Free Republic

From Northrup v. City of Toledo Police Div., 2014 WL 4925052 (N.D. Ohio Sept. 30, 2014): On the evening of June 16, 2010, Northrup was walking down a street in his neighborhood, with his wife, daughter, grandson, and their Yorkshire terrier, and a handgun holstered on his right hip, when Alan Rose drove by on a motorcycle. Northrup and Rose did not know each other, but Rose stopped his motorcycle and began telling Northrup that he could not walk around in public while openly carrying a handgun. Northrup and his wife told Rose that open carry of a firearm is...

Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) sued the U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday, intensifying its battle with federal agencies as the Internet industry's self-described champion of free speech seeks the right to reveal the extent of U.S. government surveillance. The lawsuit, which Twitter said follows months of fruitless negotiations with the government, marks an escalation in the Internet industry's battle over government gag orders on the nature and number of requests for private user information.

Rights: A Ninth Circuit Court ruling that students can't wear American flag T-shirts because they may offend Mexican students celebrating Cinco de Mayo is a ridiculous yet dangerous assault on the First Amendment. On Sept. 17, more than four years after Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Calif., sent students home for wearing American flag t-shirts, an 11-judge Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled that it was the right choice, "tailored to avert violence and focused on student safety." The decision upheld the court's three-judge ruling in February that justified the school's actions based on tensions between Mexican...

A charter school in Southern California is facing the threat of a lawsuit for “purging” Christian books from its library. snip ....Brad Dacus told WND that among the books was “The Hiding Place,” the story of Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch woman sent to a prison camp by the Nazis of World War II for helping Jews escape. Dacus said PJI’s legal team and the district have exchanged letters already. snip Strictly religious books, such as the Bible or the Quran, routinely are on library shelves, he argued. Dacus said an immediate correction of the school’s policy would prevent a...

Author’s Note: This is the fourth column in a series. The first three installments, “This is Providence,” “Pharisees and Pharaohs,” and “Prayers and Preparation,” can be accessed in my column archive. Some of the themes discussed in this series were also part of a speech I gave at an Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) event in July. The full speech can be viewed by clicking on this link. Defendant Kimberly Cook is not your ordinary sociologist. Before she even opens her mouth she comes across as an attractive and confident person. When she starts to talk it doesn’t take long to...

Well, the wild and crazy 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is at it again, this time ruling that in a conflict between bullies and the First Amendment, bullies win. The court let stand a previous ruling by a three-judge panel of the court that school officials of Live Oak High School can prohibit American students from wearing to school clothing featuring the American flag because of threats made against the American students. You read that right: not threats made by the American students but threats directed at them by others. Admittedly, it's hard to surprise sane people anymore with...

Josh Blackman links to an interesting new speech by (retired) Justice Stevens about the Court’s campaign finance jurisprudence. Among other things, Justice Stevens argues that there ought to be little protection (or no protection?) for campaign contributions made across state lines. He begins . . .: In the first sentence of his controlling opinion [in McCutcheon v. FEC] the Chief Justice correctly states that there “is no right more basic to our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders.” 188 L. Ed.2d 468, 482. And in his concluding paragraph he correctly describes that right as “the...

PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 17, 2014—In a national certified mailing sent today, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) warns the leaders of more than 300 of our nation’s largest and most prestigious public colleges and universities that they risk First Amendment lawsuits by continuing to maintain speech codes that violate student and faculty rights. The letters are being mailed from the main post office near Independence Hall in Philadelphia today to mark the 227th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution. liberty bell “58 percent of our nation’s public colleges and universities restrict student and faculty speech with blatantly...

The Christian legal group Liberty Institute says the university has reversed an earlier decision in which it ordered the school's football players not to display a memorial cross decal on the back of their helmets. The football players decided to include the crosses to honor Markel Owens, who was killed in a home invasion, and equipment manager Barry Weyer, who died in a car accident. Liberty Institute calls it a "great victory for the players."

On September 23, Dinesh D’Souza will appear before a federal judge in Manhattan to learn whether he will do jail time for violating campaign-finance law. (He pleaded guilty earlier this year to charges of funneling $20,000 to a friend’s Senate campaign via straw donors.) It will be the latest turn in a remarkable life that has embodied—perhaps more than any other—the passions and commitments of the modern conservative movement. D’Souza leapt to prominence during his student days as editor of The Dartmouth Review, then emerging as a first-read for pro-Reagan provocation. Those were heady times for the youth corps of...

Leadership: Say this for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz: He routinely takes principled stands on tough issues, even if it puts him at odds with his own party. Case in point: His comments this week in support of nuns and Israel. With the White House filing a new brief signalling it intends to force Catholic Sisters to violate their religious beliefs, the Texas Republican strongly defended religious liberty. Despite its defeat in the Hobby Lobby case, the White House last Monday was back at it, filing a brief in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado explaining a rule...

Miguel at Gun Free Zone has a great post about how Moms Demand Action are busy making fudge. Fudge as in fudging the truth into some bastardized “facts” to promote their flawed message. What flavor of fudge are the Mommies making up in the kitchen? They’re trying to claim that most every mass shooting incident has not occurred in a gun-free zone. How are they coming up with that? They aren’t relying on the FBI’s definition of a mass shooting, but instead counting crime scenes in private homes.

An upstate New York lawmaker said the loss of manufacturing jobs in the state last month is due to an anti-gun administration that has ignored pleas from local officials to be involved in the negotiating process. “Remington talks have come to a halt,” said Assemblyman Marc W. Butler (R.-Newport), whose district includes the Village of Ilion, where the Remington Outdoor Company has been located for almost 200 years. “We are losing 105 jobs at the Ilion primary plant,” said Butler. In February he predicted long-term consequences of Remington’s decision to expand to Huntsville, Ala., instead of Ilion, N.Y. The small...

In a stunning op-ed released Friday, the NY Times finally admitted that “assault weapons” are a made-up political term fabricated by anti-gun Democrats. Op-ed writer Lois Beckett also admitted that once the term was manufactured and used to outlaw a class of weapons that dishonest anti-gun Democrats had used to con an entire nation, nothing happened.

‘The constitutional amendment before us,” Harry Reid said Tuesday, describing a proposal to give federal and state governments the authority to regulate political giving, “isn’t about limiting free speech.” Harry Reid, may I present the American Civil Liberties Union. I am sure you two have met before. Writing in June that the nonprofit “strongly opposes” the so-called Udall amendment, the ACLU’s Laura Murphy and Gabriel Rottman called the Democratic proposal “deceptively complex,” “unnecessary,” “redundant of existing law,” “dangerous for liberties,” “vague,” “overbroad,” “exceedingly dangerous to democratic processes,” and “the first time the amendatory process has been used to directly...

“The constitutional amendment before us,” Harry Reid said Tuesday, describing a proposal to give federal and state governments the authority to regulate political giving, “isn’t about limiting free speech.” Harry Reid, may I present the American Civil Liberties Union. I am sure you two have met before. Writing in June that the nonprofit “strongly opposes” the so-called Udall amendment, the ACLU’s Laura Murphy and Gabriel Rottman called the Democratic proposal “deceptively complex,” “unnecessary,” “redundant of existing law,” “dangerous for liberties,” “vague,” “overbroad,” “exceedingly dangerous to democratic processes,” and “the first time the amendatory process has been used to directly limit...

We are, as it always seems, "at a pivotal moment in American history." At least that's what Sens. Tom Udall and Bernie Sanders maintained in a melodramatic Politico op-ed last week as they explained their efforts to repeal the First Amendment. Let me retort in their language: It's true that building the United States has been long, arduous and rife with setbacks. But throughout the years, the American people have repelled efforts to weaken or dismantle the First Amendment. We have weathered the Sedition Act of 1918, a law that led to the imprisonment of innocent Americans who opposed the...

<p>Football players at Arkansas State University were ordered to either remove a Christian cross decal from their helmets or modify it into a mathematical sign after a Jonesboro attorney complained that the image violated the U.S. Constitution.</p> <p>The cross decal was meant to memorialize former player Markel Owens and former equipment manager Barry Weyer, said athletic director Terry Mohajir. Weyer was killed in a June car crash. Owens was gunned down in Tennessee in January.</p>

Sen. Ted Cruz Objects to Democrats Attempt to Repeal Free Speech Protections

The Politico story quoted extensively below is a gem, on several levels.  By way of background, Senate Democrats are hopping mad because Republicans have complicated their game plan to stage a series of quixotic, poll-tested, pre-election show votes.  The GOP's specific sin?  Agreeing to proceed to a debate on the first proposed measure -- which just happens to be a Constitutional Amendment imposing unprecedented new federal limits on political speech: Several Senate Republicans joined Democrats on Monday to advance a constitutional amendment that would give Congress and the states greater power to regulate campaign finance. But the bipartisanship ends there. Many of the Republicans only voted for the bill to foul up...