Entries Tagged as 'First Amendment - Speech'
November 17th, 2008 · 1 Comment
First, the video:
Two observations:
1. If these soulless cretins went into an insular Hasidic community in Brooklyn and tried to tell the residents — who had been minding their own business — that they were sinners, that Jesus is the only way to Heaven and that God abhors their "lifestyle choices," [...]
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Tags: First Amendment - Speech · Gay Rights and Issues · Society, Religion, Culture Wars
November 13th, 2008 · 1 Comment
Attributed to Scalia in yesterday's oral arguments for Pleasant Grove City v. Summum:
"You can't run a museum if you have to accept everything, right?"
Right — Which is exactly why the government should not be running museums in the first place.
As for the outcome of this bizarre case, I think Chief Corky Roberts summed it [...]
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Tags: First Amendment - Religion · First Amendment - Speech · Libertarianism · Public Goods v. Private Goods · Updates
November 9th, 2008 · 8 Comments
Consider the following correction in Sunday's Washington Post:
Because of an editing error, the Nov. 7 op-ed column "Vows That Can't Be Voted Down" incorrectly suggested that the Mormon Church had contributed funds to efforts to pass Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in California. The op-ed should have said "members of the [...]
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Tags: First Amendment - Religion · First Amendment - Speech · Gay Rights and Issues · Law · Society, Religion, Culture Wars · Taxation & Fiscal Policy
October 15th, 2008 · 4 Comments
(Or: "Bringing Kelo to Copyright?")
Two law professors suggest exactly that:
After vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin finished her big speech at the Republican National Convention, the 1977 song "Barracuda," by the band Heart, blared out over the roar of the crowd. Convention organizers chose the music to highlight Palin's high school basketball-team nickname, "Sarah Barracuda." But [...]
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Tags: First Amendment - Speech · Law · Politics · Property Rights
(Introductory note: Ten years later, and we still have to write pieces such as this. How sad…)
I found this hilarious:
For the last several years, the Religious Right has been complaining about GLSEN's annual "Day of Silence" in which students pledge to "be quiet all day to protest the discrimination, harassment and abuse — in effect, [...]
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Tags: First Amendment - Speech · Gay Rights and Issues · Society, Religion, Culture Wars · Student Rights
September 17th, 2008 · 3 Comments
The ACLU celebrates Constitution Day by seeking words of wisdom from a leading enemy of the Constitution:
On this day in 1787, our founding fathers signed the Constitution, making us a nation of laws, not of men. The basic concepts of justice, liberty, and inherent human rights outlined in that founding document, are at the very [...]
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Tags: First Amendment - Speech · Law · Libertarianism
September 11th, 2008 · No Comments
Two separate federal courts, a trial court in Connecticut and an appellate court in the Eighth Circuit, have both ruled that a controversial provision of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 violates the First Amendment:
Organizations representing thousands of attorneys filed the lawsuit in 2006, objecting to a requirement that they give [...]
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Tags: First Amendment - Speech · Law
September 10th, 2008 · 1 Comment
Just a quick pass-along:
In 2005, Kentucky imposed a 1.3% tax on the gross revenues of telecommunications providers. In connection with the new tax, the legislature banned providers from "collect[ing] the tax directly" from consumers and from "separately stat[ing] the tax on the bill." The providers filed this lawsuit because they want to identify the new [...]
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Tags: Activist Legislators & Nanny Statists · Capitalism · First Amendment - Speech · Law · Taxation & Fiscal Policy
September 10th, 2008 · 1 Comment
To review: The high water mark in First Amendment protection of student speech was Tinker v. Des Moines School Dist., 393 U.S. 503 (1969), which famously held, "It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."
In the almost forty years [...]
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Tags: First Amendment - Speech · Law · Society, Religion, Culture Wars · Student Rights
"Help Keep Politics Out of the Exam Room!"
–Planned Parenthood Website
Since I have relentlessly railed against theocratic church leaders abusing their tax-exempt status by endorsing, overtly or otherwise, specific political candidates, I feel compelled to engage in a little equal-opportunity indignation:
Clever — but is it legal?
The Planned Parenthood Action Fund had stationed volunteers outside, handing out [...]
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Tags: First Amendment - Religion · First Amendment - Speech · Law · Politics · Society, Religion, Culture Wars · Taxation & Fiscal Policy