“We’re a free speech
site and the cost of that is that there’s stuff that’s offensive on there.” This was the response of Erik Martin aka hueypriest, General Manager of Reddit, to the accusation on
last night’s Anderson Cooper 360 that the “jailbait” subreddit is “borderline kiddie porn.”
[more inside]
posted by waraw
on Sep 30, 2011 -
237 comments
William Lawrence Cassidy has been
indicted for a series of threatening tweets directed towards Alyce Zeoli, aka Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, the leader of a Buddhist organization known as Kunzang Palyul Choling (KPC) to which Cassidy had belonged. There is however a small problem that federal prosecutors are employing a
vague anti-stalking law that makes 'intentional infliction of emotional distress' through the use of 'any interactive computer service' a felony, rather than focussing more narrowly upon the outright threats.
[more inside]
posted by jeffburdges
on Aug 1, 2011 -
34 comments
We have explained that the matching funds provision substantially burdens the speech of privately financed candidates and independent groups. ... We have explained that those burdens cannot be justified by a desire to “level the playing field.” In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has
struck down an Arizona law that provided public funds to candidates who have been outspent by either private funding or independent spending.
Link to PDF of full decision. [more inside]
posted by gerryblog
on Jun 27, 2011 -
105 comments
ACLU launches "Spyfiles" to track domestic surveillance. "The American Civil Liberties Union launched a
new website Tuesday to track incidents of domestic political surveillance by the government along with a
report (PDF) claiming such incidents have increased steadily since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. According to the report there have been 111 incidents of illegal domestic political surveillance since 9/11 in 33 states and the District of Columbia. The website,
Spyfiles, will serve as the ACLU's online home for all news and reports of domestic spying."
posted by homunculus
on Jun 29, 2010 -
12 comments
Yesterday, in a
highly split decision with six separate opinions, the United States Supreme Court overturned a Ninth Circuit ruling in
Salazar v. Buono. The issue at hand? Whether the location of the
Mojave Memorial Cross represented an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. The Ninth Circuit decided that it did, but its ruling has been called into question by the high court on several levels.
[more inside]
posted by Riki tiki
on Apr 29, 2010 -
114 comments
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a
criticism of Burning Man, LLC's
Terms and Conditions, saying that the automatic rights assignment to BMOrg for photos & video taken during the event is "creative lawyering intended to allow the BMO to use the streamlined “notice and takedown” process enshrined in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to quickly remove photos from the Internet" and that this is corrosive to our freedom of speech. Burning Man
responds.
posted by scalefree
on Aug 14, 2009 -
123 comments
Ward Churchill reinstated. A jury has found that The University of Colorado wrongfully dismissed the controversial professor, author, and activist. After a day and a half of deliberation, they cited the tenured professor's infamous
post-9/11 essay, wherein he compared technocrats who died in the World Trade Center to "little Eichmanns," as the "substantial or motivating" factor in the University's decision to fire him and awarded him $1.
(previously
here and
here.)
posted by inoculatedcities
on Apr 4, 2009 -
54 comments
The Obama Justice Department has
released nine
legal memos from the Bush administration that assert broad extra-Constitutional powers for the president. The memos assert that both the First and Fourth Amendments may be subordinated to the needs of wartime.
[more inside]
posted by EarBucket
on Mar 2, 2009 -
81 comments
The previously-
mentioned Summums want to
place their own monument in a park which contains the Ten Commandments, making the Supreme Court's
heads explode in a a hilariously weird
oral argument[pdf]:
"Scalia: I don't know what that means. You keep saying it, and I don't know what it means. [...] Breyer: Suppose that there certain messages that private people had like "eat vitamins"—and then somebody comes along with a totally different content, "ride the roller coaster," and they say this part of the park is designed to get healthy children, not put children at risk." [more inside]
posted by Non Prosequitur
on Nov 13, 2008 -
116 comments
A very big day for the Supreme Court. In
Morse v. Fredrick, the Court ruled that a school could suspend a child for holding up a "Bong HiTs for Jesus" banner. (Previous post
here). In
Hein v. Freedom from Religion, the Court held that taxpayers lacked standing to challenged Faith Based Initiatives (
previous discussions). In
Wilke v. Robbins, the Court held that land owners do not have Bivens claims if the federal government harasses landowners for easements. In
FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, the Court held that the portion of the campaign finance law which had blackout periods before elections on issue advocacy advertising was an unconstitutional restriction of speech (
other). This Thursday, the Justices will deliver their last opinions of the term, including
a death penalty case and the
school assignment cases. (Opinions are .pdfs)
posted by dios
on Jun 25, 2007 -
224 comments
(NSFW)
“If you are denying yourself pleasure then you have to take responsibility for where you are right now.
When you get to a place where you are happy then love comes into your life. When you begin to love yourself then people recognize that and you can start receiving it. Self-pity will get you nowhere. Our society is sexist, racist, ageist, but I am a biological creature with all these amazing gifts of orgasm and
I cannot wait for the world out there to change for me to be happy. I have all the happiness I need inside myself and I’m keeping it. I have denied it and avoided it for myself for too long. I have waited around for other things to be arranged before I gave myself happiness and I’m not going to do that anymore. It wasn’t until I stopped wallowing in all that self-pity and
took matters into my own hands that things started to change for me. . . . Don’t wait around for another person to give that to you, give it to yourself. . . . We have been taught to not like ourselves and
it takes a lot to unteach that to ourselves. There is a lot of conditioning and everyone has their own kind of conditioning that they have to unlearn. . . . All I can tell people about myself is that I give it to myself just as I can. My area just happens to be sex, while others have art, painting or public health or whatever. I’m just as true to myself as I can be.”
--
Nina Hartley
posted by jason's_planet
on Sep 23, 2006 -
79 comments
From the
guy who brought you the Whitewater scandal and the
impeachment of President Clinton for lying about oval antics in the Oral Office, a legal push to make the Supreme Court
just say no to "Bong Hits 4 Jesus." Ken Starr's
petition to the Court [PDF] makes clear that Starr believes this is no laughing matter, but a chance for the Court to make a landmark ruling that will give school adminstrators the power to limit student speech: "This case presents the Court with a much-needed opportunity to resolve a sharp conflict among federal courts
(and to eliminate confusion on the part of school boards,
administrators, teachers, and students) over whether the First
Amendment permits regulation of student speech when such
speech is advocating or making light of illegal substances."
posted by digaman
on Aug 28, 2006 -
131 comments
SCOTUS strikes down campaign finance restrictions [pdf]. The Supreme Court issued an opinion today in
Randall v. Sorrell, striking down limits on campaign contributions and campaign spending imposed by the state of Vermont. The Court, in a fractured opinion (six separate opinions, including two dissents), concluded that restrictions on both contributions and expenditures ran afoul of the First Amendment.
More from Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog. Expect more from
Rick Hasen later today.
posted by monju_bosatsu
on Jun 26, 2006 -
81 comments
The Ninth Circuit (
maligned by
many as a
hotbed of extreme
liberal judicial activism,
but defended by
others PDF) issued its opinion in the case
of
Harper v. Poway Unified School District last week. Judge Stephen Reinhardt - who, to some people,
embodies
the
alleged evils of the Ninth Circuit - issued the
majority opinion, and Judge Alex Kozinski filed a
strong dissent. The majority opinion held that a high school
principal who ordered a student to remove his T-shirt that said "Homosexuality is Shameful" did
not violate the student's First Amendment rights, reasoning that "limitations on speech" are
permissible in cases where speech is "derogatory and injurious remarks directed at students'
minority status such as race religion and sexual orientation," and the limitation is "narrow, and
applied with sensitivity and for reasons that are consistent with the fundamental First Amendment
mandate." [more inside]
posted by Pontius Pilate
on Apr 26, 2006 -
152 comments
In July, Georgia federal judge William C. O’Kelley ordered Barrow County to remove a Ten Commandments plaque from its courthouse. The suit was filed by
ACLU Georgia, which not only succeeded in getting the plaque removed, but also recovered $150,000 in attorneys’ fees and expenses.
Ten Commandments-Georgia pledged to reimburse the county for its legal expenses. In order for the group to raise the last $52,000 it needs to meet that pledge, it has put the actual Ten Commandments plaque that was removed from the courthouse under the order of the court
up for auction on eBay.
posted by monju_bosatsu
on Sep 13, 2005 -
40 comments
Anti-Porn Law Is Unconstitutional A federal court in
U.S. v. Extreme Associates has struck down the federal anti-obscenity law. In this case, the government argued that "entertaining lewd and lustful thoughts stimulated by viewing material that appeals to one's purient interests . . . . is immoral conduct even when done by consenting adults in private." The court, however, wanted no part of this moralizing, as it declared "upholding the public sense of morality is not even a legitimate state interest."
posted by expriest
on Jan 23, 2005 -
36 comments
This Highway Adopted By The Ku Klux Klan The US Supreme Court has declined an appeal by the state of Missouri seeking to reverse an 8th Circuit opinion which allows the Ku Klux Klan to adopt a highway. Under the controlling ruling of the 8th Circuit, "desire to exclude controversial organizations in order to prevent 'road rage' or public backlash on the highways against the adopters' unpopular beliefs is simply not a legitimate governmental interest that would support the enactment of speech-abridging regulations."
posted by expriest
on Jan 10, 2005 -
114 comments
Don't put a restraining order on God the toughest challenge of living in a democracy is to respect the freedom of other people to live according to values that are not your own. Real freedom, however, does not thrive in a moral vacuum (the ardent secularist) or a moral straightjacket (the ardent theocratic). What does my ideal of democracy look like? I can sum it up in a single sentence: A person arrives at faith freely, practices it openly, and uses dialogue with others about their own life path to deepen their understanding. another interesting read from the same webpage: God is not a Republican or a Democrat:
the Religious Right does not speak for you. Remind America that Jesus taught us to be peacemakers, advocates for the poor, and defenders of justice.. this article is a little dated, but it is relevant for people who choose to accept Jesus as the Christ but do not want someone's political agenda attached to their belief system.
posted by Hands of Manos
on Dec 9, 2004 -
127 comments
Weapons that can incapacitate crowds of people by sweeping a lightning-like beam of electricity across them are being readied for sale to military and police forces in the US and Europe. From guns that shoot streams of conductive fibers to plasma that will stop a truck, the military and the police are getting
whole new ways to deal with protestors.
posted by dejah420
on Jun 17, 2004 -
30 comments
The Supreme Court
ruled today that Michael Newdow did not have standing to sue on behalf of his daughter in challenging the recitation of the pledge in a public school classroom in California.
posted by monju_bosatsu
on Jun 14, 2004 -
81 comments
The Subpoenas are Coming! The FBI, in an attempt to prosecute Adrian Lamo (discussed
here) is sending letters to journalists telling them to secretly prepare to turn over their notes, e-mails and sources to the bureau. And by secretly, they mean don't tell your colleagues, editors or lawyers, or risk facing obstruction of justice charges. (Via
dailyrotten)
posted by Officeslacker
on Sep 30, 2003 -
11 comments
