Free Republic

Critics of higher education who say American colleges do not prepare students for life after graduation may be way off base: Among federal judges, the problem may be that they do try to apply their education to the post-graduate day jobs that they hold. “At a seminar for federal judges in Kansas City, one of the more conservative judges said, ‘Isn’t it a shame that people don’t know the five rights in the first amendment,’” historian John Kaminski remembered in a recent forum at the Cato Institute. “One of the more activist judges said, ‘Five rights, I’ve been giving 25...

Despite the fact that the majority of courts have struck down speech codes as being unconstitutional for overbreadth and/or vagueness, approximately 351 American universities, both public and private, are still enforcing such codes. This can be seen both in information collected by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) as well as from the practicing college and university websites. The purpose of speech codes is to protect students from hearing words that may offend them. This protection comes at a high price: our fundamental First Amendment right of freedom of speech. Although the Supreme Court has never decided a...

America's number one talk radio host Rush Limbaugh is being honored by Talkers magazine and the National Association of Talk Radio Hosts, which will give him their annual Freedom of Speech Award in May. "Like him or not, Rush Limbaugh has consistently made the greatest contributions to the well-being of the First Amendment," Talkers publisher Michael Harrison told the New York Daily News on Monday. Harrison described Limbaugh as "a very brave champion of the First Amendment," saying "he faces the battle without the armor of a very thick skin." Phil Boyce, program director of Limbaugh's flagship station WABC in...