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By Ryan Quinn
$14.99
By Sheldon S. Wolin
$18
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AP / Irwin Fedriansyah
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The former editor of Playboy Indonesia has begun a two-year prison stint for publishing images of scantily clad women. Playboy Indonesia began circulation in 2006, but Islamic hard-liners found issue with the magazine’s ethos and started legal proceedings against its editor.
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Flickr / k763 (CC-BY)
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By Ruth Marcus — I don’t know if there’s a hell, but if it exists, the Rev. Fred Phelps and other members of the Westboro Baptist Church deserve a place. In this world, their repulsive actions are shielded by the Constitution.
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Flickr / dbking
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What do you get when you mix issues regarding a fallen soldier, free speech, homophobia and gays in the military and throw in hatemonger pastor Fred Phelps and Larry Flynt’s famous court battle with Jerry Fallwell?
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By Amy Goodman — Early in the morning on Friday, Sept. 24, FBI agents in Chicago and Minnesota’s Twin Cities kicked in the doors of anti-war activists, brandishing guns, spending hours rifling through their homes.
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tnr.com
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Islamophobia alert: Martin Peretz, editor of The New Republic magazine, expressed something very unfortunate about Muslims recently (actually, he wrote more than one shameful something), and now he’s contrite about it, sort of.
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craigslist.org
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Craigslist, the online classifieds site responsible for everything from selling couches to hiring clowns for birthday parties, has quietly changed its “adult services” section—which has been the focus of controversy due to the heavy presence of prostitution services—to an eerie, blacked-out “censored.”
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Flickr / Giorgio Montersino (CC-BY-SA)
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By Stanley Kutler — Once he tasted the realities of political life, Thomas Jefferson had harsh words for the free press. What would he have made of the irresponsible, shoddy, pernicious zeal that passes for news today?
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By David Sirota — The instantly famous image of police removing a 29-year-old from Cleveland’s Progressive Field is illustrative of a nation that, for all its pro-Constitution rhetoric, increasingly ignores its founding document.
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Photo illustration from Flickr / Burstein! (CC-BY)
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It seems obvious, but if you publicly sign a petition seeking to ban gay marriage, your name can be made public. The 138,000 Washington state cowards who thought they could meddle in the relationships of their gay neighbors from the comfort of anonymity got a reality check from the Supreme Court on Thursday.
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Flickr / Foxtongue (CC-BY)
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The Icelandic parliament has approved a package of broad protections for journalists, making the island nation perhaps the safest place in the world to afflict the comfortable and speak truth to power.
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The Danish cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad inspired more than death threats. A Dutch cartoon mocking the Holocaust was published in response and the group responsible was taken to court for being offensive. (continued)
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AP / Charles Dharapak
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By Ruth Marcus — When John Paul Stevens leaves the Supreme Court bench this summer we will have lost a legal giant as well as a voice of reason and respect for democracy.
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Flickr / blhphotography
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Pointing to the First Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday nixed a federal law from 1999 that made the creation, possession or sale of depictions of animal cruelty illegal, despite the Obama administration’s request that the top court consider the animal rights angle in its decision.
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Flickr / hikikomorix
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By Stuart Whatley — When criticized, many followers of one faith or another mistakenly perceive a personal attack, and tend to elevate the sacredness of their own individual beliefs at the expense of universal free expression, thus sullying the discourse before it can even begin.
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Wikimedia Commons
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A Danish newspaper that published a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban has apologized for offending Muslims. The penitence was part of a settlement between the paper and eight Muslim groups. The apology has been denounced by other members of the Danish media, which previously stood united in rejecting calls to back down in the face of Islamic outrage over the cartoon.
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AP / Alex Brandon
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In his weekly radio address, President Obama showed his dismay at the Supreme Court’s decision to remove corporate campaign finance limits, warning of a pending deluge of special interest money into our democracy—a subject he knows quite well as he continues to fight for health care reform.
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Flickr / yukali
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According to the muckrakers at TPM, some independent media types were refused entry to a “Going Rogue” event in the world capital of Sarah Palin, Wasilla, Alaska, because their names were on a “banned list.” (continued and video)
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By Amy Goodman — Going to Canada? You may be detained at the border and interrogated. I was, last week.
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Flickr / G20Voice
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By Amy Goodman — A social worker from New York City was arrested last week while in Pittsburgh to participate in the G-20 protests, then subjected to an FBI raid this week at his home—all for using Twitter.
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World Economic Forum
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu likened a report in a Swedish tabloid that said Israeli troops harvested organs from dead Palestinians to “medieval libels that Jews killed Christian children for their blood.”
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hartmaninstitute.com
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Feeling their power, Israel’s conservative parliamentarians are drafting laws that appear to target Arab citizens, causing both allies and civil libertarians to cringe. One measure would create a loyalty oath, while another would punish any “call to negate Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state” with a year in jail.
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AP photo / Marianna Kambon, Summit of the Americas pool
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Could it be that diplomacy works better than a my-way-or-the-highway approach when dealing with adversarial nations? Judging by President Obama’s apparent progress with the Cuban government, the answer would seem to be yes.
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wikimedia.org
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A lawsuit tinged with questions of free speech and separation of church and state ended when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the Summum religious group’s attempts to install a marker of its own in a Utah park that already has a Ten Commandments monument.
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theatrum-belli.com
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Be it due to danger or the ever-present desire for security, the Israeli government has always found reason to forbid journalists to enter the Gaza Strip at times of “conflict.” The current brutal assault on Gaza is no different, but this time an association of journalists has filed a petition in the Israeli Supreme Court to demand access to the occupied territories.
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Someone better give Sarah Palin a copy of the U.S. Constitution—or better yet, read it to her slowly. The up-and-coming legal scholar/vice presidential candidate is scared for her own First Amendment rights because of “attacks” from reporters who claim she is engaging in negative campaign tactics.
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Flickr / aesop
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Team McCain has rejected the “vicious smear” that as mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin wanted to ban books from the local library, but the campaign’s 1,615-word memo on the subject indirectly supports the accusation. As Palin’s mayoral predecessor recalls, “She asked the library how she could go about banning books.” According to the Anchorage Daily News, she also fired the library director “without warning” for “not fully supporting her efforts to govern.”
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By Amy Goodman — Government crackdowns on journalists are a true threat to democracy. As the Republican National Convention meets in St. Paul, Minn., this week, police are systematically targeting journalists.
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BGay.com
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Here’s a quiz: What’s the most potentially harmful phenomenon or issue threatening our nation? Our use of torture on suspected terrorists? Hawks in the White House? If you guessed either of those, according to Oklahoma Rep. Sally Kern, you’re wrong—homosexuality is America’s worst scourge. Guess who won’t be voting for Rep. Kern in her next bid for office?
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Freespeech.org has this entertaining take on the privatization of the Internet, a medium that was once public, open and collaborative, but has since been taken over by corporate juggernauts. It’s not something we all think about, but it wasn’t so long ago that the Internet was organized around information and education, as opposed to shopping.
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thesituationist.wordpress.com
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There’s been a slight shift in the regulation of pornography in America, thanks to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, that might appeal to those of-age-and-consenting types interested in creating racy footage of themselves without the goal of profiting (monetarily, anyhow).
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AP photo / Jose Goitia, file
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Joining in the exciting game of apocalyptic Mad Libs that President Bush kicked off with his recent pronouncement that a nuclear-equipped Iran could start World War III, Cuban leader Fidel Castro has swapped out “Iran” for “Bush” and turned Bush’s accusation back at him in this latest round of doomsday fun.
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youtube.com
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Get ready for the inevitable barrage of jokes on late-night television: The Washington state Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that a law holding politicians legally accountable for lying about their opponents is unconstitutional.
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msnbc.com
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In a landmark ruling, a federal appeals court has sided with broadcasters against the Federal Communications Commission on the issue of indecency, saying the regulatory body has not adequately explained how the Constitution could permit the censorship of “indecent” language.
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A couple of leading Internet personalities, including the creator of Wikipedia, have proposed a set of voluntary guidelines to help rein in the nastiness and abuse that can thrive in the blogosphere. Critics say the proposal would limit free expression, while supporters argue that “free speech is enhanced by civility.”
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Police say Ivan Safronov, a military correspondent for a major Russian newspaper, jumped out of a fifth-floor window. But the media and friends say it’s likelier that he was murdered because his reporting had embarrassed Vladimir Putin’s government. Thirteen Russian journalists were killed in 2006, making it the third-most-dangerous country to report from.
(h/t: Largest Minority)
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answers.com
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The New York City Council has symbolically banned the use of the word nigger. The resolution, though unenforceable, is meant to defy the word’s popularity among young people, though, as the BBC points out, an “edict from elected officials” is unlikely to have much of an impact.
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The Dixie Chicks were honored in December by the ACLU for defending liberty and the right to free speech in the face of overwhelming pressure. Lead vocalist Natalie Maines said she’s proud to be a card-carrying member and “It hasn’t taken courage to stand strong, just a first-grade education.”
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An air traveler wrote the above phrase—a reference to the head of the Transportation Security Administration—on his carry-on bag, and the traveler ended up being detained by TSA personnel who told him that his free speech ends at the security gate.
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A coalition of conservatives and progressives has formed to defeat a law that would allow Internet provider companies to decide which sites load up the fastest—based on who pays them the most. Such a law would upend the even playing field that every site on the Web now enjoys. Check it out and contact your congressperson.
When a right-wing blog like Instapundit and a left-wing organization like MoveOn.org get together on something, it’s worth paying attention to.
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From indybay.org
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Colleges and universities that accept federal money must allow military recruiters on campus, even in the face of the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gay people. John Roberts wrote the 8-0 opinion.
Posted on Mar 6, 2006
READ MORE 
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By Robert Scheer — On Monday an Austrian court sentenced crackpot British historian David Irving to three years’ imprisonment for having denied the Holocaust 17 years ago. Directly on the heels of rioting sparked by the Muhammad cartoons, the ruling has exposed a longstanding double standard in the West about who is entitled to free speech and why.
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From Jyllands-Posten
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As violence spreads across the world, Editor & Publisher has the best take yet on why most U.S. news outlets won’t re-publish the satirical images. | story
ABC is one of the very few to do so. | video (there’s a commercial)
Update: Check out the way Truthdig’s Mr. Fish depicted Jesus in a cartoon.
Is it offensive, an exercise in free speech, or both?
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