Posts Tagged ‘freedom of speech’
University of California Schools Flout Student Speech Rights
Liberty Alerts, TheFIRE.org While some University of California schools are facing scrutiny due to their handling of students' exercises of free speech and civil disobedience, others in the system have unfinished business protecting students' free speech rights in their policies. All eight of the UC universities reviewed by FIRE have "red [...]
James Madison: On a Just Partition of Power
Liberty Letters, James Madison It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the [...]
Freedom of Speech—Samuel Adams Shouted Down
Democratic Thinker, American Debate On the evening of October 26, 1791, Samuel Adams rose to speak against repealing the prohibition of theaters in Boston. Those of the town meeting wishing the repeal refused to allow him the courtesy. Long may Americans revere the Saviours of their country, and on the records let the occasion be noted with [...]
Franklin: Freedom of the Press
Democratic Thinker, American Debate Benjamin Franklin, after the adoption of the Federal Constitution, ponders the abuse of the constitutionally protected freedom on the press. But since so much has been written and published on the federal constitution, and the necessity of checks in all other parts of good government has been so clearly [...]
Whither Glik . . . and Why?
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Wendy McElroy The streets of America have become safer, not from criminals but from brutish police. On August 26 the First Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a motion to dismiss a lawsuit against the Boston police for arresting a man who recorded their brutal treatment of a teenager. The ruling is only one [...]
Bryant: Freedom to Speak
Democratic Thinker, American Debate Following the Cincinnnati Abolition Riots in 1836, William Cullen Bryant writes an editorial defending the right of all citizens to express concerns without obstruction by those of opposing views. … if they cannot put down the abolitionist press by fair means, they will do it by foul; if they cannot [...]
Sixth Circuit Orders Federal District Court to Rule on Student Blogger’s Free Speech and Due Process Claims
Liberty Alerts, TheFIRE.org On Monday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed a 2009 federal district court decision (full opinion here) in which a student claimed that the University of Louisville wrongfully dismissed her based on the contents of her personal blog. The district court had refused to rule on the [...]
Michigan Universities Respond to Request for E-mail Records
School Days, EducationNews.org The University of Michigan’s faculty Senate is fighting back against Freedom of Information Act requests from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, reports the Detroit Free Press. Calling the requests for the emails “harassing,” the Senate Chairman Ed Rothman said he viewed the tactic as a challenge on [...]
U.S. Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Free Speech in Funeral Protest Case
Liberty Alerts, Liberty Counsel Washington, DC – This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld free speech rights in a case that could have had significant negative repercussions for those who seek to express unpopular views. The Court’s ruling is in keeping with the position that Liberty Counsel advocated in the Amicus Brief it filed in the [...]
On Freedom of Speech and Incitement to Violence
By Izzy Kalman I’m sure many of my readers wonder why I deal with political matters in a newsletter that is seemingly about psychological matters. The truth is that the separation between psychology and politics is an artificial one. All political actions are psychological actions because they involve human behavior. And while [...]
Ideas and Guns are Dangerous Things
Tyranny Unmasked, Joseph Stalin "Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas." So said Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (1878 – 1953) served as the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in [...]
Milton’s Areopagitica: In Support of Freedom of Speech
Liberty Letters,1644, John Milton A SPEECH FOR THE LIBERTY OF UNLICENSED PRINTING. TO THE PARLIAMENT OF ENGLAND. This is true Liberty, when freeborn men, Having to advise the public, may speak free; Which he who can, and will, deserves high praise: Who neither can, nor will, may hold his peace: What can be juster in a state than this? — [...]
Pamphlet for Those Interested in Challenging College Speech Code
Liberty Alerts, TheFIRE.org FIRE is pleased to announce the publication of our new informational pamphlet for public university students interested in serving as plaintiffs in a First Amendment challenge to their universities' policies restricting free speech. Our new pamphlet, "Challenging Your College's Speech Code," answers students' [...]
Treating All of God’s Children as Brothers and Sisters
Prophet Statesmen, Quentin L. Cook A second example of how religious faith benefits society and contributes light to the world is the role of religion in treating all of God’s children as brothers and sisters. Many faith-based institutions in the last two centuries have been at the forefront in reaching out and rescuing those subjected to [...]
Major Legal Victory for Free Speech
Liberty Alerts, Institute For Justice Arlington, Va.—A federal appellate court today held that six neighbors in the tiny subdivision of Parker North, Colo., should not have been forced to register with the government and comply with burdensome campaign finance laws simply for opposing a ballot issue involving the annexation of their [...]
A Need for Equal Access to the Public Square
Prophet Statesmen, Quentin L. Cook There has always been an ongoing battle between people of faith and those who would purge religion and God from public life.12 Many opinion leaders today reject a moral view of the world based on Judeo-Christian values. In their view there is no objective moral order.13 They believe no preference should be [...]
UVa Eliminates Speech Codes, Earning ‘Green Light’ Rating
Liberty Alerts, TheFIRE.org CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., October 28, 2010—This week, the University of Virginia (UVa) confirmed that it had eliminated the last of its policies that unconstitutionally restricted the free speech of students and faculty members. While more than two-thirds of the nation's colleges maintain policies that clearly [...]
Government Has the Internet in Its Sites
The proposals keep coming The Freeman, Wendy McElroy The Obama administration is seeking domestic and worldwide control of the Internet. After the July Wikileaks disclosure of 77,000 classified Afghan war documents and its planned release of 15,000 more, the U.S. wants that control bad –and fast. The danger from the proposed regulation is [...]
Why the DISCLOSE Act Put K Street Over Main Street
Liberty Alerts, Congress Shall Make No Law, Bert Gall The President is disappointed that the DISCLOSE Act died in the Senate last week. He said, among other things, that “Wall Street, the insurance lobby, oil companies and other special interests are now one step closer to taking Congress back and returning to the days when lobbyists [...]
Jacob Sullum Debunks the Demonization of Citizens United
Liberty Alerts, Congress Shall Make No Law, Bert Gall From his excellent article on Reason.com: Last week The New York Times reported that “outside groups supporting Republican candidates in House and Senate races across the country have been swamping their Democratic-leaning counterparts on television.” The paper worried that “a [...]
We Hate to Say We Told You So, But . . . .
Liberty Alerts, Congress Shall Make No Law, Steve Simpson Yesterday, a district court in Minnesota ruled that corporations must become political committees or PACs in order to speak. The case is called Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, Inc. v. Swanson. The decisions directly conflicts with Citizens United, but it is particularly [...]
The Michael Myers of Bad Ideas
Liberty Alerts, Congress Shall Make No Law, Bill Maurer Following up on my colleague Bert Gall’s discussion of seemingly unkillable frights, the Fair Elections Now Act (FENA) is also showing signs of life again. FENA, one may recall, is the name for a number of bills that operate from the assumption that if you preemptively shower [...]
A License to Speak
Liberty Alerts, Congress Shall Make No Law, Steve Simpson We’ve noted before that when government controls our economic affairs, it will inevitably control our speech as well. We’ve seen that tendency in calls to prohibit companies that receive TARP funds from lobbying and speaking out about elections and in the government’s threats [...]
Campaign Finance Laws: The Worst Kind of Party Crashers
Liberty Alerts, Congress Shall Make No Law, Anthony Sanders In a recent article in National Journal, Jonathan Rauch explains that the “Tea Party” is not one organization run by a top-down command structure, but rather a large number of local organizations across the country. Almost all of them are completely run by volunteers, and [...]
Grambling State University Bans Use of E-Mail for Core Political Expression
Liberty Alerts, TheFIRE.org GRAMBLING, La., September 16, 2010—As the 2010 election season enters full swing, Grambling State University (GSU) is prohibiting its students and faculty members from engaging in a wide swath of constitutionally protected political expression. The Louisiana public university has forbidden students and [...]
Level My Speech, Please!
Liberty Alerts, Congress Shall Make No Law, Lisa Knepper As Bill Maurer notes below, at the heart of IJ’s challenge to Arizona’s “Clean Elections” law is an obvious and important claim: If the government gives additional money to your political and ideological opponents whenever you speak, you are less likely to do so. Thus, the [...]
Update on Wisconsin Speech Restrictions
Liberty Alerts, Congress Shall Make No Law, Anthony Sanders It turns out we were a little too quick in our post last week proclaiming the end of the case challenging the new Wisconsin campaign finance rule. The case is in federal court and the judge has expressed concern that he might not have jurisdiction to enter a judgment, even an agreed [...]
Wisconsin Seeks to Criminalize Your Unregistered Facebook Account
Liberty Alerts, Congress Shall Make No Law, Anthony Sanders Faced with three separate lawsuits the State of Wisconsin has backed-down from enforcing an incredibly-broad new campaign finance regulation. If the regulation had been enforced, then conceivably millions of people across the Wisconsin would have had to register with the government [...]
Students at Lincoln Memorial Told to Stop Singing National Anthem
Liberty Alerts, Fox News A group of high school students attending a conservative leadership conference in Washington, D.C. said they were ordered by a security guard to stop singing the national anthem during a June 25 visit to the Lincoln Memorial. “They told them to stop singing,” said Evan Gassman, a spokesman for the Young America’s [...]
Washington State gets message on bias reporting protocols; will other universities?
Liberty Alerts, TheFIRE.org The advent of bias reporting protocols on university campuses is viewed by FIRE as a pernicious threat to student speech, and with good reason. Universities that maintain and operate such policies typically encourage students and others on campus to report, often anonymously, occasions in which they experience [...]
