Free Republic

Over three dozen journalist organizations including the Radio Television Digital News Association, National Press Foundation, and the Society of Professional Journalists, have asked the President to drop the "excessive controls" on public information by federal agencies, branding it "politically driven suppression of news and information about federal agencies." There has been an ongoing tension between broadcast, print and online journalists and the Obama administration, with complaints that the Administration has limited access to events, while providing its own "coverage" through official channels. n a letter to President Obama, the groups complained about policies that require journalists to go through public...

Even while my colleagues and I at the ACLJ are suing the IRS and its key officials on behalf of 41 conservative groups in 22 states, there’s still a need (now perhaps more than ever) for a bit of old-fashioned levity and mockery. Our outstanding video-production team put together this three-minute “ACLJ short” about IRS excuses. It’s called “Quick Lerner.” Enjoy!

New York's highest court said on Tuesday that a law designed to criminalize cyberbullying was so broad that it violated the First Amendment, marking the first time a U.S. court weighed the constitutionality of such a law. . . . The Court of Appeals in a 5-2 decision said it was possible to pass a law outlawing bullying via social media or text message that respected free speech rights, but the county's statute went too far. . . . “The problem is, it’s going to be really tricky to write a law that is comprehensive in its coverage of bullying...

While Thursday’s ruling overturning buffer zones outside abortion clinics pleased pro-life activists, Justice Antonin Scalia thinks it didn’t go far enough. The court unanimously agreed that the Massachusetts law, which barred protesters and counselors from being within 35 feet of abortion clinics, violated the First Amendment, but denied that it unfairly discriminated against abortion opponents. “Today’s opinion carries forward this Court’s practice of giving abortion-rights advocates a pass when it comes to suppressing the free-speech rights of their opponents,” wrote Justice Antonin Scalia, with whom Justices Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas concurred. “There is an entirely separate, abridged edition of...

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court has struck down a 35-foot protest-free zone outside abortion clinics in Massachusetts. The justices were unanimous Thursday that extending a buffer zone 35 feet from clinic entrances violates the First Amendment rights of protesters. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT Chief Justice John Roberts says authorities have less intrusive ways to deal with problems outside the clinics.

College campuses are becoming increasingly hostile towards certain forms of speech. One of the main reasons for the hostility is the admission of students who are too emotionally immature to tolerate dissenting opinions. In addition to lacking emotional maturity, many of these students lack humility. They believe that their emotions trump the ideas of others. Obviously, I disagree. In fact, I think that these students need to be weeded out early in the college application process. I think I have a specific plan that can help make that a reality. We already ask students a lot of questions in the...

Today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ruled that the name Redskins is 'disparaging of Native Americans' and, therefore, should not be afforded trademark protection any longer. This seems like a free-speech appeal just waiting to happen but in the meantime we should take a look at all the major American sports (sorry, soccer/futbol is still not one of them) and pick a few other nicknames that should be banned or at least left unprotected with trademark rights because they could be offensive to some people in the country. Major League Baseball 1.Royals - this name could be offensive to...

I gave a cursory read to the Code of Conduct in the updated Microsoft Services Agreement, which, among other things, states under Prohibited Uses states, You will not upload, post, transmit, transfer, distribute, or facilitate distribution of any content (including text, images, sound, video, data, information, or software) or otherwise use the service in a way that: ...Threatens...defames...degrades, victimizes, or intimidates an individual or group of individuals for any reason, including on the basis of age...sexual orientation, race or religion, or incites or encourages anyone else to do so. Obviously, this is purposely ambiguous and broad ("for any reason"!), but...

he Supreme Court delivered a major victory on Monday to an anti-abortion group that sought to challenge an Ohio law that bans campaign statements deemed to be false. The justices, in a unanimous decision, ruled that the Susan B. Anthony List can go ahead with a lawsuit challenging the law as a violation of free-speech rights.

Earlier this year, Sauk Rapids satirist Dan McCall won a legal victory over the federal government after National Security Agency reps tried to get online retailers to stop selling shirts emblazoned with the the agency's seal and slogans like this: "The NSA: The only part of government that actually listens." The NSA essentially claimed their logo is copyrighted and couldn't be used without permission, an argument that didn't pass muster in light of the First Amendment's protection of satire. Now, a pro-Hillary Clinton group is making a version of that same argument to once again get McCall's products pulled from...

Yesterday, a man and a woman shot two police officers in a Las Vegas restaurant after saying, “this is a revolution.” Then they draped their bodies in a Gadsden flag. According to reports now coming in, the couple (who later killed themselves) appear to have been white supremacists and told neighbors they had gone to join the protests in support of anti-government rancher Cliven Bundy. It was one more incident of right-wing terrorism that, while not exactly an epidemic, has become enough of a trend to raise some troubling questions. What I’m about to say will raise some hackles, but...

Reflexively distrustful, eager to make powerful enemies, the young journalist whose Mercedes exploded in Los Angeles one night couldn’t possibly have died accidentally, could he? A t the end of his life, Michael Hastings, like many of the progressive journalists he counted among his friends, felt besieged by an overreaching government. Hastings was living in Los Angeles, and at a Beverly Hills theater in April, he took part in a panel discussion about the documentary War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security State. Interviewed in May on The Young Turks, a talk show on Current TV, Hastings railed...

From the First Circuit’s decision Friday in Gericke v. Begin (1st Cir. May 24, 2014): This case raises an important question about an individual’s First Amendment right to film a traffic stop by a police officer. Carla Gericke attempted to film Sergeant Joseph Kelley as he was conducting a late-night traffic stop. Shortly thereafter, she was arrested and charged with several crimes, including a violation of New Hampshire’s wiretapping statute. Gericke was not brought to trial. She subsequently sued the Town of Weare, its police department, and the officers who arrested and charged her, alleging in pertinent part that the...

WASHINGTON — There are three big winners from the recent Supreme Court decisions that Senator John McCain says might “dismantle entirely” campaign finance laws: wealthy interests, greedy politicians and investigative journalists. The decisions, culminating in another loosening of restrictions last month, were crafted by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and a slim majority. They essentially contend that limitations on campaign financing impede speech and that the system profits from more money. The consequence will be record sums of cash in the midterm races this year, and for the 2016 presidential election. Wealthy individuals, corporations and unions will spend unlimited...

In the early days of the internet, there was much talk of how the web would connect us all, thereby furthering knowledge and fostering community. Yet for all its advocates’ and early adopters’ optimism about its potential to enable us to organise, think and influence one another, freed from institutional supervision or what the newcomers frequently described as “mainstream media bias”, one thing has remained consistently problematic: comments posted under articles or blogs (or “below the line” in internet-speak). ~snip~ One of the great questions for the future of the net is: to what extent this extraordinary freedom will be...

Dinesh D’Souza faces more than a year in prison for giving away his money. Guilt lies with the law and not the lawbreaker here. The conservative author pled guilty to violating campaign finance laws, which is another way of saying he opened up a lemonade stand without a license or ripped the tag off a mattress. The case stems from D’Souza’s 2012 donations through intermediaries to a friend’s senatorial campaign. Congress, made up of incumbents, has placed restrictions of dubious constitutionality on the amount individuals can legally donate to candidates. They haven’t, tellingly, placed any such limits on what they...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has mentioned Charles and David Koch over 134 times from the floor of the Senate. Last week Sen. Reid announced that he would bring a constitutional amendment to the Senate floor that would allow Congress to set even more limits on political donations. Make no mistake, this isn’t a call to get “special interest money” out of politics. It is a directive from the most powerful man in the Senate to punish two private citizens for their beliefs and success. In an interview with BuzzFeed, Senator Reid said, “The Koch Brothers, I’m not walking away...

Academia is hell. In the latest higher-education fad, students want "trigger warnings," according to The New York Times. It appears that some students are so fragile that they want university staff to protect them from big bad ideas. Students around the country say they want "explicit alerts that the material they are about to read or see in a classroom might upset them or, as some students assert, cause symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in victims of rape or in war veterans." An Oberlin College draft -- now "under revision" -- for trigger warnings suggested faculty "be aware of racism,...

From the Nazis to the Stalinists, tyrants have always started out supporting free speech, and why is easy to understand. Speech is vital for the realization of their goals of command, control and confiscation. Basic to their agenda are the tools of indoctrination, propagandizing, proselytization. Once they gain power, as leftists have at many universities, free speech becomes a liability and must be suppressed. This is increasingly the case on university campuses. Back in 1964, it was Mario Savio, a campus leftist, who led the free speech movement at the Berkeley campus of the University of California, a movement that...

A New York City cab driver insisted Friday that it is his right, hands down, to wear a Nazi armband – even if the Taxi and Limousine Commission says otherwise. As CBS 2’s Lou Young reported Friday evening, Gabriel Diaz, 26, spoke outside of his family’s home in the Throggs Neck section of the Bronx, after he was suspended for wearing a swastika while driving the cab. “I am. I’m a National Socialist – what you guys call a Nazi. I am. I’m a believer of it,” Diaz said. Diaz was suspended for wearing the armband while driving his cab....