with NYC citizens facing hefty fines for what is being called “misgendering.” The idea, as the original news story explains, is that calling a trans person the wrong pronoun or title is now seen as a civil rights violation. ... MORE

Was 2015 A Bad Year For Campus Free Speech?

by Robby Soave.  Are easily-offended students and their allies within the university bureaucracy ushering in a new era of censorship on American college campuses? Even President Obama is worried that excessive political correctness is stifling legitimate debate at universities. Still, it’s hard to say whether the situation on campuses is truly    ... MORE

The Democrats’ Theme For 2016 Is Totalitarianism

by Kevin D. Williamson.  At the beginning of December, Rolling Stone writer Jeff Goodell asked Secretary of State John Kerry whether Charles and David Koch, two libertarian political activists, should be considered — his remarkable words — “an enemy of the state.” He posed the same question about Exxon, and John Kerry, who could have been    ... MORE

Tampering Charges Dropped Against Jury Rights Advocate

by Barry Donegan.  Judge acknowledges the First Amendment. District Court Judge Kenneth Plotz dismissed all charges on Wednesday against jury nullification activists Eric Brandt and Mark Iannicelli, who had been charged in July with seven felony counts of jury tampering while handing out Fully Informed Jury Association flyers with general        ... MORE

Man Charged With A Felony For Passing Out Jury Right Flyers Demands The Names Of These 'Tampered Jurors'

by Bob Unruh.       Defending a First Amendment assault. A lawyer representing a Michigan man accused of jury tampering for handing out brochures about the concept of jury nullification – essentially jurors voting their conscience no matter their instructions from prosecutors and judges – now wants to talk to potential jurors who may have been in the   ... MORE

Free Speech Be Damned: Tyrannical Judge Orders Man Arrested And Jailed For Handing Out Jury Rights Fliers

by Barton Deiters.   Because justice is a result, not just a process. A 39-year-old former pastor was arrested and jailed in Mecosta County after he handed out fliers informing people about jury nullification in front of the county courthouse. Keith Wood said he was handing out pamphlets from the Fully Informed Jury Association on Nov. 24 while        ... MORE

A Threat To Freedom Of Speech At The Supreme Court

by George Will.   Never has American freedom of speech been attacked so flagrantly, promiscuously and on so many fronts. The most egregious examples come from campuses and Congress. On campuses, censorship proliferates as political advocacy is confined to designated spaces. In Congress, 54 Democratic senators voted last year to amend      ... MORE

David Harsanyi: The First Amendment Is Dying

Congress shall make no law, but...   "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" Unless we're talking about a white chocolate-paneled cake for a gay wedding or perpetual funding for "women's health" clinics because it's the "right thing to do." "or abridging the freedom of speech;"   ... MORE

A. Barton Hinkle: The Parties Turn It Up To 11

GOP moving rightward, while Dems move leftward.  "Look, I imagine that there's theoretically a chance that [we] all went from being radical extremist crazies to Washington sellouts in 12 hours," South Carolina Republican Rep. Mick Mulvaney said the other day. "But maybe a more likely narrative is that we really think that this is a good  ... MORE

Ted Cruz: Internet Freedom & Free Speech In Great Peril

by John Hayward.   Sen. Ted Cruz is issuing a strong warning about the threats to free speech and Internet freedom. “You know, the Obama FCC has invoked the Fairness Doctrine a number of times with sort of wistful glances to the past. Nostalgia,” he said. “You know if I had suggested years ago that the Obama administration would send government    ... MORE

John Stossel: Censorship In America

Hate speech is less dangerous than censorship. Support for the idea that it's good to hear all opinions, even offensive ones, is thin. A plurality of Americans now support laws against "hate speech." Conservatives once wanted to ban Playboy magazine, violent rap lyrics and offensive depictions of Jesus. Leftists then were right to fight    ... MORE

Brendan O'Neill: Contempt For Free Speech - Why Are Students Cheering About The Massacre At Charlie Hebdo?

The sad decline of American principles.     I witnessed something genuinely disturbing at Trinity College Dublin last night: trendy, middle-class, liberal students cheering and whooping a man who had just given the closest thing I have yet heard to a justification for the massacre at Charlie HebdoIt was as part of a debate on the right to offend. I was    ... MORE

Replace Political Correctness With Common Sense

by Guillermo Garcia.  This group think, political correctness imbecility just hit a new low. Curt Schilling, former professional baseball player and now ESPN color commentator, tweeted that he thought Muslim extremists were no better than Nazis. Mr. Schilling was called on the carpet by the bosses at ESPN and the next day he issued a statement in which  ...  MORE

Protect Free Speech Inside And Outside Of Courtrooms

Because justice is a result, not just a process.  In 2012, an 80-year-old retired chemistry professor was indicted on jury tampering charges for passing out brochures in a plaza outside a federal courthouse in New York. Those brochures regarded "jury nullification," an option available to jurors who might agree that a defendant broke the  ... MORE

John W. Whitehead: Sheep Led To The Slaughter

The muzzling of free speech in America.      “If the freedom of speech be taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” —George Washington     The architects of the American police state must think we’re idiots. With every passing day, we’re being moved further down the road towards a totalitarian society        ... MORE

Denver Concedes Distributing Jury Nullification Pamphlets Near A Courthouse Is Constitutionally Protected Speech

by Jacob Sullum.  But, it still won't drop charges against those arrested for doing so.   Yesterday a federal judge in Denver issued a preliminary injunction protecting the First Amendment rights of activists who want to distribute jury nullification pamphlets outside the Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse. Two activists, Mark Iannicelli and Eric Brandt, did  ... MORE

Paul Detrick: Do Rappers Have 1st Amendment Protection?

After all, popular speech needs no protection.     The movie Straight Outta Compton, which opens this weekend, dramatizes the emergence of southern California hip-hop rap group N.W.A. In 1988, the group's album of the same name popularized gangsta rap music with lyrics detailing the realities of life in gang-ridden South Central L.A.   ... MORE

I Will Defend Your Right To Fly The Confederate Flag

by Wendy Kaminer. Don’t ask me to defend a Confederate flag display by the state. Unlike private individuals and associations, governments don’t have rights: they exercise power. And while hoisting a Confederate flag on state property isn’t an illegal use of power, it is a politically abusive one, for all the reasons so recently recited in the wake  ... MORE