The footage shows the intensity in the air leading up to the raid and the insane amount of police presence that showed up to destroy the encampment. Mayor Jean Quan’s legal adviser resigned at 2 a.m. in protest to the heavy police response.

It started out as a crimefighting tool. But over the years, an FBI effort known as “geo-mapping” evolved into something more expansive — a method to track Muslim communities, without any suspicion of a crime being committed.

Last month, Danger Room revealed that the FBI was training its agents that religious Muslims tended to be “violent” and that Islamic charity is merely a “funding mechanism for combat.” In response, both the FBI and the Justice Department promised full reviews of their training materials. But the geo-mapping effort indicates that the FBI may have more than just a training problem: The suspicion of ordinary Muslims promoted in those lectures may be spilling over into its counterterrorism tactics.

Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union acquired some of the FBI geo-maps (.pdf), like the one pictured after the jump, through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Although many of the maps are heavily redacted, they represent the first public confirmation that the FBI compiles maps of businesses, community centers and religious institutions in ethnic enclaves around the United States…

More: WIRED’s Danger Room

In the case of Glik v. Cunniffe, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has issued a unanimous opinion in support of the First Amendment right to record the actions of police in public.

For those of you not familiar with Simon Glik’s case, Glik was arrested on October 1, 2007, after openly using his cell phone to record three police officers arresting a suspect on Boston Common. In return for his efforts to record what he suspected might be police brutality — in a pattern that is now all too familiar — Glik was charged with criminal violation of the Massachusetts wiretap act, aiding the escape of a prisoner and disturbing the peace.

Unlike most arrestees, Glik, with the assistance of the ACLU, fought back against this treatment. Undeterred, in February 2010, Glik filed suit in federal court against the officers and the City of Boston under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act. Glik alleged that the police officers violated his First Amendment right to record police activity in public and that the officers violated his Fourth Amendment rights by arresting him without probable cause to believe a crime had occurred.

The First Circuit ruled that “Glik was exercising clearly-established First Amendment rights in filiming the officers in a public space, and that his clearly-established Fourth Amendment rights were violated by his arrest without probable cause.”

Let’s see if we can find some more excellent quotations.

“[I]s there a constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public? Basic First Amendment principles, along with case law from this and other circuits, answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative.”

“Glik filmed the defendant police officers in the Boston Common, the oldest city park in the United States and the apotheosis of a public forum. In such traditional public spaces, the rights of the state to limit the exercise of First Amendment activity are ’sharply circumscribed.’”

“[A] citizen’s right to film government officials, including law enforcement officers, in the discharge of their duties in a public space is a basic, vital, and well-established liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment.”

“Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting ‘the free discussion of governmental affairs.’”

In Europe, draconian libel laws are increasingly being used to intimidate bloggers who question the validity of specific alt-med products or modalities. The most recent case involves the multinational homeopathy manufacturer Boiron and an amateur blogger in Italy. Steven Novella at Science-Based Medicine writes:

There have been many cases now of big companies or organizations, or wealthy individuals, threatening to sue or actually suing a blogger for libel. The most famous case is that of Simon Singh who was sued by the British Chiropractic Association over comments he made in an article. Simon braved through the expensive and exhaustive legal process (which is especially onerous in England), but he is not just a lone blogger. He is a successful author and was writing for the Guardian. Eventually the BCA was forced to drop the case – but only after the blogging community rallied behind Simon, magnifying his criticisms of the BCA by orders of magnitude. By all accounts it was a PR disaster.

The blogging community as a whole is rather passionate about this issue. We exist on the premise of free and open public discourse about important issues. At SBM we take on many controversial issues and we don’t pull our punches when criticizing what we see as pseudoscience in medicine. So of course we take notice when a large company tries to bully a blogger to silence their legitimate criticism.

[Full Article at Science-Based Medicine]

Walter E. Bagdasarian.

Stephen C. Webster writes in the Raw Story:

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that calling for someone to kill the President of the United States cannot be classified as a threat because standing law does not prohibit “predictions or exhortations” to violence.

In a 2-1 decision, judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that California resident Walter E. Bagdasarian was engaging in free speech when he wrote that Obama “will have a 50 cal in the head soon,” then called on someone to “shoot the nig.”

Bagdasarian published his comments on a Yahoo finance website in the weeks leading up to the 2008 presidential election. He was arrested weeks later, after one of the other commenters reported a potential threat to the Secret Service. During a search of his residence, authorities discovered that he did indeed possess a .50 caliber rifle.

“These statements are particularly repugnant because they directly encourage violence,” the judges wrote. “We nevertheless hold that neither of them constitutes an offense within the meaning of the threat statute under which Bagdasarian was convicted.”

For more information, see original article.

HFS, Christians have denied and continue to deny non-Christians the right to pursue happiness. Christians oppress homosexuals and their right to marry and pursue happiness. Christians are attempting to thwart legal marijuana use. It’s time we deny them their rights for they have clearly shown they abuse those rights to oppress non-Christians.

If Germany can keep out Scientology then America should be able to boot out Christianity!

ISN, 666

ALAMOGORDO, NM— A New Mexico man’s decision to lash out with a billboard ad saying his ex-girlfriend had an abortion against his wishes has touched off a legal debate over free speech and privacy rights.

The sign on Alamogordo’s main thoroughfare shows 35-year-old Greg Fultz holding the outline of an infant. The text reads, “This Would Have Been A Picture Of My 2-Month Old Baby If The Mother Had Decided To Not KILL Our Child!”

Fultz’s ex-girlfriend has taken him to court for harassment and violation of privacy. A domestic court official has recommended the billboard be removed.

But Fultz’s attorney argues the order violates his client’s free speech rights.

“As distasteful and offensive as the sign may be to some, for over 200 years in this country the First Amendment protects distasteful and offensive speech,” Todd Holmes said.

The woman’s friends say she had a miscarriage, not an abortion, according to a report in the Albuquerque Journal.

For more information, see original article.

Photo: Prisonblues (CC)

Saturday, around 50 people held a demonstration through dance at the Jefferson Memorial in southern Washington, D.C., which overlooks the Potomac River. Over 2,000 people had testified on Facebook that they would show up, but these testimonials apparently turned out to be the Internet’s letting off steam.

A week before, U.S. Park Police arrested five protesters for silently dancing in the memorial, which they did in response to the April 12, 2008 arrest of Mary Oberwetter, a 28-year-old D.C. resident, who was eventually charged with “interfering with agency functions.”

The video of recent arrests received in its first 24 hours well over 100,00 views and, at the time of this writing, nearly 900,000. Russia Today journalist and 2010 House Candidate Adam Kokesh, a self-described Ron Paul Republican, found himself thrown to the ground and, briefly, even choked, last weekend for dancing, as he said, in celebration of the principles of Thomas Jefferson.

Recently, the Washington Post ran a consensus editorial claiming that by silently dancing in the memorial, the protesters had in fact justifiably invited their booking and whatever force shown to them. “If it goes anything like previous ones, it will not be pretty,” wrote the Post’s editors, adding, “And that won’t be the fault of the U.S. Park Police.” However, Saturday’s protest did go a great deal better than the previous weekend’s. There was no resorting to direct violence, but in the face of protesters already backed off to the steps of the memorial, where the Post’s editors swore back and forth that “anyone is free to polka,” police were in fact brandishing automatic rifles.

Speaking on the steps of the memorial just minutes before the noon start of the demonstration, Medea Benjamin, co-founder of activist group Code Pink and one of the five arrested the previous week, lamented that the “pursuit of happiness” advertised in the Declaration of Independence, authored largely by Jefferson, was outside the prerogative of the defense by Park Police in the memorial. She cited the unobtrusive nature of listening to headphones and silently dancing in commemoration of the declaration’s author.

The popularity of the subsequent video footage on Kokesh’s blog, “Adam Vs The Man” – even as other nonviolent protesters in Bahrain and Syria faced permanent injury if not total execution – displayed the degree to which the treatment of the protesters was clearly outraging many domestically.

The heart of the matter is a view of whether celebration of Jefferson’s ideals can even be done by dancing inside the memorial . Dancing is “distracting from the atmosphere of solemn commemoration,” agreed an appellate court with the original lower-court decision Kokesh et. al. were initially protesting. There seems to be an at least popularly-enough held skepticism that in fact any sort of dance-based celebration can even earnestly be done in honor of Thomas Jefferson. However, in the face of Jefferson’s legacy that people of the majority of ethnicities should live free or die, the brandishing of automatic rifles and tear gas canisters in the face of harmless expression seems a more serious defiling of that spirit of “solemn commemoration.”

The point of Americans who genuinely believe that dancing in a public memorial warrants its closing to the public, daresay violence against dancers, is that disbelief that the dancing is even being done in sincere celebration of the ideals of the First Amendment, an high-minded ideal that in reality has always been subject in one way or another to restrictions of minor status, obscenity, sedition or national security restrictions, or the general popularity of one’s ideas.

During the exchange with Benjamin, Tighe Barry, who was also one of the five arrested last week for dancing, said, “I think Jefferson would have said a long time ago that it’s time for government to grow up. If he were to spring up alive right now, he wouldn’t know what to make of any of this. I do know from the words that he said he would have changed the laws that are antiquated and outdated. He doesn’t seem like the person that would ever want a memorial that would be solemn and you have to come and pray to a certain god.”

Jefferson, on record discouraging celebrations of his birthday and whose grave marker does not mention his highest office of the presidency, is the figurative “god” to which Barry is saying that the courts’ decisions have demanded reverence.

The Washington Post’s editors would blatantly participate in libel against the protesters, saying “a group of self-proclaimed libertarians who decided to defy the court on Memorial Day weekend.” Barry and his girlfriend, Code Pink Cofounder Medea Benjamin, are obvious socialists, as indicated by, among many things, their not-so-subtle habit of wearing pink clothing.

Barry would also fire back at the editorial’s charge that the “dancers’ energy and presumably good intentions would be better channeled by addressing real injustices.”

“I was in Tahrir Square [in Cairo, Egypt], looking – I was there for the entire revolution. I was looking for someone from The Washington Post editorial board to come out and say something about what was going on. And they waited and waited until the very last minute, when they figured out who was going to win and then they editorialized. You know, this is the Washington [Post] editorial board. You know, they need to straighten it out.”

After approximately 10 minutes of silently dancing, which began roughly around noon, a few protesters immediately began silently dancing, apparently without any requests that they stop dancing. After another 10 minutes, approximately 50 people had joined in and were making their way in a conga line around the statue of Jefferson himself. Clearly upping the ante from the previous complaint that they had not been allowed to silently dance, the emboldened crowd began yelling slogans and cheering jubilantly, several chanting the text of the First Amendment. As the circular marchers made passes by, Kokesh stopped, roughly in front of me, and made a point of accepting handshakes from generally admiring coprotesters.

Recording video on phone, it was apparent that the initial discussed tactic of the police was to walk up to protesters and simply ask them to leave, if they felt like dancing. I didn’t hear any of those initial conversations up close, but their occurrence was apparent because individuals would began asking others to not leave, because that’s, as some protesters loudly suggested, when the police would begin their arrests. No matter one’s conclusions about the rights of Kokesh et al and those of the original demonstrator, Oberwetter, to silently dance, by the time the monument was shut down a week later after the first Kokesh protest, activists had chosen to turn their new demonstration into a markedly less silent one.

Without announcement, the police had put up a metal barrier at the entrance to the memorial, without any sort of public announcement. This tactic was effective insofar that it made it so that police didn’t have to block people, with their own bodies, from coming back in once they had left. However the tactic was not so effective because it also made it difficult to comply with their orders, once requested to do so. Once asked to leave, this reporter attempted to make his way out of the meter-wide gap in the barrier, only to find it impossible to get out through the line of camera-bearers all too intent on capturing more salacious police brutality, if in fact it went down.

Unable to make my way out of the gap, which I was facing, trying to push my way through, and refusing no request, a Park Police officer shoved this reporter into the crowd of not-budging cameramen. It was unnecessary force, but their motivations were clear enough. If the police did not apply at least a little unnecessary force this time, they stood to lose even more face than they obviously did last weekend, when as Kokesh said to RT, they were inundated with angry phone calls, which, he suggested, could have expedited the release of the libertarian and socialist protesters.

You can see it in my footage after I’m shoved: My hand is shaking. Memories of last week’s footage came back to me. While I never feared for an instant that, on account of the dancers, foreign tourists would think less highly of Jefferson or America, I did fear, perhaps irrationally, that police would begin a disastrous power trip that could end with a lot of hurt people. In light of more substantially more egregious civil rights abuses, it easy to, as did The Washington Post, dismiss the cause of dancing in the Jefferson Memorial as trivial. At the same time, it is impossible to at the same time, maintaining consistency, suggest that the police actions, up to and including the mere closing of the memorial, in response to such trivial actions are more warranted. The pretense of this solemnity enforcement is that it will stop ridicule of Jefferson or impress upon visitors an “appropriate” regard for the man, when the idea that a law can enforce such a genuine internal consideration is an illusion, a mirage.

As I reported for the Buffalo BEAST back at Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial, the naïve idealism of some American Revolutionary revivalists is really quite striking. It is the product of a grade-school indoctrination Americans receive, one not unlike that of many country’s citizens regarding still-vogue leaders past. It reminded me of being in the 4^th grade in a school in Virginia hearing my teacher ask, sure, slavery was bad, but what were some of its benefits.

I caught this same tone repeatedly at the Jefferson Memorial dance-off, between the chants of “TJ, TJ” and blood-boiled, screeching testimonials to Jefferson’s beyond-reproach character.

Last weekend, I was at the Mount Vernon home of the first constitutional president of the United States, George Washington, and in a line of tourists on the veranda. The lawn was quite vast, and the general had ordered his chattel slaves to have it cut with a scythe. Mind you, this was not a farming operation for the production of food; this was a prurient and petty exercise in aesthetics.

A guide was stationed out on the porch, with arm’s length of me.

“How many human beings did George Washington own? Eight hundred? A thousand?” I inquired, not stuttering, but the guide appeared mildly repulsed by the question, her chin pulling backwards in a kind of micro-whiplash, and then she asked me if I were asking about the general’s land-holding acreage, before I made a clarification, and she told me he owned more than 300 people.

It seems pretty clear that Jefferson would have been outrageously offended that people were facing police action, quite possibly to the point of advocating lethal-force resistance to the officers on the scene. Of course, this would have been and would be an evil mistake, but it goes to show the weakness of appealing to Jefferson’s authority itself to justify this resistance.

Somewhere around the 12:20 p.m. peak of the dancing, Kokesh stopped to face the throng of journalists, bloggers or onlookers to proclaim how acts of disobedience of this type were cardinal to bringing down the state. It was a thought-provoking comment. If the purpose of the action were to collapse the state itself, what monuments would there within which armed guards were to regulate behavior in the first place?

After the event, Kokesh said that, were he only allowed to not pay taxes, he would gladly give up his claim of access to the memorial.

It was then, after police had forced everyone willing to go out, Kokesh was on the steps bull-horning back at the stragglers in the sanctum and their onlookers, proclaiming that “the people had won” and requested that no one risk arrest at that point. The police’s granting 30 minutes from dancing’s starting until my being asked to leave, at least individually as a bystander, seemed tacit acknowledgment of wrongdoing.

A group of tourists told me that if the protesters inside had truly wished to fight for freedom, they should simply enlist, presumably to go fight in missions like that most tolling in Afghanistan, where some recent polling has shown that perhaps as many as 80 percent or more of men believe that the NATO mission is bad for Afghans, and NATO forces openly refuse to comply with President Hamid Karzai’s demands that they stop air attacks on houses.

It was fascinating to see a conception that their own personal liberties were maintained through military operations in a country where soldiers are largely undesired, and whose actions are roundly condemned by the elected leadership in place.

By the refreshment stand near the Jefferson Memorial around 1 p.m., a mid-30s man was yelling at another at the top of his lungs, swearing upon “the altar of God” “eternal hostility” to that tourist, blaming him and his ilk, not the police, for the monument’s closing.

The tourist complained that foreign tourists, families, and his prepubescent son were not able to see the memorial they had traveled to view. He indicated that the dancer yelling at him believed that “his rights were more important than mine,” adding “[my family pays] the bills to keep that open. You got it closed. You people got it closed. Congratulations.”

“We families,” he would continue, “we get our rights violated because you insist on being a buffoon. That’s what happened. That’s what happened. My rights are more important because I have a right to go in there and enjoy the monument.” The tourist would personally charge that the law can enforce a “solemn atmosphere” in the monument.

The tourist’s blood still boiling, I attempted to get his consideration of the predicament of another protesters, who had brought several of his young children, that police had told him that his children would be taken into protective custody if he stayed at the memorial. As that father stood far outside of the sanctum of the memorial, talking to his children, an officer approached them and said, “If you get caught up in the sweep, they go down also. It’s child services, just letting you know.”

I asked the tourist how exactly that officer’s request was in particular consideration of families. He did not answer the question, which encouraged me to ask him point-blank if indeed the protester’s children should have been placed into custody.

The frustrated tourist declined to answer this question directly but did indicate his sense that the police, who were carrying Armalite assault rifles in the face of dancing protesters, “didn’t do enough.”

As onlookers reacted belligerently to this claim, the tourist’s son said, “I’ve learned nothing from you.”

The dancers were protesting an appeals court ruling handed down last week that the national monuments are places for reflection and contemplation — and that dancing distracted from such an experience.

In 2008, Mary Brooke Oberwetter and a group of friends went to the Jefferson to commemorate the president’s 265th birthday by dancing silently, while listening to music on headphones. Park Police ordered the revelers to disperse and arrested them when they did not.

Oberwetter sued on free speech grounds, but the appeals court ruled last week that her conduct was indeed prohibited “because it stands out as a type of performance, creating its own center of attention and distracting from the atmosphere of solemn commemoration” that Park Service regulations are designed to preserve.

Saturday’s protest was staged during the day, on Memorial Day weekend, in order to draw maximum attention:

More on Huffington Post

Peter King’s brand new version of the HUAC hearings and the glory days of the McCarthy era is set to begin Thursday, when King will hold hearings deciding whether or not American Muslims have been “radicalized.” King told CNN’s State of the Union “We’re talking about the affiliates of Al Qaeda who have been radicalizing, and there’s been self-radicalization going on within the Muslim community, within a very small minority, but it’s there. And that’s where the threat is coming from at this time.”

King justified his witch hunt, titled “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response” by citing three terrorist incidents in the U.S. instances involving Muslims – the tragic shooting at Fort Hood in 2009 and two bomb plots in New York. King said “People in this country are being self-radicalized, whether it’s Major Hasan or whether it’s Shahzad or whether it was Zazi in New York. These were all people who were identifying, in one way or another, with Al Qaida or Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.” But while these horrific instances of terrorism are ghastly, they’re certainly not representative of the American Muslim community at large.

King’s no stranger to stoking the fires of fear towards the Muslim community. The Washington Post reports that in 2004 King told Sean Hannity that “no American Muslim leaders are cooperating in the war on terror,” even though a study found that tips thwarting 48 out of 120 cases involving American terrorist plots came from the Muslim community. Furthermore, the study concluded that the number of Muslim-Americans engaged in terrorist acts against America has totaled 28 in the past two years. In addition, the Post reports a Pew Research study found in 2007 that most Muslim Americans are largely “assimilated, happy with their lives and moderate with respect to many of the issues that have divided Muslims and Westerners around the world.”

Read the full post at Diatribe Media

Supreme Court Justice Alito is the lone dissenter in the 8-to-1 ruling on free-speech principles, saying the conduct of the Westboro Baptist Church ’caused petitioner great injury.’

In an important reaffirmation of free speech principles, the US Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that noxious, highly offensive protests conducted outside solemn military funerals are protected by the First Amendment when the protests take place in public and address matters of public concern.

The high court ruled 8 to 1 that members of the Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church are entitled to stage their controversial antigay protests even when they cause substantial injury to family members and others attending the funeral of a loved one.

“Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and – as it did here – inflict great pain,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker,” he said.

Read More in the Christian Science Monitor

Amid the largest protests Madison, Wisconsin has seen in decades, newly elected Republican Gov. Scott Walker last week issued a stark message to public labor unions occupying the capitol building: we have options, and using the National Guard against protesters is among them.

Since then, a myrad of rumors have circulated through crowds gathered at the state capitol, united in protest of a bill that would strip public unions of their collective bargaining rights. One rumor, which had not yet come to pass, even suggested that like Egypt’s former dictator did in Tahrir Square, Gov. Walker may call in police to forcibly clear out the capitol.

And according to a Wisconsin police union president, whether the police agree or disagree with their governor’s politics, they would “absolutely” carry out any order given to them … even if that order included using force against their fellow Americans gathered in peaceful protest …

For more information, see original article.

A former FBI informant who infiltrated a California mosque violated the constitutional rights of Muslims by conducting “indiscriminate surveillance” because of their religion, according to a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday.

The lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles was filed by the ACLU of Southern California and the Los Angeles office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. It named the FBI and seven of its agents and supervisors, the Washington Post reported.

The lawsuit alleges ex-FBI informant Craig Monteilh was ordered by his supervisors to target Muslims for surveillance, violating their First Amendment right to freedom of religion. The lawsuit seeks class-action status, unspecified damages and a court order instructing the FBI to destroy or return the information Monteilh collected.

Monteilh infiltrated an Orange County mosque and helped build a case against an Afghan-born man who was arrested on terrorism-related charges in 2009.

The lawsuit claims that Monteilh’s handlers, FBI agents Kevin Armstrong and Paul Allen, instructed him to collect e-mail addresses, phone numbers and other detailed information about Muslims and “explicitly told Monteilh that Islam was a threat to America’s national security,” according to the Post…

For more information, see original article.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Jared Lee Loughner, charged with Saturday’s shootings, has invoked his right to silence, leaving us ignorant of his motives. Sources disagree on his politics — an acquaintance calls him an “extreme” liberal; a government memo links him to a “racial-realist” journal (one that denies any ties to him). His online writings point to an unhinged mind. But though much remains unclear, people are withdrawing some of their first theories, which rashly labeled the shootings a Tea Party / Republican plot.

Replacing those accusations is a broader look at how the shooter may have responded to intense political rhetoric. Critics again blame the right-wing, mainly Sarah Palin, whose PAC last year produced an image with crosshairs on congressional seats such as Giffords’. It was only a slight escalation from the usual manner of treating politics as war (Targeted districts, swiftboating, battleground states, political campaigns). But it was an escalation, and people called Palin out on it. Giffords herself spoke against it, stating her fears of a possible response.

Some critics now ask Palin to apologize for the graphic , which her site has now removed. The petition reads: “Violent threats have consequences.” Fine. We must all consider our words’ consequences. And reducing vitriol would improve politics.

But other people want to go further. Thousands across the web now call for victims’ families to sue Sarah Palin, or for us to charge her criminally for inciting violence. Some, without a trace of irony, post these suggestions to ACLU message boards. Pennsylvania’s Rep. Bob Brady has proposed a bill banning imagery that uses gun-sights or cross-hairs. Like those from elsewhere on the political spectrum, these critics, after a tragedy, are forgetting Americans’ rights under the law. The First Amendment allows figurative calls to arms — and much, much more.

In this particular case, nothing proves that the image influenced the shooter. And if it did influence him, Palin need not have foreseen that it would have. The image was a political rallying cry to fellow party members. We might avoid similar calls from now on, but we don’t criminalize all that may motivate deranged assassins. If we did, we would have to ban Catcher in the Rye and permanently incapacitate Jodie Foster.

Even if the image’s designers could have foreseen its consequences, they did not intend them, which should remove criminal liability. Yet even if they did intend them — and this is what people so easily forget — the law would still protect that speech. Sarah Palin could have, for the sake of argument, declared: “Citizens! You should shoot all the Democrats in Congress.” The law would have protected her.

We punish dangerous speech only when it incites imminent lawless action. So if you were present on Saturday in Tuscon and urged the shooter to act, you would have broken the law. If you instructed him beforehand to act on that day and in that place, you would have broken the law. But advocating lawbreaking in general, despite the consequences that may follow, merely expresses an opinion. The Constitution protects that, even if the opinion is objectionable or dangerous.

This standard exists, in part, because of the ACLU. In 1964, Klan leader Clarence Bradenburg called for “re-vengeance” against blacks and Jews at a televised rally. This invitation for violence earned him a fine and a sentence of up to ten years. But the ACLU defended Brandenburg all the way to the Supreme Court, which then revised the legal standard for criminal speech.

Bradenburg v Ohio legalized racist speech and other violent calls to action. It also allowed legitimate political advocacy that had for the previous 50 years been illegal. According to the First Amendment, you may advocate anything, even positions the majority abhors, and argue for it however you want — so long as you don’t infringe on someone else’s rights. Others’ interpretation of your message does not undermine your right to express it. Not do the criminal actions others may later take.

People must choose their words carefully. But encourage self-restraint — don’t ask the government for censorship.

Free speech stands front and center in the Supreme Court term beginning next week, in a pair of cases testing the First Amendment’s reach in the digital age.

On Oct. 6, the justices will weigh whether the First Amendment protects a Kansas church’s campaign to publicize its beliefs by picketing military funerals with vulgar placards and insulting fallen soldiers’ survivors in online screeds.

The father of a fallen Marine is seeking damages for emotional distress from the church, which believes that God is killing American soldiers to punish the U.S. for its tolerance of homosexuality.

A month later , the court is to consider whether states can bar minors from buying violent videogames, on the theory that these games cause damage to developing minds and this outweighs young people’s constitutional rights.

Both cases add digital twists to constitutional doctrine. The church’s Internet posting potentially exposes the entire world to its hurtful attack, while the videogame laws single out computer role-playing as uniquely dangerous to children while leaving violent music, films, comic books and other media unrestricted.

The Roberts Court’s record on free-speech cases makes it hard to predict the outcome. It voted 8-1 earlier this year to strike down a federal law that banned depictions of animal cruelty, finding the ban too broad. At the same time, it curtailed First Amendment rights for minors in 2007, ruling that school officials could suppress a student placard that referred to marijuana.

The court has put about 40 cases on its docket for the new term, which runs through June, and is expected to add a similar number in coming months…

[continues in the Wall Street Journal]

One of Matt Urick's photos

Why do we put up with this kind of police state nonsense? Good to see Washington’s mainstream newspaper, the Post, highlighting the issue:

A few weeks ago, on his way to work, Matt Urick stopped to snap a few pictures of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s headquarters. He thought the building was ugly but might make for an interesting photo. The uniformed officer who ran up to him didn’t agree. He told Urick he was not allowed to photograph federal buildings.

Urick wanted to tell the guard that there are pictures of the building on HUD’s Web site, that every angle of the building is visible in street views on Google Maps and that he was merely an amateur photographer, not a threat. But Urick kept all this to himself.

“A lot of these guys have guns and are enforcing laws they obviously don’t understand, and they are not to be reasoned with,” he said. After detaining Urick for a few minutes and conferring with a colleague on a radio, the officer let him go.

Courts have long ruled that the First Amendment protects the right of citizens to take photographs in public places. Even after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, law enforcement agencies have reiterated that right in official policies.

But in practice, those rules don’t always filter down to police officers and security guards who continue to restrict photographers, often citing authority they don’t have. Almost nine years after the terrorist attacks, which ratcheted up security at government properties and transportation hubs, anyone photographing federal buildings, bridges, trains or airports runs the risk of being seen as a potential terrorist.

Reliable statistics on detentions and arrests of photographers are hard to come by, but photographers, their advocates and even police agree that confrontations still occur frequently. Photographers had run-ins with police before the 2001 attacks, but constitutional lawyers say the combination of heightened security concerns and the spread of digital cameras has made such incidents more common…

[continues in the Post]

The suspensions of seven pro-life students at two Roswell, N.M., high schools for distributing rubber fetuses have given birth to a lawsuit that takes the First Amendment protections for student speech into uncharted territory.

The students, who belong to a religious youth group called Relentless in Roswell, sued school officials last month, alleging their suspensions were unconstitutional. They were disciplined in February after they handed out hundreds of fetus dolls at Goddard and Roswell High Schools before classes.

The complaint describes the dolls as two inches in length and “the actual size and weight of a developing unborn child at 12 weeks’ gestation.” Attached to the dolls was a verse from the Bible: “For you formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are your works.”

Liberty Counsel, a conservative advocacy group, is representing the plaintiffs, who are seeking injunctive relief and the return of dolls that were confiscated by school officials.

Under the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community Sch. Dist., 393 U.S. 503 (1969), officials can only censor student speech that would seriously disrupt classroom or school activities. And pro-life activists in the nation’s schools have a track record of success in cases involving such materials as buttons, t-shirts and flyers.

Earlier this year, a New Jersey judge found a student was improperly suspended for distributing pro-life flyers, noting there was no evidence that other students were upset by the flyers and “this somehow caused a disruption to the learning environment.” C.H. vs Bridgeton Board Of Education

Continued at OnPoint News ...

In a resounding ruling for free speech, the New Hampshire Supreme Court has reversed a superior court’s ruling ordering the Implode-o-Meter web site to take down contributed materials and divulge the identity of a whistleblower.

The case was The Mortgage Specialists vs. Implode-Explode Heavy Industries, Inc. (the owner of ML-Implode.com). It concerned items posted to MoSpec’s “Ailing/Watch List” entry — the 2007 “Loan Chart” data for the company, and a post by username “Brianbattersby” accusing MoSpec and its President, Michael Gill, of habitual/systemic fraud.

In light of the ruling, the original content has been restored at the company’s ML-Implode profile here.

The portions of the post written by ML-Implode chiefly concerned MoSpec being fined in 2008 by the New Hampshire and Massachusetts banking departments for its practices. (MoSpec’s President, Michael Gill, called these “compliance” issues; the ML-Implode whistleblower argued otherwise.)

Read More: Mortage Lender Implode-O-Meter

Free speech advocates praised Tuesday’s US Supreme Court decision striking down a federal law banning depictions of animal cruelty.

At the same time, animal rights groups are calling on Congress to enact a new, more targeted law, to prevent trafficking in photos and videos depicting acts of severe animal cruelty, including so-called “crush” videos.

In striking down the 1999 Depiction of Animal Cruelty Act, Chief Justice John Roberts said the law was substantially overbroad and could criminalize depictions of entirely lawful conduct such as hunting videos and magazines. The vote was 8 to 1.

“It is clear from the opinion and the size of the majority that the court heard the many voices concerned about this law,” said David Horowitz, executive director of the Media Coalition, a free-speech advocacy group. “This law put at risk a broad range of newspaper articles, films, books, and images of hunting and wasn’t limited to dogfighting videos,” he said.

The 1999 law was aimed in part at outlawing the production and distribution of “crush videos” involving depictions of small animals being tortured and killed by women in high heel shoes. The videos were sold in an underground trade as part of a sexual fetish.

But the 1999 law also outlawed depictions of other acts of animal cruelty.

Free-speech advocates

The high court case stemmed from the arrest and conviction of a Virginia-based documentary producer named Robert Stevens who sold videos containing scenes of dogfights. Mr. Stevens said his videos were aimed at portraying the aggressive characteristics of pit bulls and the use of pit bulls in hunting. He argued that his documentaries were protected by the First Amendment.

A federal judge disagreed and a jury convicted him of selling banned depictions of dog fights in violation of the 1999 law. He was sentenced to three years in prison.

A federal appeals court overturned the conviction by declaring the underlying law unconstitutional. On Tuesday, the US Supreme Court also declared the law unconstitutional, but on different legal grounds.

In doing so, the high court rejected an attempt by the Obama administration to create a free speech balancing test that would weigh the value of the disputed speech against its societal costs to determine if it qualified for First Amendment protection…

[continues in the Christian Science Monitor]

LEX18.com via the AP

FRANKFORT (AP) — Kentucky may follow the lead of Texas and a handful of other states in allowing Bible classes to be taught in public schools.

The Senate Education Committee on Thursday unanimously approved legislation that would effectively return the Bible to classrooms across Kentucky.

“The purpose is to allow the Bible to be used for its literature content as well as its art and cultural and social studies content,” said state Sen. David Boswell, D-Owensboro, chief sponsor of the bill that is modeled after a Texas measure.

Under the Kentucky proposal, Bible courses would be offered as electives, meaning schools could choose whether to offer them to students as a social studies credit and that students could decide whether to take them.

Boswell said he believes the legislation is constitutional because the Bible won’t be taught from a religious perspective. What sets the legislation apart, he said, is that it proposes teaching, not preaching, the Bible.

Read More: LEX18.com via the AP

Reporting from Washington – Could the government outlaw a hypothetical “Human Sacrifice Channel” on cable TV?

That question became the focus of a Supreme Court argument Tuesday on the reach of the 1st Amendment and whether Congress can outlaw videos showing dogs fighting or other small animals being tortured and killed.

Last year, a federal appeals court, citing freedom of speech, struck down a law against selling videos with scenes of animal cruelty.

The law applied only to illegal acts of torturing or killing animals, not legal hunting or fishing. It was intended to dry up the underground market in so-called crush videos, which show squealing animals being stomped by women in high heels. More recently, it has been used to prosecute people who sell videos of pit bulls and other dogs fighting.

On Tuesday, most of the justices sounded wary of reviving the law, fearing it might be used to ban depictions of legal activities such as hunting…