- You don’t have to think porn’s OK, or that speech never does harm, to see that Ross Douthat’s censorship ideas will fall flat on their face [Rick Garnett/Prawfs, Taylor Millard/Hot Air quoting me, Elizabeth Nolan Brown, Tyler Cowen]
- Group libel theory meets nationalism in Europe’s censorship creep: “Poland Passes Bill Criminalizing Claims Of Its Complicity In The Holocaust” [Colin Dwyer/NPR, Eugene Volokh, Jacob Sullum]
- “Arizona Bar Accuses Libel Lawyers of Suing Fake Defendants” [Eugene Volokh; related Paul Alan Levy]
- First Amendment should protect t-shirt shop that refused to print gay pride message [Ilya Shapiro on Cato amicus in Hands-On Originals case, involving Lexington, Ky. anti-discrimination law; earlier here, etc.]
- Federal judge rules Electronic Frontier Foundation need not obey an Australian court order directing it to take down a “Stupid Patent of the Month” blog post, finding the order “repugnant to the United States Constitution.” [Kurt Opsahl, EFF]
- “First Amendment Watch is a project of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. Our mission is to document threats to the First Amendment freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and petition, all rights that are critical to self-governance in a democratic society….First Amendment Watch is an online news and educational resource for journalists, educators and students.”
Filed under: Australia, First Amendment, free speech
2 Comments
Maybe the good folks at First Amendment Watch should actually read the First Amendment. They are apparently oblivious to the first half of it. On the “about us” page of their website, among six paragraphs describing their work, the word “religion” never appears.
Seeing as First Amendment Watch is a project run by a journalism institute, I can see how it makes sense for them to focus on the second half of that amendment. Fortunately enough, there are plenty of other groups who focus exclusively on the first half.