Free Republic

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...