Free Republic

A scrappy Web site that's built a reputation for taking on Goliath-sized corporate and government corruption is now fighting a holy war over copyright infringement. Wikileaks.org — a watchdog Web site that leaks corporate and government documents — hasn't officially launched, yet it has already uncovered human-rights violations in China, claimed to have swayed Kenya's Dec. 2007 elections and exposed the inner workings of the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. So many were surprised when it recently turned its sights on two lawyer-heavy religious groups: the Mormons and the Scientologists. The Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City

Inside the Beltway "Very odd," says our source. "They sat at a table in the back." Referring to the intriguing trio of Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, and his wife, Valerie Plame, of CIA-leak fame,

On Saturday, Gibson released a statement apologizing: "After drinking alcohol on Thursday night, I did a number of things that were very wrong and for which I am ashamed. I drove a car when I should not have, and was stopped by the L.A. County Sheriffs. The arresting officer was just doing his job and I feel fortunate that I was apprehended before I caused injury to any other person. I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested, and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable. I am...

Southern California High School Sued for Silencing Student on Issue of Illegal Immigration To: National Desk Contact: Richard D. Ackerman, Esq., Lively, Ackerman & Cowles, 951-308-6454, 951-258-5456 cell RIVERSIDE, Calif., June 2 /Christian Newswire/ -- The public interest firm of Lively, Ackerman & Cowles filed suit on behalf of Jurupa Valley High School student Joshua Denhalter on Thursday afternoon. The First Amendment suit alleges that the public high school has intentionally interfered with his right to speak out on the issue of illegal immigration. Mr. Denhalter alleges that on March 27, 2006, dozens of high school students, mostly of Mexican-American...

More than two dozen students walked out of Skyline High School Friday morning to protest what they say is a ban that doesn't allow the American flag to be flown on school grounds. Several students said that they were upset that Mexican flags can be waved around but that American flags couldn't. They said that school officials confiscated their American flags because it has become inflammatory because of recent immigration issues. "When the immigration laws came out we noticed that a lot of Hispanics were waving Mexican flags and what we were thinking to ourselves is like, isn't the immigration...

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) yesterday postponed a controversial decision on subjecting Internet political speech to campaign-finance regulations, raising the stakes for today’s scheduled House vote on a bill that exempts all blogs, Web ads and other online communications. The heated debate over a proposal by Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) to exclude online content from the “public communications” covered by campaign-finance law has engulfed every corner of the political world, splitting both Democrats and Republicans and pitting mainstream editorial boards against left- and right-wing bloggers.The House Rules Committee scheduled a meeting late yesterday to determine the ground rules for debate...

Congress is attempting to regulate our free political speech on the internet! We MUST rise to stop this attempt. But there is a bill pending that would make our political speech protected, just as the Founders of this country intended. But it isn't going to happen by osmosis. WE must raise our voices. This from RedState Blog, who is helping to spearhead this issue from the center right in the blogoshere. __________ Friends, We've been working for a long time on HR 1606 - The Online Freedom of Speech Act. It will come up for a vote on the floor...

Sean Treglia, a former high-ranking operative of the Pew Charitable Trusts, a foundation worth more than $4 billion, last year openly admitted that passage of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law—which bans political free speech in the 60 days leading up to an election—was engineered, planned, funded and executed by several lavishly wealthy, anti-gun foundations. In other words, it was not a grassroots movement of people throughout the country. It was a big scam. A fraud. A con job. Or, to be more exact, a midnight assassination hit on America’s First Amendment. In an explosive videotape obtained by the New York...

Donald Alexander Downs. Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus. Cambridge University Press. 318 pages. $28.99Our universities are ailing. Many, including most of our elite universities, have abandoned the notion that a liberal arts education is constituted by a solid core, that is, a basic knowledge of the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences that all educated people should possess. Furthermore, for all their earnest words about the beauty and necessity of multicultural education, university administrators and faculty preside over a curriculum that routinely permits students to graduate without acquiring reading, writing, and speaking fluency in any foreign language, let...

<p>Web loggers, who pride themselves on freewheeling political activism, might face new federal rules on candidate endorsements, online fundraising and political ads, though bloggers who don't take money from political groups would not be affected.</p> <p>Draft rules from the Federal Election Commission, which enforces campaign finance laws, would require that paid political advertisements on the Internet declare who funded the ad, as television spots do.</p>

Judges must be criticized. We must not move to a society that limits the criticism of tyrannical judges. We must foster criticism of these tyrants.

Key lawmaker calls for criminalizing TV indecency SAN FRANCISCO (Hollywood Reporter) - The chairman of one of the entertainment industry's most important congressional committees says he wants to take the enforcement of broadcast decency standards into the realm of criminal prosecution. Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner III, R-Wis., told cable industry executives attending the National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. conference here on Monday that criminal prosecution would be a more efficient way to enforce the indecency regulations. "I'd prefer using the criminal process rather than the regulatory process," Sensenbrenner told the executives. The current system -- in which the FCC fines...

Condemned man gets life in prison for killing waitress Updated: 2:47 p.m. ET March 28, 2005 DENVER - The Colorado Supreme Court threw out the death sentence Monday of a man convicted of raping and killing a cocktail waitress because jurors consulted the Bible during deliberations. The court said Bible passages, including the verse that commands “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” could lead jurors to vote for death. The justices ordered Robert Harlan to serve life in prison without parole for the 1994 slaying of Rhonda Maloney. Harlan’s attorneys challenged the sentence after discovering five...

On January 17, I posted a First Look column titled "The ACLU's Very Own Constitution." In it I commented upon an item that I had first been made aware of in a "Best of the Web" column by James Taranto of the Opinion Journal. The subject of my column was how the ACLU had distorted, edited, "censored" the 1st Amendment on its website in order to support its claim that the Framers considered the freedom of speech so important that they put it at the very tip-top of the Bill of Rights. But now the ACLU has changed its website...

Omega Letter Christian Intelligence Digest Ten Congress Members Call For Boykins' Removal They Were Appalled By His Mention Of GodCommentary on the NewsSaturday, September 04, 2004OL StaffTen members of Congress wrote a letter to President Bush stating that Lt. Gen. William Boykin should be dismissed as the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. In case you don't remember, Boykin is the man in charge of hunting for Osama and was caught speaking to a church while in uniform. The letter states that Boykin has offended Muslims and he lacks objectivity. They seem to be overlooking the fact that it...

My wife got an e-mail today from a friend who is a member of the B Company Warhawks of the California National Guard. The 'Hawks are getting ready to move into Iraq in the near future. They had a great little website going, but the California National Guard ordered them to take it down. I am more than a little bit peeved, because one of the goals of this site was to have the readers stand up and support these troops with something more than a bumper sticker. The warhawks had a wish list of item to make their life...

I'm amazed when seemingly intelligent people tell me they still think the American Civil Liberties Union is a group that fights for First Amendment freedoms no matter whose ox is being gored. If that's the case, why is the ACLU not filing amicus briefs in Philadelphia where four Christians are facing 47 years in jail for expressing their free-speech rights? That's right. Four Christians are facing 47 years in prison for peacefully quoting the Bible, an action an unglued local prosecutor determined to be "fighting words" when cited among homosexual activists. It all started Oct. 10, when a total of...

Christmas carols and other kinds of music will again be played on a Gurnee-area school district's buses after a short-lived ban gave new meaning to the "Silent Night" season. At a special meeting Wednesday night, the Woodland School District 50 board told Supt. Dennis Conti to allow radio music on the buses again. The decision brought applause from audience members, who had packed the board room. Some began singing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." Conti said he was disappointed that the board did not support his ban, which he contended was a matter of safety, not Christmas music. Sandra...

French Suspended By Nick Voll (August 27, 2004) Oregon City - The Clackamas County Prosecutor who appeared in an ad against John Kerry has been suspended from his job, but not for speaking out. Al French has been the target of local protests after his appearance in a political ad questioning the the Democratic candidate's war record. On Thursday he was placed on leave by the Clackamas County District Attorney's office. It wasn't for his statements against Kerry, but for lying about an extra-marital affair. Reports say French misled his former boss ten years ago to avoid getting fired. French...

So Much for Free Speech By Robert J. Samuelson Wednesday, August 25, 2004; Page A17 The presidential campaign has confirmed that, under the guise of "campaign finance reform," Congress and the Supreme Court have repealed large parts of the First Amendment. They have simply discarded what were once considered constitutional rights of free speech and political association. It is not that these rights have vanished. But they are no longer constitutional guarantees. They're governed by limits and qualifications imposed by Congress, the courts, state legislatures, regulatory agencies -- and lawyers' interpretations of all of the above. We have entered an...

The Founding Fathers established the First Amendment to protect two forms of speech: political and religious. Yet in a typically perverse irony of our time, these blameless exercises of the First Amendment are regarded as "shocking" violations of it while a growing culture of obscenity not protected by the framers receives its imprimatur. Daily we're told of sinister "outside groups" churning out...political speech. "Outside groups" is treated as a discussion-ending epithet by both the Bush and Kerry camps. Why the existence of independent groups should strike fear into the hearts of Americans is never explained. Is the United States of...

8/20/2004 5:16:00 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: National Desk, Political Reporter Contact: Chad Clanton or Phil Singer, both of Kerry-Edwards 2004, 202-464-2800; Web: http://www.johnkerry.com WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Kerry-Edwards campaign spokesman Chad Clanton released the following statement today about the new Swift Boat Veterans for Bush ad: "This is another ad from a front group funded by Bush allies that is trying to smear John Kerry. The newest ad takes Kerry's testimony out of context, editing what he said to distort the facts. He testified as a 27 year-old Vietnam veteran. He opposed a war that, at that point, cost...

CHICAGO — The anti-abortion group Wisconsin Right to Life) is airing a TV spot and radio ads about blocked judicial nominees aimed at Wisconsin Democratic Sens. Russ Feingold and Herbert Kohl. But come this weekend, the ad campaign will be illegal because of whom it's targeting.

Rogue AARP members are targeting a web site with the address JeffBlogworthy.com for "removal". The attack is an allegory of what has been happening to the Bush administration in recent months. The AARP liberals pulled out the standard playbook: 1)Ignore the facts 2)Demagogue opponents 3)Silence dissent 4)Distort the truth 5)Make threats 6)Wallow in willful ignorance Here is the post content detailing the complaint: Bush Blog site caught in lie & deceptionIt has been a great day I started the first step in removing a RNC blog site that uses typical Bush Mafia Tactics, and uses lies, deception. While using Google,...

In Rush's closing segment he said that he just received a story or document saying that lawyers for both the Kerry and Edwards teams were sending out letters to TV stations warning them about showing the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth advertisement!

DENVER - Media organizations have asked the U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) to intervene in their fight to publicize details from closed-door hearings in the Kobe Bryant sexual assault case. Attorneys for the media groups, which include The Associated Press, challenged a trial judge's ruling, which was upheld this week by the Colorado Supreme Court. The groups on Wednesday asked the high court to stay that ruling. The filing was confirmed by an AP attorney, Dave Tomlin. The media groups asked Justice Stephen Breyer (news - web sites) to put the ruling on hold pending a formal appeal...

Christian's message worn at Poway High By Blanca Gonzalez UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER June 4, 2004 LAURA EMBRY / Union-Tribune Robert Tyler (left) is helping sophomore Tyler Chase Harper sue the Poway school district for allegedly violating the student's civil rights. POWAY – Tyler Chase Harper is a good student and athlete who likes to surf and has never been in trouble at school. He is also a Christian who believes homosexuality is wrong, and he's suing the Poway Unified School District over a T-shirt proclaiming his beliefs. "I was appalled that my school would take such a controversial issue and...

WASHINGTON — Chief movie lobbyist Jack Valenti defended smoking in Hollywood films, but senators insisted the industry must do more to stop the practice. "I don't believe that whatever the director does ought to incite the intervention of the government in any form," Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, told a Senate Commerce Committee hearing yesterday. "I've got to tell you I believe it is his right to tell the story as he chooses to tell it." Some lawmakers were dissatisfied by his answers. A study last year found that teens who watch movies with smoking in...

Focus on the Family is forcing lawmakers who voted against the impeachment of a Denver judge to turn over all their correspondence in the case. The Colorado Springs conservative group, citing the state's Open Records Law in letters to each member of the House Judiciary Committee, demanded e-mails, letters, cell phone bills and notes from the hearing on the effort to impeach Judge John Coughlin. Focus on the Family lobbied in favor of impeaching Coughlin because of a decision he made in a lesbian custody case. But the impeachment effort failed when three Republicans joined five Democrats on the committee...

After banning the press from videotaping its weekly meeting, the Cornell University Student Assembly (SA) rejected the Academic Bill of Rights. Citing the document’s objectives as “redundant,” “irrelevant,” “insulting,” and “objectionable,” the SA determined that academic freedom was unimportant to the Ivy League campus. The Resolution on Academic Freedom — based on David Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights — was introduced by a bipartisan coalition of Cornell students, including the editor-in-chief of The Cornell Daily Sun. The resolution stated that the “SA affirms [the] principles of academic freedom and intellectual diversity” and went on to cite six principles: (1) Students...

<p>Received another letter from Gannett Publications, publisher of USAToday, and several other newspapers. Due to contractual arrangements they have with third-party content providers, they have denied our request to allow posting of excerpts. They will only allow the posting of titles and links.</p>

<p>Could Al Franken's life take an unfunny turn? The liberal comedian may have crossed the line after brawling with hecklers during a Howard Dean rally in New Hampshire.</p> <p>Though accounts of the fracas vary, the beefy comedian essentially bearhugged, then brought down an agitated Lyndon LaRouche supporter who screamed Mr. Dean was "a liar" from the back of the Palace Theatre in Manchester, where the Democratic presidential hopeful took questions.</p>

<p>Hewlett-Packard had the right to fire an employee who posted anti- gay passages from the Bible at his work cubicle in protest of the computer industry giant's diversity policy and in an effort to persuade gays to repent, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.</p>

In a First Amendment case of national importance, the Boy Scouts of America today asked the Supreme Court of the United States to review the exclusion of Boy Scout councils from a charitable fundraising campaign among Connecticut state employees. The state of Connecticut excluded the Boy Scouts from a charitable campaign -- in which 900 groups of all different kinds participate -- solely because of the Boy Scouts' constitutionally protected views and membership policies. The state singled out Boy Scout councils that had participated in the campaign for 30 years, but still allowed a wide variety of other groups to...

<p>Secularist fanatics try to take "holy" out of the holidays.</p> <p>If you like your Christmases straight--i.e., "Merry Christmas" instead of "Season's Greetings"--the run-up to Dec. 25 can be a trying time. And this year the grinches are again out in full force, trying their best to strip from our public squares any hint of what most Americans will actually be celebrating come Christmas morn.</p>

Sad day for freedomMona Charen (archive) December 12, 2003 | Print | Send On Dec. 10, 2003, freedom took two body blows. The first was the decision by the Supreme Court of the United States to permit the limitation of political speech. This is not exotic dancing or flag burning. This is "Vote for Sam Smith" -- the beating heart of our democracy. The Supreme Court has just tied a gag around our mouths, and most of the intellectual class is delighted. Apologists obscure the crude reality of this repression by calling it "campaign finance reform." Well, you can call...

An interesting and horrifying thing happened this Wednesday. The United States Supreme Court modified key portions of the First Amendment to the Constitution, and few citizens took notice. Admittedly, those portions include such minor and ambiguous clauses as "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech" and "Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." According to the Court, Congress may indeed abridge these freedoms, even in the context that the authors of the Constitution specifically had in mind when the Amendment...

The Supreme Court is finally discovering forms of free speech it considers "corrupting." Pornographers and flag-burners don't corrupt our politics and culture; "sham issue ads" do. Mapplethorpe-style exhibits don't corrupt the public square. No, what erodes it are nativity scenes. Basically the only form of speech the Supreme Court considers dangerous is the very political and religious speech the constitutional framers designed the First Amendment to protect. The more vital the speech is to the preservation of a republic, the more likely the justices are to ban it from public life. The more worthless the speech and destructive to a...

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm in favor of censorship, and, in all likelihood, so are you. The only difference is, if you're a typical American, you either won't admit it or you don't know it. But look: If you think it's a good idea for the government — federal, state, or local — to keep Triple-X porn off of Saturday-morning cartoon-hour TV, you're in favor of censorship. If you don't think neo-Nazis should be allowed to make presentations at your kid's public school's career day, you're in favor of censorship. Heck, if you think the...

Supreme Court Upholds Campaign Finance Law; ACLU Calls on Congress to Seek Real Solutions in Public FinancingWASHINGTON -- The American Civil Liberties Union today criticized the Supreme Court’s decision upholding major provisions of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law as an unprecedented restriction on core political speech that is inconsistent with basic First Amendment values. The ACLU is a non-partisan organization that has never endorsed a candidate in its 83-year history. After today’s decision, however, the ACLU runs the risk of criminal prosecution if it broadcasts an advertisement in the period preceding an election that urges voters to contact their Senator...

WASHINGTON - The legal wrangling over campaign finance restrictions is far from over, despite the Supreme Court's endorsement of the broadest limits on campaign donations in nearly 30 years. Justices invited opponents of the law to come back later with proof that parts of the new campaign law, as applied, are unconstitutional. But unless there is a showing of harm, the divided court said Wednesday, the nation is better off with limits on the financial influence of deep-pocket donors even if money can never be divorced from politics. The ruling means the restrictions put in place by Congress last year...

<p>Who could have imagined that the same Court which, within the past four years, has sternly disapproved of restrictions upon such inconsequential forms of expression as virtual child pornography, tobacco advertising, dissemination of illegally intercepted communications, and sexually explicit cable programming, would smile with favor upon a law that cut to the heart of what the First Amendment is meant to protect: the right to criticize the government.</p>

Supreme Court whitewash? Posted: December 11, 20031:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com The Associated Press story covering the Supreme Court hearing on requested release of Vincent Foster crime-scene photos read as follows: "Five government investigations concluded that White House attorney Vincent Foster's death in 1993 was a suicide." Not true. There haven't been five government investigations. In fact, there hasn't been even one real government investigation. Instead, there have been five cover-ups, all using the same tainted evidence and the same tainted investigators. Attorney Allan Favish believes the public may learn something from 10 unreleased police photos of Foster and has taken...

[Reading from an Associated Press wire story:] "A sharply divided..." There's nothing "sharply divided" about this. We got four liberals and we got two Republicans who read the editorial pages - or two conservatives who read the editorial pages - on the Supreme Court. Let me just stick with the details here, and then I will ad-lib my commentary and analysis after presenting to you the facts. "A sharply divided Supreme Court upheld key features of the nation's new law intended to lessen the influence of money in politics, ruling today that the government may ban unlimited donations to political...

FEDERALIST PAPERS Federalist No. 78 The Judiciary Department From McLEAN'S Edition, New York. Author: Alexander Hamilton To the People of the State of New York: WE PROCEED now to an examination of the judiciary department of the proposed government. In unfolding the defects of the existing Confederation, the utility and necessity of a federal judicature have been clearly pointed out. It is the less necessary to recapitulate the considerations there urged, as the propriety of the institution in the abstract is not disputed; the only questions which have been raised being relative to the manner of constituting it, and to...

<p>WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court (search) upheld key features of the nation's new law intended to lessen the influence of money in politics, ruling Wednesday that the government may ban unlimited donations to political parties.</p> <p>Those donations, called "soft money," had become a mainstay of modern political campaigns, used to rally voters to the polls and to pay for sharply worded television ads.</p>

GENEVA — Worried over U.S. domination, a group of developing nations wants to put control of the Internet into the hands of the United Nations, an issue that likely will overshadow a summit on information technology opening today. Key decisions on Internet issues, such as domain names and addresses, now reside in a private agency spun off from the U.S. government — and the United States wants to keep it that way. But if countries do not think their concerns are adequately heard by the Internet's key decision-makers, a U.N. official warned yesterday, they may create conflicting national policies and...

The controversy surrounding the photographs posted last week on the Web site of the Penn State College Republicans' chair has caused the resignation of at least one member and many statements and apologies from others. Leaders of the group met with university administrators to discuss the gravity of the situation. Brian Battaglia, the group's chairman, said he met with Vice President of Student Affairs Vicky Triponey this weekend to discuss possible resolutions to the situation and group members' safety on campus. "There is definitely a double standard," he said. "Our members and the officers and myself really do feel threatened...

<p>Stanley Shepp wants the right to teach his daughter about polygamy and his religious beliefs.</p> <p>HALLAM, Pennsylvania (AP) -- Tracey L. Roberts isn't trying to stop her ex-husband from voicing his support of polygamy, a belief that broke up their marriage.</p>

The justices let stand a U.S. appeals court ruling that reinstated Parks' false advertising and publicity claims against OutKast and three Bertelsmann AG (news - web sites) units -- LaFace Records, the record producer, and Arista Records and BMG Entertainment, the distributors. Parks made history in 1955 when she refused to give up her seat to a white man and move to the back of a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her arrest, which became a defining moment in the civil rights movement, led to a 381-day boycott of the bus system by blacks. It resulted in the end...