free speech
L. Brent Bozell III, the erudite and thoughtful fuhrer of rightwing hacktanks like the Media Research Center, proved his bona fides for leading anything that conducts “research” into “media,” by evincing via Twitterz a complete and total non-understanding of the Constitutional basis for our cherished American Free Speech. Jawing hacking on behalf of (who else?) [...]
Judge Frances McIntyre lifted the restraining order preventing Boston Mayor Thomas Menino from gleefully sending in his minions to tear down the Occupy Boston encampment in Dewey Square, although the camp hasn’t yet been raided. Here’s the creepy stand-out line from the judge’s ruling: “Little in the way of expression is outlawed in the United [...]
High school senior Emma Sullivan made an honest joke about Kansas governor/wingnut Sam Brownback, on Twitter, and wound up in the principal’s office, where she was ordered to write an apology. This followed the governor’s office calling the schoolgirl’s principal to demand “respect” after seeing the tweet. Today was the deadline to turn in her [...]
Our most critical free speech rights continue to hang in the balance today: “The highly anticipated jury trial for a woman ticketed for dangling Bulls Balls from the trailer hitch of her truck has been postponed, for a third time,” according to, yes, ABC News. AMERICA WEEPS BITTERLY, because justice is elusive. And yet it [...]
The U.S. State Department has been known to make noise about protecting free speech around the world. Writers and bloggers, the department says, should be allowed to publish their opinions even if they conflict with government dogma. But these freedoms are granted to humanity by the State Department under the strict condition that the people [...]
Wingnut oppression alert! A judge has banned a high school in San Antonio from using certain religious words at its graduation ceremony, after an agnostic student filed suit claiming he would suffer “irreparable harm” if he had to sit through that. We don’t blame him! But the school’s valedictorian is insisting that she needs to [...]
Looking for a good read while you’re protesting the literal dissolution of your union or local death panel? You could do a lot worse than the new book from free-speech champion and Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, One Nation Under Sex: How the Private Lives of Presidents, First Ladies and Their Lovers Changed the Course of [...]
Apparently last year’s Koran-burn-threatening pastor Terry Jones decided he wasn’t getting enough attention, so last week he actually did go through with burning itself. Normally a pastor saying hateful things who only has a half dozen or so followers would be ignored, but because we’ve been graced with a thing called the modern news media, [...]
Though foreign reporters are still filing stories from Libya these days, such freedoms do not exist in the Landfill of Humanity on this side of the Atlantic, a place also known as “Florida.” On Wednesday morning, Orlando Sentinel reporter Scott Powers went to cover a Bill Nelson fundraiser featuring Joe Biden at one of those [...]
CNN’s Experts have done it again: they have split another very difficult difference! You say the First Amendment says this, but I say free speech makes me sad sometimes! Who is more right? No one, duh! 50-50 FOREVER! PERFECT COMPLACENCY! EVERYBODY IS RIGHT AND WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING, FA LA LA LA LA!
Supreme Court Justice and First Amendment fetishist Anthony Kennedy would not let some high school newspaper to publish an article about his recent visit to Manhattan’s Dalton School until he approved the piece first. “‘The justice’s office received a draft of the proposed article on Monday and returned it to the newspaper the same day [...]
