Scott Walker,
Michele Bachmann,
Robin Vos,
Karl Rove,
Joe Moore,
Ron Paul,
Scott Serota,
Newt Gingrich,
Rahm Emanuel,
Eric Cantor, and, today,
Barack Obama
posted by finite
on Nov 22, 2011 -
195 comments
"Born
Shigeyoshi Murao in 1926, he was universally known as Shig. His playful demeanor—not to mention his signature beard, Pendleton shirts, Royal Air Force exercise vest, horn-rimmed glasses, and bowler—rendered him unforgettable. But that did not make him easy to know.
Shig, who died in 1999, is largely remembered for an event that occurred on June 3, 1957, when two undercover agents from the San Francisco Police Juvenile Squad showed up at City Lights
to buy a seventy-five-cent book of poetry."
[more inside]
posted by Toekneesan
on Oct 5, 2011 -
10 comments
In February of 2011, eleven students that attended
UC Irvine and
UC Riverside went to a fundraising speech featuring Israeli Ambassador to the U.S.,
Michael Oren, at the UC Irvine campus. During Oren's speech,
students would stand up, shout an objection to Oren's speech, and then would allow themselves to be escorted by security, essentially causing a "
heckler's veto." They were arrested, charged, and today
found guilty of
disrupting Oren's speech.
[more inside]
posted by jabberjaw
on Sep 23, 2011 -
59 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
A Danish court rules that truth is not a defense to its hate speech law and
fines Member of Parliament
Jesper Langballe $1,000 for commenting that "Of course Lars Hedegaard [President of the
Danish Free Press Society] should not have said that there are Muslim fathers who rape their daughters when the truth appears to be that they make do with killing their daughters (the so-called honour killings) and leave it to their uncles to rape them."
Hedegaard had tried to explain that he was speaking in the context of an epidemic of honor violence within Muslim families when he said "They rape their own children"; he faces his own set of charges. (via
Volokh Conspiracy)
[more inside]
posted by shivohum
on Jan 14, 2011 -
229 comments
The Complaints Choir phenomenon, started by the Finnish artists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, has
spread all over the world since
last we paid it any attention, from
Birmingham to
Helsinki,
Hamburg,
St. Petersburg,
Poikkilaakso,
Bodø,
Penn State,
Canada,
Juneau,
Gabriola Island,
Sointula,
Jerusalem,
Melbourne,
Budapest,
Malmö,
Chicago,
Florence,
Copenhagen,
Vancouver (
2),
Philadelphia,
Sundbyberg,
Milano,
Åland,
Hong Kong,
Tokyo,
Rotterdam,
Basel,
Umeå,
Ljubljana,
Gdansk,
Arizona State University,
Washington, DC,
Horace Mann School,
Durham-Chapel Hill,
Auckland,
Toronto theatre students,
Kortrijk,
Cairo (
2),
St. Pölten,
Maribor,
Port Coquitlam,
Ústí nad Labem,
Columbus &
Kauhajoki (
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8). For more information, including a
9 step guide to forming your own complaints choir, go to the
Complaints Choir website. Finally, here's the
Singapore Complaints Choir, whose performance was banned by the Singapore government.
posted by Kattullus
on Nov 19, 2010 -
40 comments
Suing for libel, UK newspaper proprietor Richard Desmond made a point of denying that he exerts any influence over stories appearing in his papers.
He lost his case today, but reading his
paper's website, you'd be forgiven for thinking he'd actually won it!
[more inside]
posted by salo
on Jul 23, 2009 -
44 comments
"
How do black women fight crime? They have abortions." "
How do you stop a poofter from drowning? You take your foot off his head." These and other 'jokes' featured in an advertisement on
The Gruen Transfer, an Australian television program focusing on advertising. The ad, part of a segment called 'The Pitch' which usually produces humorous ads, was banned by the ABC, but the national broadcaster has still allowed it to be viewed online, and hundreds have now seen it. The ad was designed to sell "fat pride", with creator Adam Hunt explaining his motivation behind the ad being to say "if you discriminate against somebody on the basis of their shape then you are no different to someone who is racist, homophobic or anti-Semitic."
Debate has raged online if the ad is offensive and discriminatory, as the ABC has declared, and whether or not it was effective.
Watch the ad and judge for yourself.
posted by Effigy2000
on May 15, 2009 -
157 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
Sabrina Guzzanti, an Italian comedienne who said that Pope Benedict XVI
would go to Hell and be tormented by homosexual demons is facing a prison term of up to five years, according to the provisions of the Lateran treaty.
[more inside]
posted by ersatz
on Sep 13, 2008 -
21 comments
A 15-year-old in London is being
prosecuted for
holding a sign calling Scientology a "cult", during a
peaceful demonstration (0:55-1:40).
The teenager refused to back down, quoting a 1984 high court ruling from Mr Justice Latey, in which he described the Church of Scientology as a "cult" ... The City of London police came under fire two years ago when it emerged that more than 20 officers, ranging from constable to chief superintendent, had accepted gifts worth thousands of pounds from the Church of Scientology. The City of London Chief Superintendent, Kevin Hurley, praised Scientology for "raising the spiritual wealth of society" during the opening of its headquarters in 2006. Last year a video praising Scientology emerged featuring Ken Stewart, another of the City of London's chief superintendents via
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94
on May 21, 2008 -
128 comments
The Ayn Rand Institute held their
yearly confab in Telluride, CO, near the purported location of the fiction Gault's Gulch of
Atlas Shrugged, celebrating the 50th anniversary of one of the most turgid novels of all time. Part of the program included a panel of academics discussing their experiences "as objectivists." The
Chronicle of Higher Education reports on the state of objectivism in academe.
Rand Grants are up,
tenure is tendentious, and a for-profit
Founders Institute appears to be foundering. (more inside)
posted by beelzbubba
on Jul 14, 2007 -
111 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
Whu? Bill O'Reilly does a respectably good interview with...
Marilyn Manson! This is surprising on so many levels. And the content, superb. Well worth the viewing.
[video link] via Cyberdork via Reddit
posted by five fresh fish
on Feb 28, 2007 -
63 comments
