John Patrick Leary Published 11:04 p.m. ET July 16, 2017 | Updated 11:04 p.m. ET July 16, 2017

The recent flurry of activity on the crisis of campus free speech is manufactured, Leary writes.(Photo: David Guralnick / The Detroit News)Buy Photo

The Michigan Legislature, like the U.S. Senate, is a safe space for right-wing groupthink. Thats the conclusion Ive drawn from a recent flurry of activity on the manufactured crisis of campus free speech in Lansing and Washington, D.C. A pair of bills recently introduced by Sen. Patrick Colbeck would direct state universities to ensure the fullest degree of intellectual freedom and free expression, and would then require them to suspend or expel student protesters who infringe upon another persons free speech rights. Colbecks bill is similar to proposed legislation in Wisconsin, Colorado, and North Carolina. Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., Sen. Chuck Grassley recently concluded a Judiciary Committee hearing entitled Free Speech 101: The Assault on the First Amendment on College Campuses.

What is driving this concern with college activism? Conservatives have been in an uproar since a series of raucous protests against conservative speakers at campuses like the University of California, Berkeley, and Middlebury College in Vermont last year. In February, Milo Yiannopoulos, the disgraced former Breitbart.com editor, canceled a talk at Berkeley in the face of raucous demonstrations. The following month at Middlebury, student protesters interrupted a lecture by Charles Murray, an American Enterprise Institute Fellow and co-author of The Bell Curve, the book that argued that racial inequality is shaped by nonwhite peoples genetic makeup.

Grassley and Colbeck choose to read disruptive demonstrations like these as evidence of a pervasive crisis of free speech on campus. Grassley claimed that American colleges are becoming places of anti-Constitution indoctrination and censorship. His primary example of this dreadful development? Seventy percent of students today believe it is desirable to restrict the use of slurs and other language intentionally offensive to certain groups, he said. The First Amendment, to Grassley, protects Americans God-given right to be cruel in public. Colbeck echoes this assessment.

The Bill of Rights should be next on Colbecks summer reading list. One can argue about tactics, but Berkeley and Middlebury students had every right to loudly, disruptively, even rudely protest Yiannopoulos and Murray. The First Amendment makes no demands on politeness. And Yiannopoulos and Murray, in turn, had every right to give their lectures without state repression. But contrary to popular belief in the GOP, the First Amendment does not guarantee anyone, right or left, a platform or a polite audience.

Whats more, Colbeck seems not to recognize that the First Amendment applies to speakers he doesnt like leftist protesters, in this case as well as those he does. Senate Bill 349 stipulates that protests and demonstrations that infringe upon the rights of others to engage in or listen to expressive activity are not permitted. Violations of this vaguely-worded rule what does infringe mean? would result in either suspensions or expulsions for student demonstrators speaking out on the issues that matter to them. Under the law, student activists would have recourse to a disciplinary hearing and a lawyer if they have enough pizza money laying around to hire one, that is. Colbeck may have read 1984, but he has learned all the wrong lessons it. It is Orwellian in the extreme to propose a free-speech tribunal, presided over by college authorities, as a remedy for the suppression of free speech.

The stated reasons for the GOPs interest in regulating college campus activism dont stand up to scrutiny. What, then, are their unstated reasons?

Politics. Student activists, the clear targets of the bill, are on the left. Senate Bill 350 stipulates that universities must not shield students from protected speech, if they find the ideas and opinions expressed unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive. I agree as does every faculty member I know. (Unlike Sen. Grassley, however, I dont consider racial slurs to be ideas.) But if Colbeck were serious about nurturing unpopular or controversial opinions in college, then he would be alarmed at the rise of neo-McCarthyist groups like Turning Point USA, which operates a Professor Watchlist that claims to expose and document leftist professors across the country. He would be disappointed that George Cicciarello-Maher, a Drexel University political scientist on this list, faces possible dismissal over a series of tweets that earned the ire of an right-wing outrage machine on social media.

But you will not hear a word about them, or many others like them, from Colbeck or Grassley. Conservatives, no longer content to undermine public colleges by starving them of funding, now seem to prefer that the government regulate their intellectual lives more directly all in the name of free speech, of course. And in the name of freedom of speech and thought, we shouldnt let them.

John Patrick Leary is an assistant professor of English at Wayne State University.

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Column: The manufactured free speech crisis - The Detroit News

When Congress invites a comedian and filmmaker to testify about free speech on college campuses you know theres a problem.

On July 27, Adam Carolla will address the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the Subcommittee on Health Care, Benefits and Administrative Rules, and the Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Affairs about the declining acceptance of free speech on college campuses in America.

Also invited to speak to members of Congress are conservative author and commentator Ben Shapiro and former ACLU President Nadine Strossen. The official title of the hearing is "Challenges to Freedom of Speech on College Campuses."

Carolla is actually a fitting person to speak to the groups, as he's currently working on a film called "No Safe Spaces," along with conservative commentator Dennis Prager. The two men go to college campuses that promote such notions assafe spacesto debate and dig into the truth of what's happening on today's college campuses.

Free speech is a serious problem on today's colleges. At University of California, Berkeley, riots broke out when commentator Milo Yiannopoulos was invited to speak as well as when Ann Coulter's appearance was announced earlier this year.

College is meant to be a place at which young people learn more about themselves and the world, through the representation and discussion of free ideas and points of view. There should be endless amounts of talk and free forms of debate about a variety of issues.

Related: Four TV Shows You Should Be Watching

Unfortunately, the stories coming from today's college campuses tell the world these institutions of higher education are not truly preparing young people to exist in the real world.

There are no "safe spaces" in the real world and young people need to get used to hearing and engaging in speech with which they disagree.

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Why This Filmmaker Will Testify Before Congress on Free Speech - LifeZette

Writing in the New York Times Sunday Review, Professor Lisa Barrett of Northeastern University posed a question this weekend:

"When is speech violence?"

Barrett, who specializes in psychology, tries to answer the question with two key points.

First, "Offensiveness is not bad for your body and brain. ... When you're forced to engage a position you strongly disagree with, you learn something about the other perspective as well as your own. The process feels unpleasant, but it's a good kind of stress temporary and not harmful to your body and you reap the longer-term benefits of learning."

No problem there. Stress is something we can internalize and compensate for.

But then Barrett warns against "long stretches of simmering stress. If you spend a lot of time in a harsh environment worrying about your safety, that's the kind of stress that brings on illness and remodels your brain." What kind of stress is Barrett talking about?

Milo Yiannopoulos.

The professor explains that "it's reasonable, scientifically speaking, not to allow a provocateur and hatemonger like Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at your school. He is part of something noxious, a campaign of abuse. There is nothing to be gained from debating him, for debate is not what he is offering."

Conversely, Barrett says, Charles Murray is worthy of our ears because he offers meaningful debate.

In this juxtaposition of Milo and Murray, Barrett wants us to regard her argument as nuanced and intellectual.

We should not do so.

After all, there's a moral and intellectual rot at play here. While Barrett might deride Yiannopoulos as a "hatemonger" who has no interest in the exchange of ideas, his supporters clearly believe the opposite. Whether defending Donald Trump or challenging college campuses to allow controversial speakers, to them, Yiannopoulos does serve social debate.

And that speaks to the broader issue here.

At its most basic level, Barrett's argument is neither intelligent nor constructive. It is simply hyper-arrogant. The professor believes her viewpoint of stress and speakers should be a guide for all society.

The opposite is true. Indeed, Barrett is exactly why the Constitution grants such latitude to the conduct of free speech. If not, a speaker's appeal or discomfort will be viewed subjectively by each individual. The Constitution represents the truth that the more individual viewpoints exchanged, the more opportunity for worthwhile social discourse.

Barrett concludes with a call to action "we must also halt speech that bullies and torments. From the perspective of our brain cells, the latter is literally a form of violence."

Well, from the prospective of my brain cells, Barrett's argument is a form of violence. Not because it threatens me, but because its arrogant idiocy causes me painful stress.

Yet unlike Barrett, I believe freedom of speech is too important to be subjugated to my misplaced emotions.

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The latest idiotic attack on free speech: Opinions as violence - Washington Examiner

"Sad" and "helpless" - that was how Thuringia State Premier Bodo Ramelow of the Left Party described his emotions after right-wing radicals chanted "Sieg heil" at the "Rock against Being Swamped by Foreigners" event on Saturday. In an interview with the eastern German regional state television broadcaster MDR, Ramelow said that measures needed to be taken to prevent such concerts from enjoying the same protections and advantages as political protests.

"I find it intolerable that they staged a giant right-wing extremist rock festival under the guise of a demonstration and earned money for their political network while all the costs were passed on to taxpayers," Ramelow said.

The German constitution guarantees the right of people to assemble, and the state bears the costs of police presences to maintain order at political demonstrations. Ramelow suggests rewriting those rules to exclude concerts like the one in Themar, which he cast as a commercial event that had attracted 6,000 violent right-wing extremists from all over Europe.

Ramelow says he doesn't want taxpayers footing the bill for such concerts

"I think we have to define the right to assembly precisely enough that in future local authorities, licensing offices and courts don't see things like this in terms of freedom of speech and treat a gigantic concert as a nice neighborhood demonstration," Ramelow said. "We calculate that it took in between 300,000 and 400,000 euros ($344,000-$458,000)."

Thuringia has the option of modifying Germany's federal Law of Assembly as states such as Berlin and Bavaria have done. And while it is unclear whether Ramelow's statements were an off-the-cuff response or a serious call to action, it is certain that Thuringia is the center of the right-wing extremist music scene in Germany.

Right-wing hot spot

It is no coincidence that Saturday's concert was staged in this part of the country. People in the formerly communist eastern part of Germany are generally more receptive to right-wing extremism than elsewhere. Henning Flad, project directorof the Federal Working Group for the Church and Right-Wing Radicalism, says Thuringia has been a perennial "hot spot" for right-wing extremist music.

"It always had particularly active, ambitious structures of people who organized concerts like this," Flad told DW. "It has always been an infrastructural point of connection."

"Guerilla marketing" is how marketing strategists have labeled stickers that can be distributed quickly, anonymously and just about everywhere. They are also used for branding, publicity slogans and concert announcements - and as a means for spreading rather dubious political messages.

The exhibition documents to what extent stickers have been used as a means of political agitation - well before the Nazis exploited them for spreading their racist propaganda. It aims to illustrate just what the omnipresent stickers can do. The anti-Semitic slogans in the picture managed to get stuck in people's heads during the Nazi era.

The Nazis purposefully used their anti-Semitic stickers in order to spread their hate messages among the people and on the streets. Immediately after Nazis' rise to power in 1933, SA and SS paratroopers pasted stickers meant to intimidate the Jewish population on Jewish-run shops all over Berlin.

Jewish organizations and associations resorted to the same means in order to defend themselves against the agitation of the Nazis. Throughout the early 1930s, they continued to fight back with their own anti-propaganda, printing stickers like this one of the "Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith." It reads: "The Nazis are our disaster."

During the era from 1933 to 1945, anti-Semitic stickers even came to be used for personal messages and love letters. Like political stamps, they often decorated the backs of envelopes so that the addressee would immediately grasp what political attitude the addressor intended to espouse.

Political stickers were also used excessively in Germany during the 1970s and 1980s. Long before social media came to be invented, these little messages embodied the political statements of an entire generation. A large part of the exhibition originates from the private collection of Wolfgang Haney, who collected stickers dating from the late 19th century through the present.

Although focusing on the historical context, the exhibition also takes a critical look at current affairs. The debate on refugee policy has triggered the production of stickers, some of which have frightening historical parallels. The exhibition runs through July 20, 2016, and has been put together in cooperation with the Research Center for Anti-Semitism at Berlin's Technical University.

Author: Heike Mund / ad

The organizer of Saturday's concert, Tommy Frenck, who owns an online clothing shop featuring neo-Nazi items and has the word "Aryan" tattooed around his neck, comes from Thuringia. The owner of the property where the festival was held, Bodo Dressel, the mayor of a neighboring town, was until recently a member of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD), who was criticized from within his own party for being too extreme.

Flad says that there has been a small comeback in right-wing extremist music in the past two years, "which thanks to this well-attended concert has become more visible." Jan Raabe, perhaps Germany's leading expert on the radical right and music, says there are some 200 extreme right-wing bands and singer-songwriters active in the country. He puts the number of people in the scene, narrowly defined, at around 15,000.

"What we, of course, don't know is how many young people have this sort of music on MP3 players and otherdevices," Raabe told DW.

Thuringia is the center of Germany's right-wing radical music scene

A 'peaceful counteroffensive'

Local authorities initially refused to grant permits for Saturday's event in Themar, but that refusal was overturned by a higher Thuringia authority. Organizers are planning another far-right event for July 29 with the title "Rock for Identity."

The mayor of Themar, Hubert Bse, organized a protest action with other local leaders against last Saturday's concert and says he'll do the same if the upcoming festival is allowed to go ahead.

"It would be terrible if we didn't come together in a peaceful counteroffensive," Bse told DW. "We don't want this sort of thing and are of the opinion that, in terms of content, it has nothing to do with Themar."

Bse said he couldn't say whether he supported Ramelow's ideas without knowing the details. But he added that his town, which has just over 3,000 residents, was too small to cope easily with large-scale right-wing extremist music festivals.

"In general, we should ask whether events of this size, which significantly exceed the number of inhabitants, should be considered examples of people assembling," Bse said. "We had 1,000 police officers here. In the end it all costs a lot of money."

To change the law - or better enforce it?

Video footage from the festival, which was shared on social media, shows a crowd shouting "Sieg Heil."

Critics have questioned why police officers didn't intervene and shut down the concert since expressions of support for National Socialism are forbidden in Germany.

The Central Council of Jews in Germany praised the community of Themar for "bravely" opposing the concert and said it agreed with Ramelow that a "radical right-wing music concert should not be classed as a political demonstration covered by the freedom to assemble."

But Ramelow's suggestion also attracted considerable criticism from detractors who argued that it would do nothing to combat the problem. Raabe, for instance, said he didn't see any "direct advantages" of changing laws on assembly for combating right-wing extremism and the associated music scene. Existing laws, he proposed, should be better enforced.

"What does it mean to say that political events enjoy special protection?" Raabe asked. "I would like to assume that the law is also enforced at political events. Moreover, football matches aren't political events, and yet football clubs are required to pay for police security. That isn't the real problem."

The residents of Themar now must wait to found out whether another event will be held in their town in two weeks time.

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Thuringia leader slams neo-Nazi concert free speech protection - Deutsche Welle

BELLE PLAINE, Minn. A veterans park in Belle Plaine became a ground zero for constitutional debate after the city created a Free Speech Zone where memorials of any religious background could be placed.

In January, a Christian memorial was removed over concerns it violated the establishment clause of the Constitution. Now, a satanic memorial is set to move in, causing protests on Saturday.

The removal of the Christian memorial by the city of Belle Plaine sparked outrage. The city cited complaints that it violated Constitutional obligations to separate church and state. Later, the memorial was returned to the park.

In February, the Belle Plaine city council voted to establish the veterans memorial park a Free Speech Zone, welcoming any religion or group to take part.

This is what we support, this is what the community supports, said one protester. And it doesnt matter if you are Jewish, Muslimwe are all Americans fighting this war together.

But, promises of inclusion were quickly put to the test. The Satanic Temple in Salem, Massachusetts, announced a plan to install a monument of their own: a black cube with a helmet on top.

The monument is intended to honor veterans who may not be Christian.

Counter-protester Army Reserve Lieutenant Kevin Lindow told Fox 9 that he supports any memorial, regardless of religion or background. He said he does not believe in God, but did serve his country and would like the monument to be in the park.

Others at Saturdays gathering believe Constitutional protection comes with exceptions.

My thoughts are, if you are calling Satan to be on your side, you are not going to expect any blessings, Bernard Slobodnik, a protest organizer said.

There is a freedom of speech, but freedom comes at a price, as well, said one protester. They are free to believe whatever they want to, but they need to do it on their own grounds, not on public property.

Read more from FOX 9.

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Satanic memorial sparks free speech debate in Minnesota city - Fox News

Flying Dog Brewery has officially terminated its membership with the Brewers Association (BA), citing changes to the not-for-profit industry trade organizations Advertising and Marketing Code thatare aimed at addressing sexually explicit, lewd, or demeaning brand names, language, text, graphics, photos, video, or other images.

Flying Dog CEO Jim Caruso told Brewbound that his company, ranked no. 32 on the BAs list of largest domestic craft breweries, had cut ties on June 1 even though it had paid its membership dues through June 2018. He made the decision after the BA announced policy changes during the annual Craft Brewers Conference in April.

The new policy prevents brewers from using the BAs intellectual property after winning medals at the Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup. It was put in place, in part, to snuff out offensive labels and to limit how those companies are able to promote their winning beers.

This sort of policy is nothing more than a thinly veiled side door to censorship, Caruso said. Its anti-free enterprise. Its interfering with their competitors business. Its thinking for consumers. Americans hate thought police, and they hate censorship.

BA CEO Bob Pease told Brewbound that the organization was disappointed in Flying Dogs decision to withdraw from the organization. However, Pease defended the policy changes as reasonable and responsible.

The BA and its members absolutely support the First Amendment, he wrote in an email. Invoking the First Amendment in this instance is misplaced and inaccurate. The Brewers Association has no intention nor ability to censor any market initiatives by any brewing industry member.

However, Caruso told Brewbound that he views the changes as nothing more than attempting to bully and intimidate craft brewers into self censorship.

Self censorship is a particularly vicious tyranny of silence because people tend to over censor, he said.

Caruso said he asked the BA to reconsider enacting the policy but realized the organization was intent on implementing the changes. He then informed BA CEO Bob Pease of Flying Dogs decision to end its membership and followed up with a six-page letter that outlined reasons for his companys departure.

Caruso said Pease assured him that the BA had no issue with any of Flying Dog brands, which include labels such as Raging Bitch as well as sexually explicit, innuendo-laden brands such as Doggie Style Pale Ale and Pearl Necklace Chesapeake Stout. However, those assurances were not merely a case of agreeing to disagree, but a fundamental disagreement on a core principle, Caruso stressed.

Free enterprise doesnt exist without freedom of expression, he said. If youve suppressed my ability to communicate my marketing message to my potential consumers, you are anti-free enterprise. Its appalling to think that the brewers who sit on the board of directors and the BA management are interfering in the industry, trying suppress free enterprise and suppress craft brewers from communicating their marketing message to their consumers.

Asked about brand names that consumers may consider offensive in Flying Dogs portfolio, Caruso replied: The question is, offensive to whom?

Everybody has something subjective, he said. There is a free market, and its as much a marketplace of ideas as it is products, and over time good products survive and bad products disappear off the shelves. Thats how it works.

Caruso said such a policy creates a chilling effect on speech. For example, a new brewery attempting to differentiate itself from the more than 5,400 beer companies now operating in the United States may talk themselves out of using a clever, witty name that might have a double entendre for fear of running afoul of the BAs policy.

Its an awful policy because its nonobjective, Caruso said.

Part of the BAs efforts to crack down on offensive labels also included the formation of a three-person Advertising Complaint Review Panel, aimed at addressing member complaints. The findings of reviews are published on the BAs website.

Caruso characterized the panel as a tribunal, and called the review process creepy.

Three people are making the decisions for fifty million craft beer consumers, he said. You actually have a system where you go online and complain about your competitor. What reality are they living in?

BA leaders have completely lost sight of the purpose for the Association and should be focusing their attention on issues such as nutritional labeling, the fight for market share with wine and spirits, the challenges coming from big brewers, softening of craft beer sales and winning new consumers, Caruso argued.

The brewers on the BA board of directors and BA management are there to serve the industry, he said. Theyre not there to think for consumers and make sure they only have BA-approved choices. Theyre not there to interfere with their competitors and tell them how to run their businesses. There are big issues in the industry, and thats what they should be focused on.

This isnt the first time that Flying Dog has taken a stand on First Amendment rights. The brewery lodged a federal challenge in 2009 against the state of Michigan, which had rejected the brewerys Raging Bitch label and other labels using the word bitch. In 2015, Flying Dog won the case and was awarded six-figures in damages, which Caruso said were used to create the First Amendment Society, a nonprofit educational advocacy group.

Caruso said his company will take the tens of thousands of dollars that it spends annually on its BA membership and related activities such as GABF, CBC and SAVOR and double it in a donation to the First Amendment Society.

This is not a small issue for us, Caruso said. We are the freedom of speech brewery.

SPONSORED POST

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In Defense of Free Speech, Flying Dog Terminates BA Membership - Brewbound.com

Amanda Roley , KREM 5:46 PM. PDT July 13, 2017

SPOKANE, Wash. -- A woman is facing multiple counts of malicious harassment after court documents said she yelled racially motivated comments at her neighbors.

Court records show the cell phone video was taken of Shalisha Israel yelling things like, "You guys drug dealers or something," and "I think you might be terrorists! This is not your America! You are evil!"

PREVIOUS STORY:Woman arrested after harassing neighbors, calling them 'terrorists'

KREM 2 posted the story online and many people commented that what the woman said was not right but what about her freedom of speech?

To verify when your first amendment rights are protected and when it turns into harassment KREM 2 talked to First Amendment lawyer David Bodney.

He said the line between your freedom of speech and harassment is drawn with three exceptions to your First Amendment rights. The first is, if the statement constitutes incitement. Meaning if there is a serious risk of imminent harm, it is possible your speech can be limited. The second exception is if the speech uses "fighting words" meaning if someone continues to provoke another in close proximity using language that would cause a person to respond aggressively. The final exception, is if the speaker says a true threat, which is where the speaker communicates in a way that is a true threat to the safety of the recipient. However, Bodney said these three exceptions are fairly difficult to prove.

"There are not a lot of fighting word cases out there, and there are not a whole lot of true threat cases out there. And thought the court recognizes this notion of what constitutes incitement, it's a very difficult standard to meet," Bodney said.

Bodney adds that your first amendment right is not absolute. In the case of this woman who shouted racial remarks at her neighbors, Bodney said the video does not show any pronounced evidence of the three exceptions to free speech. Even though the first amendment could be used as a defense, Bodney said it could still go in the victim's favor.

"If the speech is annoying, alarming or otherwise meets the test of a state statute that define harassment it may well be possible to get an order to restrain that kind of speech," Bodney explains.

KREM 2 can verify there are exceptions to your first amendment rights that would classify your speech as harassment. Before you exercise those rights, make sure your speech does not include fighting words, a true threat or constitute incitement.

Help our journalists VERIFY the news.Do you know someone else we should interview for this story? Did we miss anything in our reporting? Is there another story you'd like us to VERIFY?Click here.

2017 KREM-TV

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Verify: When does free speech become harassment? - KREM.com

We are led to believe that standing up for the Constitution and limiting the tax burden on citizens were Republican tenets. Unfortunately, members of the Republican Party are the ones now considering to stomp on both the First Amendment and the American entrepreneur by changing the way we expense advertising costs.

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX) is reportedly contemplating the adoption of former Republican Rep. Dave Camps 2014 ad tax proposal, in which commercial advertising would no longer be 100 percent deductible as a business expenseas it has been since the creation of the federal income tax. Instead, it would be 50 percent deductible, leaving the remaining to be amortized over a decade. By holding corporations money for an entire decade, this new tax would treat ads as an asset like machinery instead of as a business expense like research and wages.

I know accounting can be boring, but these are fighting words!

In singling out free, commercial speech from other business expenses, this 50/50 proposal is in clear violation of the First Amendment. After all, the reason commercial advertising has been fully deductible since the income taxs founding in 1913 is because Congress has always known that it cannot constitutionally regulate free, commercial speech by making it a dollars and cents game.

The American Revolution was largely fought over this very issue. Remember the Stamp Act of 1765? The relationship between England and the Colonies was strained already when this tax pushed it to a boiling point. The Stamp Act imposed an across-the-board flat tax on advertising. It levied a tax of two shillings per ad no matter what it was or where it was being printed. Mob violence was triggered. Stamp collectors quit in fear and the British government repealed it a year later to quell the violence, but the goose was cooked. War was on the horizon and the Stamp Act was a rallying cry for the colonists.

After the British were defeated, our Founders set up a form of government with a Constitution in which the First Amendment prevented the government from ever taxing advertising again. Freedom to advertise: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press

For centuries, the First Amendment has protected corporate advertising, which goes hand in hand with our formidable entrepreneurial spirit. Businesses must advertise to succeedin fact, advertising spending generates approximately 16 percent of the nations economic activity. Do the Republicans really want to be the party to tax that?

From Constitutional scholar Bruce Fein:

Commercial speech is protected by the First Amendment. In overturning a prohibition on legal advertising in Bates v. State Bar of Arizona (1977), the Supreme Court reaffirmed that free speech includes paid advertisements or solicitations to pay or to contribute money. The Court elaborated on the consumer benefits of commercial advertising:

The listeners interest is substantial: the consumers concern for the free flow of commercial speech often may be far keener than his concern for urgent political dialogue. Moreover, significant societal interests are served by such speech. Advertising, though entirely commercial, may often carry information of import to significant issues of the day. [citation omitted]. And commercial speech serves to inform the public of the availability, nature, and prices of products and services, and thus performs an indispensable role in the allocation of resources in a free enterprise system. [citation omitted]. In short, such speech serves individual and societal interests in assuring informed and reliable decisionmaking.

A Republican-controlled Congress would go down in history as the party to regulate our First Amendment right in such a way as to extort more from the already burdened American businessmen and women.

Recently, a coalition of 124 House members, led by Reps. Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.) and Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) sent a letter to congress urging them not to mess with the current tax treatment of advertising.

Will Congress heed the warning? Only time will tell.

Steve Sherman is an author, radio commentator, and former Iowa House candidate. His articles have appeared nationally in both print and online. His most recent novel, titled Mercy Shot, can be found on Amazon or at http://www.scsherman.com

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Is Advertising Free Speech? - The American Conservative

Buffalo Business First

Did Carl Paladino engage in protected free speech? Buffalo Business First As I sit down to write this column over the Fourth of July weekend, my thoughts wander to our rights and duties as U.S. citizens and to the First Amendment's freedom of speech clause. We all know by now that Carl Paladino, developer, former ...

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Did Carl Paladino engage in protected free speech? - Buffalo Business First

Amendment 1 of The Constitution of the United States says, Congress Shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The statement, The press is the enemy of the people, is an attack on the Constitution of the United States and Amendment 1 of the Bill of Rights not hyperbole or exaggeration but an attack. This encompassing statement includes television, radio and print media.

The term fake news is also an attack on the Constitution of The United States and Amendment 1 of the Bill of Rights. Fake news is a response a child would use for something he/she doesnt want to hear. Fake news has no merit just as saying, The sky is falling, the sky is falling! has no merit. Not only does it erode Amendment 1 of the Bill of Rights, it is also allows the opportunity to avoid proving the statement. This broad brush attack on the Constitution of the United States of America is convenient to the user because it allows the user to hide behind the Fake news statement and not prove the assertion.

To use another perspective, what if the statements were the following attacks:

Religion is the enemy of the people or fake religion

Freedom of speech is the enemy of the people or fake speech

The right to peacefully assemble is the enemy of the people or fake assembly

As citizens of The United States, protect Your Bill of Rights and your Constitution of the United States of America.

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Freedom of speech and the press protected - Grand Island Independent

On the Sunday before the 4th of Julya celebration of our nations independence from a regime that, among other odious acts, criminalized the criticism of its monarchcommentator Lindy West exhorted us to Save Free Speech From Trolls. This doltish ramble is Wests debut as a weekly opinion columnist in the New York Times, suggesting that Wests sense of self-respect and that of the Times somehow correlate inversely.

West, wielding an intellect shaped by long hours of fighting with people on social media, bounteous self-righteousness, and little else, begins by recalling the halcyon days when she thought it silly to be called a politically correct, anti-free-speech censor. She muses, I was not the government. I literally could not censor anyone. As if being a government was the only way to go about it.

But then Trump got elected, and it didnt seem so silly anymore. Since then, the anti-free-speech charge, applied broadly to cultural criticism and especially to feminist discourse, has proliferated, writes West. It is nurtured largely by men on the internet who used to nurse their grievances alone, in disparate, insular communities around the web mens rights forums, video game blogs. Gradually, these communities have drifted together into one great aggrieved, misogynist gyre and bonded over a common interest: pretending to care about freedom of speech so they can feel self-righteous while harassing marginalized people for having opinions.

Thus begins a veritable manual on how to preach to the social justice warrior choir.

West possesses a mysterious gift of psychic progressivism that lets her see into the hearts of men and unearth the real intentions behind their stated ones. Or so it would seem. These men are only pretending to care about freedom of speech, for example. They really want to harass marginalized people for having opinions. They want to feel self-righteous while doing so. It is just that simple they have no legitimate concerns at all, of that West is certain.

Further on in her column, she writes, Nothing is more important than the First Amendment, the internet men say, provided you interpret the First Amendment exactly the same way they do: as a magic spell that means no one you dont like is allowed to criticize you. She adds, The law does not share that interpretation, as if someone besides herself had made it.

Theyre weaponizing free speech to maintain their cultural dominance, she says, obsequiously quoting Anita Sarkeesian, another psychic progressive.

That flushing noise you hear is the sound of productive dialogue disappearing into the rhetorical toilet. Identitarians like West have never grasped that it is impossible to found a good-faith discussion on bad-faith premises such as these. There are great numbers of principled people who worry sincerely, and justifiably, about attacks on the First Amendment in the name of social justice. The veracity of that sincerity is not up for debate any more than Wests Ill be happy to prove mine right after she proves hers.

West describes herself as having made on occasion some relatively innocuous bit of cultural criticism like, say, that racism is bad and artists should try not to make racist art if they dont want to be called racists. Sarkeesian, she says mildly, started a Kickstarter campaign to fund a series of YouTube videos critiquing the representation of women in video games and issued some precise, rigorously argued opinions about the relative loincloth sizes of male and female video game avatars. For this and nothing more, they were answered with untold abuse, as she frames it.

A typical example of Wests innocuousness is this sentence inan essay she wrote for the Guardian: As we all know from the anguished howls of quivering white people that erupt any time a person of colour expresses any dissatisfaction about being murdered by police, disenfranchised by voter suppression, trapped in cycles of systemic poverty and/or treated like a criminal when theyre just trying to buy a horrible, $49 mauve bodysack, nobody in the world is ever racist, except for actual KKK members and the ghost of George Wallace. Exaggeration for effect is a time-honored literary device, but West employs it so often that one gets the sense that its not only for effect, but to fill the world of her prose with un-woke whites that justify every last bit of her disdain for those who dont share her take on these issues.

Sarkeesian, meanwhile, has been fairly criticized for subscribing to a reductionist form of feminism that relies on similar blanket damnations. What West doesnt tell you is that some of this criticism has come from other feminists such as Liana Kerzner, who were consequently subjected to online harassment from Sarkeesians defenders.

West mentions that Sarkeesian recently appeared at a public talk only to find the first two rows of seats stacked with her online harassers, leering up at her, filming her on their phones. She elides the part where Sarkeesian addressed the man who organized the filming, If you Google my name on YouTube you get shitheads like this dude who are making these dumb-assed videos. They just say the same shit over and over again. I hate to give you attention because youre a garbage human. Sarkeesian has always been more interested in declaration than persuasion.

None of this justifies threats of violence and deathnor doxxing, criminal harassment, or any other abuse that West or Sarkeesian have had to endure beyond mockery of their arguments. But the truth of the matter is a more complicated picture than the one painted by West, and it doesnt flatter the author so well.

West claims that the true goal [of defenders of free speech] has always been to ensure that if anyone is determining the ways that we collectively choose to restrict our own speech in the name of values, they are the ones setting the limits. She knows this because 8,000 people signed a petition to have Sarkeesian arrested for violating the Logan Act when she spoke at the UN. They didnt get Kathy Griffins back when she pulled that gag with Trumps severed head. They didnt decry the threats against Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor after she called Trump a racist and sexist megalomaniac.

Except that much of GamerGate thought that the Logan Act stunt was indefensible. Reason writer Robby Soave called out the social media mob that went after Griffin. Samantha Harris of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education came out in support of Professor Taylor.

Besides, we can play this sorry game with West: what are we to make of her commitment to free speech and combating sexism given her utter silence about the assault on Allison Stanger? I could speculate tendentiously about Wests real motives, but Im inclined to think that even Wests capacity for outrage is finite, and like most pundits she tends to reserve her public expression of it for calamities in the news cycle that bolster her own side.

The irony of this essay is that its main point that all this defense of free speech is really about deflecting criticism is coming out of a camp of left-identitarianism that spent much of the last decade answering criticism with charges of bigotry. Even a public figure as minuscule as myself has to put up with accusations of racism, sexism, and fascism for taking issue with the absurdities put forth as Gospel by certain progressives.

The fruit of their harvest is the alt-right. We might have gotten the alt-right anyway, but a style of argument that came to be known among people who study the SJW phenomenon as point-and-shriek left little room for rational engagement. Instead, some people took it upon themselves to find out how loud they could get the left-identitarians to shriek. Pretty loud, it turns out, and its kind of fun to make them do it. Thus we find ourselves in a situation described eloquently by Jacob Siegel: The cultural Left became enforcers of rectitude while elements on the right developed an aesthetics of transgression. Cue the cartoon frogs.

But the identity-politics crowd has never been able to deal very well with internal criticism either. It turns out that liberals and leftists enjoy getting accused of racism, sexism, and fascism even less than libertarians and conservatives, resulting in a backchannel culture described by Freddie deBoer, in which even the believers are convinced that stepping out of line with the constant search for offense will render them permanently unemployable, even though they are themselves progressive people. That ultimately harms progressive interests as surely as anything perpetrated by the right.

West should try to understand that our protectiveness of the First Amendment as a legal doctrine falls out of our concern for free speech as a societal norm, and that West is eroding the latter by conflating the two and attributing foul motives to us for wanting to defend them. My politics and Wests likely have nothing in common. But could we at least agree that a society that harbors fundamental doubts about the value of free expression is likely to turn into one that neither of us want?

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NYT Columnist Lindy West Debuts With Clueless Rant Against Free Speech - The Federalist

Campus leftists have so tramped upon freedom of speech that a legislative reaction was inevitable. A model bill, the Campus Free Speech Act, has been drafted and introduced in quite a few state legislatures this year. One state is North Carolina. The bill has passed both the House and Senate and now sits on Governor Coopers desk. I dont know whether he will sign it or not. The state has a lot of rabid progressives who helped elect Cooper in last falls nail-biter election and they might persuade him to veto the bill on the grounds that it interferes with what they view as their terrain the UNC system.

One reason why the campus Left opposed the bill is that it requires that state colleges and universities adhere to institutional neutrality. Thats a crucial feature argues Jay Schalin in todays Martin Center article.

While individual administrators and faculty members should naturally be free to take any position on political issues, the institutions should not take sides. Schalin provides several examples. When colleges insist that faculty members and applicants submit diversity statements, that amounts to an official position that only if you are willing to declare your support for a set of extremely debatable notions are you fit to teach there. Another example is the Climate Leadership Statement that many college presidents have signed. It means that the school has taken sides in the argument over climate change. That could silence faculty members who disagree but dont want to jeopardize their jobs.

Schalin concludes, With the Free Speech Act, the North Carolina legislature has provided some powerful safeguards against future politicization of the states colleges and universities, and it deserves great praise for securing those protections. Of course, more needs to be done, so it should not rest on this years laurels but continue to improve the academic atmosphere in the states higher education institutions for the benefit of all North Carolinians. Thats right, and if the campus leftists cant stand operating under rules that protect free speech and depoliticize academe, they are free to leave.

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A State Steps Up to Protect Campus Free Speech - National Review

by Cody Gohl 8h ago

After being forced out of the United States by LGBT activists, the anti-trans Freedom of Speech bus has made its way to Mexico, where its beenonce againmet with protest.

National Organization for Marriage

Sponsored by the National Organization for Marriage, CitizenGo, the International Organization for the Family, and other anti-LGBT groups, the orange shuttle has been visiting cities around the world imparting a hateful message: Boys are boys and always will be. Girls are girls and always will be. You cant change sex. Respect all.

The bus has since been vandalized, defaced with graffiti and denounced by city leaders, including Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, who spoke out against the bus before raising the transgender pride flag at city hall.

Instead of parking the bus for good, organizers responded to the resistance by taking their campaign to Guadalajara, Mexico, where they were promptly greeted by protesters.

Twitter

Twitter

On the day the vehicle was scheduled to roll through the city, activists from National Congress of GLBTI, Inclusive Vote and Codise gathered to prevent the bus from moving by surrounding it in a large rainbow flag.

Twitter

These right-wing groups want to remove the rights [of the most vulnerable], said Jaime Cobin, a protester. Gay people are not what you fear. They are your sons, fathers, brothers, bishops and priests.

He concluded: Since Mexico is moving forward on LGBTI rights, we will not let there be a setback.

Texas native with a penchant for strong margaritas, early Babs and tastefully executed side-eye.

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Transphobic Freedom Of Speech Bus Wrapped In Rainbow Flag: Gay People Are Not What You Fear - NewNowNext

Grant Strobl Published 10:48 p.m. ET July 4, 2017 | Updated 10:48 p.m. ET July 4, 2017

The Michigan Daily editorial not only has a perverted understanding of First Amendment jurisprudence but also ignores the University of Michigans current policy, Strobl writes.(Photo: John T. Greilick / The Detroit News)Buy Photo

The Michigan Daily recently published an editorial voicing opposition to two free speech bills pending in the Michigan Senate on the grounds that hecklers should be allowed to veto speech.

The editorial not only has a perverted understanding of First Amendment jurisprudence, but also ignores the University of Michigans current policy.

The Michigan Daily is wrong to suggest that our Constitution does not protect the right to listen to a speech classified as freedom of speech. In less confusing words, students have no right to listen to speech.

This is absurd. Public university facilities are considered limited public forums, meaning they cannot discriminate based upon viewpoint. Constitutionally, administrators must provide equal access to campus facilities for all students. They have an obligation to protect the freedom of expression of speakers sponsored by student groups in university venues. When the university allows hecklers to veto speech of only one viewpoint, they are de facto suppressing speech based on content.

In fact, the University of Michigan has a policy Standard Practice Guide 601.1 on Freedom of Speech and Artistic Expression to protect the free speech rights of speakers and the students hosting them. That policy states, when hecklers try to subvert a speech on campus, the effect is just as surely an attack on freedom of speech or artistic expression as the deliberate suppression or prohibition of a speaker or artist by authorities. Hecklers subverting an event, according to existing University of Michigan policy, can also be removed.

Although some sections of Standard Practice Guide 601.1 need improvement, the policy is largely sound free speech policy.

The editorial also wrongly supports the university for allowing Black Lives Matter activists students and outsiders alike to subvert a Michigan Political Union debate. The university should have abided by its policy and removed the protesters who prevented the event from occurring as planned. Instead, university leaders stood silently as hundreds of protesters invaded and shut down the scheduled debate. This is why there are needed improvements to Standard Practice Guide 601.1, and why the State of Michigan needs to take further action to protect speech on campuses statewide.

The Michigan Daily ends its editorial by implying that the two Senate bills uphold free speech for speakers, but not for students. Their argument suggests that speakers exist on campus against the will of the students. This could not be further from the truth. Liberal student groups host leftist speakers without interruption, but when students hosts a conservative speaker, then it is okay to veto speech.

This mentality is antithetical to free speech and the mission of the University of Michigan. This is exactly the reason why Michigans legislators must act to ensure free speech for all students.

Michigan universities should be forced to remove disruptors who unduly interfere with events held by student groups, regardless of speakers viewpoints. When the radicals break the law, they should face the consequences. It is imperative to prevent situations in Michigan, like those at the University of California, Berkeley, where campus police have issued stand-down orders for protests against conservative speakers and have outright denied conservative student groups access to university venues.

Young Americas Foundation is currently suing Berkeley to secure the free speech, due process, and equal protection rights of students.

The two proposed bills, sponsored by Sen. Patrick Colbeck, will help protect students right to free speech and expression on campus, conservative and liberal alike. As a side benefit, if enforced, the two laws just might save taxpayers thousands of dollars in attorneys fees to defend future violations of free speech on campus.

Grant Strobl is the national chairman of Young Americans for Freedom.

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Column: UM paper should support free speech - Detroit News - The Detroit News

This Fourth of July, many solemnly salute out nations independence, but for 91 years, satire and parody have ruled the Ancient and Horribles Parade in Chepachet.

Even the parades name is a spoof on the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, the nations oldest chartered military organization. Parade floats take aim at local and national politics, with costumes and flashy signs.

Last year, the Parade sparked controversy when a local landscaping company included the Confederate Flag on its float. But parade chair Mike DeGrange says the event is a celebration of free speech.

Its a good side. Its a bad side. Its all sides of freedom of speech. DeGrange said.

Just what issues the floats will take on this year are a mystery until the day of the parade.

Controversy aside, DeGrange says the parade faces shrinking numbers of sponsorships and volunteers.

Hopefully well be getting more volunteers and more donations. And if we do that, I hope it continues the way it is keeps on going for a very long time, DeGrange said.

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Freedom Of Speech Reigns At The Ancient And Horribles Parade - Rhode Island Public Radio

I long for the days of perspective. When a wise voice could step to the fore with a calm, reasoned approach; when common sense prevailed and a settling demeanor won the day.

That's what I kept thinking recently after reading what later turned out to be yet another politically-charged, wildly inaccurate story in one of our nation's leading newspapers. It was opinion masquerading as straight news, only giving fodder to the term Fake News which is so prevalent today.

Richland Source managing editor Larry Phillips

The topics span from politics to news to religion to pollution to sports to the weather and beyond. There are polarizing, extreme opinions in all of them. You think LeBron James is great? Obviously you are spitting at Michael Jordan, or vice-versa, right?

Too often I've blamed social media for this distressing landscape where so many run to their echo chamber. Others of my generation have blamed the younger generation, following an incredibly consistent and equally ignorant tradition that dates to the dawn of time.

Unfortunately, we're all wrong.

Perspective has rarely been part of the equation in the United States since the Founding Fathers put pen strokes to the Constitution, and well before that.

As a history minor in college, I've often found comfort and answers to today's questions in yesterday's newspapers, magazines, TV shows, movies and books. The older I get the less patient I become with those who repeat mistakes we've seen so many times in history.

But the truth is knee-jerk evaluations and stubborn, wrong-headed thinking are simply the residue of freedom of speech. Thank goodness it's a right, one we all enjoy. Yet there's a price for it.

I especially enjoy the way writer Aaron Sorkin put it during his 1995 movie The American President.

"America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You've got to want it bad 'cause it's gonna put up a fight," said Michael Douglas in his portrayal of fictional president Andrew Shepard. "It's gonna say 'You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who is standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that what you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours."

It has always been this way. Perspective has too often been locked in a closet with time the only key.

You think politics are nasty today? At least Trump and Hillary didn't pull pistols on each other. Yes, we've had national political rivals do exactly that.

The hottest Broadway musical of the day is Hamilton, based on the life and times of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. Spoiler Alert, Hamilton's incredible political career ended far too early. He died on July 12, 1804 at age 47 (or 49 depending on your preferred source) after a political feud led to a rash pistol duel with would-be vice president Aaron Burr.

Unfortunately, that's not an outlier. Ever heard of the Civil War?

Ah, those were the days, when slavery was clearly wrong. Everyone can agree with that, right?

Hardly.

Contrary to popular opinion today, Abraham Lincoln was not beloved in his lifetime. His critics were everywhere. Much of the press despised him, and teed off at the slightest provocation. Sound familiar?

When Lincoln, a Republican, delivered his landmark speech at Gettysburg, it was immediately ripped by the Chicago Times, a Democratic, pro-slavery newspaper with ties to the president's former political rival Stephen A. Douglas. The Chicago Times reporter covering Lincoln's Gettysburg Address filed this masterpiece of a sentence, which has long lived in journalism infamy:

"The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flab, dishwatery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the president of the United States."

How would you like to have your byline attached to that review of what is generally considered one of, if not the greatest speech in U.S. history? That's a 154-year-old embarrassment, and the count will continue as long as students are taught those eloquent words.

My father worked as a barber and owned a bar among other business interests. He had a standing rule in all of his establishments. Never discuss politics or religion. You're not going to change anyone's mind. You're only going to make someone mad. You will lose customers.

He wasn't trying to convert anyone. He had no political interest. He simply wanted his business to succeed.

We can't operate that way in the media. We shouldn't if we're going to hold our public officials responsible for our tax money and trust.

However, there's a difference between being a watchdog and being an instigator. I sigh at our lack of perspective in identifying that difference today. I see far too many examples of our refusal to learn the lessons of past failures from our country's brief, glorious, tumultuous history.

But the truth is we've had few examples of perspective through the years.

It's not the fault of social media, or the Baby Boomers or Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z, or the Millennials. It's not the I-Phone or text messaging, radio, TV, newspapers, chat rooms or the internet.

It's all of us. This is the price we pay for freedom of speech. It's a love-hate relationship. Long may it live.

But it will be a lot easier to live with if we can find room for that elusive element of perspective that has evaded us for far too long.

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From Lincoln to LeBron, freedom of speech defeats perspective - Richland Source

With the help of ADF, many pastors continue to pursue the freedom of speech the government has denied them.

The Free Speech Fairness Act was introduced in Congress to correct the problem that began in 1954 with passage of the so-called Johnson Amendment, which prohibits tax-exempt organizations, including churches, from endorsing or opposing political candidates at the expense of losing their tax-exempt status.

Alliance Defending Freedomhas been trying to overturn that for nearly ten years. ADF attorney Erik Stanley tells OneNewsNow it began when 33 pastors preached Pulpit Freedom Sunday sermons in 2008.

"Those sermons talked about the candidates that were running for office at the time in light of Scripture," he explains. "They made recommendations about those candidates to the congregation. They recorded their sermons and sent them to the IRS. Now, since that time, over 4,000 unique pastors have participated in Pulpit Freedom Sunday."

The idea was to provoke the IRS into taking action and pursuing the case in federal court so that the Johnson Amendment would ultimately be overturned. But none of the pastors has been investigated or punished.

"The problem is the Johnson Amendment is still on the books," Stanley says. "The IRS still believes that it has the ability to regulate the pastor's sermon from the pulpit, and the pastors of America are kind of left in a legal limbo. This is where the Free Speech Fairness Act comes in."

If passed and signed into law, the measure would restore freedom of speech that everyone else enjoys, a freedom backed by the U.S. Constitution.

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Free speech for pastors -- here's hoping - OneNewsNow

By David Ingram and Dustin Volz | SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON

SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON Facebook Inc (FB.O) is challenging a gag order from a U.S. court that is preventing the company from talking about three government search warrants that it said pose a threat to freedom of speech, according to court documents.

Facebook said it wants to notify three users about the search warrants seeking their communications and information and also give those users an opportunity to object to the warrants, according to a filing in a Washington, D.C., appeals court seen by Reuters.

"We believe there are important First Amendment concerns with this case, including the government's refusal to let us notify three people of broad requests for their account information in connection with public events," Facebook said in a statement on Monday.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees certain rights including freedom of speech.

William Miller, a spokesman for U.S. prosecutors, declined to comment.

Facebook decided to challenge the gag order around the three warrants because free speech was at stake and because the events underlying the government's investigation were generally known to the public already, Facebook said in the undated court document.

The precise nature of the government's investigation is not known. One document in the case said the timing of proceedings coincides with charges against people who protested President Donald Trump's inauguration in January.

More than 200 people were arrested in Washington the day Trump was sworn in. Masked activists threw rocks at police, and multiple vehicles were set on fire.

Tech firms comply with thousands of requests for user data annually made by governments around the world, but in extraordinary circumstances, companies such as Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) have challenged government secrecy orders.

Facebook recently fought a secrecy order related to a disability fraud investigation, losing in April in New York state's highest court.

Companies and privacy advocates argue that gag orders rely on outdated laws and are applied too often, sometimes indefinitely, to bar them from notifying customers about government requests for their private online data. Facebook says about half of U.S. requests are accompanied by a non-disclosure order prohibiting it from notifying affected users.

In April, a local judge in Washington denied Facebook's request to remove the gag order there, according to the document. Facebook is appealing and has preserved the relevant records pending the outcome, the document said.

"The government can only insulate its actions from public scrutiny in this way in the rarest circumstances, which likely do not apply here," said Andrew Crocker, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group that advocates for digital rights.

Facebook is getting support in court papers from several organizations including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as eight tech companies such as Microsoft and Apple Inc (AAPL.O).

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals, which is the highest court in Washington for local matters, is scheduled to hear the case in September, according to an order obtained by BuzzFeed News, which first reported Facebook's challenge to the gag order on Monday.

(Reporting by David Ingram in San Francisco and Dustin Volz in Washington; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

SAN FRANCISCO Microsoft will undergo a reorganization that will impact its sales and marketing teams, company executives told employees on Monday.

BEIJING/SHANGHAI China's latest maneuver in a sweeping crackdown on internet content has sent a chill through a diverse community of filmmakers, bloggers, media and educators who fear their sites could be shut down as Beijing tightens control. Over the last month, Chinese regulators have closed celebrity gossip websites, restricted what video people can post and suspended online streaming, all on grounds of inappropriate content.

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Facebook fights US gag order that it says chills free speech - Reuters

The United States is an exceptional nation in many respects. This fact cuts both ways. It shouldnt spare us from others criticism or our own soul-searching about any of our peculiar national excesses or injustices. Asserting that we are special isnt the same as saying were perfect.

But as our letters to the editor remind us today, our countrys 241st birthday, there is much to celebrate about being an American.

High on our list is the guarantee of free speech found in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This amendment, adopted in 1791, includes the immortal words that bar Congress from passing any law abridging the freedom of speech. Subsequent court decisions extended that prohibition to all other levels of government. Its the foundation for another First Amendment guarantee, freedom of the press. But free speech is a blessing enjoyed by all Americans, not just by those who buy their ink by the barrel full.

In his 2017 book The Soul of the First Amendment, lawyer Floyd Abrams wrote that while other nations promise free expression, America does so more often, more intensely, and more controversially than is true elsewhere. The U.S. is an outlier when it comes to protecting free speech, according to Abrams. Thats a good thing. It means Americans are at liberty more than just about anyone else in the world to speak their minds. Speech that would invite official harassment, imprisonment or worse in many countries is protected in the United States.

U.S. courts have consistently ruled that Americas constitutional guarantee of free speech doesnt allow the government to exclude views deemed to be erroneous or offensive. This principle was reiterated just last month in a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned a government decision to withhold trademark protection from a dance-rock band whose name is a racial slur for Asians. In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote, "Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free-speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express 'the thought that we hate' a memorable phrase first used by legendary Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in a 1929 dissent.

Expansive protection for free speech reflects a radical faith, dating back to the Founding Fathers, that Americans can be trusted to sift through ideas for themselves. The primary author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, reaffirmed this faith when he founded the University of Virginia in 1820: For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it. Holmes, writing more than a century later, wrote the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.

In the 21st century, this faith in the wisdom of the American people and the free marketplace of ideas is not always shared by partisan media outlets. And its withering at some universities under pressure from students and faculty who object to providing a forum for contrary views a hazard that Jeffersons current successor as head of the University of Virginia, Teresa A. Sullivan, warned about in a speech earlier this year: The danger in shutting out viewpoints that differ from our own is that we create a personal echo chamber in which our deeply held beliefs are continually reinforced by those who share those beliefs.

Beware of that echo chamber. Dont shun the debate join it. Bear in mind the words of another high court justice, John Marshall Harlan, who wrote in a 1971 case, That the air may at times seem filled with verbal cacophony is not a sign of weakness but of strength.

Honor the nation and the faith of its founders, today and every day, by embracing free speech yours and your fellow Americans.

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We celebrate America's commitment to free speech - Orlando Sentinel

Basically, when it comes to the freedom of speech you must know that it is the political right for communicating ones own option and express the own ideas. Or we can say that the right to speak and express personal emotions is called the freedom of speech. Though sometimes it is used synonymously but it always includes the act of receiving, seeking and imparting the information or ideas regardless of source used. In fact, the right to the freedom of speech is not absolute in any nation and the rights are mostly subject to the limitations as with the slander, sedition, libel and slander.

No doubt the freedom of speech is a much important thing in decision-making at all the levels and it is a significant factor in the deliberation of a representative range of views. Basically the Right to speech is more important factor for the individual liberty. There is no right more important than the right to think what you damn well please and then talk about it. It is not important only for an individual but it is also more important for the different communities living in the different parts of the world. it is the best way to get the new and fresh ideas for that are much important for the improvement of nations and their economies as well as it also affects directly on the political power, development of nations and their characters as well. So no one can deny the importance of the Right to speech freely.

While you are searching for the most libertarian nations on the earth, then you will find great difficulty because there is not any specific and particular way for ranking the nations based on their right to express their opinions and voice. To figure out the list of nations that are considered the freest nations around the globe, you must sacrifice in some of the areas famous for the freedom. Following is a list of top five countries that are considered the freest countries around the globe.

It is one of the most beautiful and richest nations around the globe and for this reason it is a place where anyone would love to go, to live and everyone has the desire to spend his moments in it. It has number of attractions that are making it a beautiful nation on the earth. It is not only famous for its beauty but it is also famous for the liberty of speech. It is one of the most socially free nations in the world. It is providing more freedom to its citizens as compared to many other countries of the world.

United States is also one of the most popular, rich, beautiful and strongest countries in the world. Having a great history of freedom loving, the communication within the country has been pretty astonishing. United States of America may be the most controversial nation in the list, but within the few years, its ranking has dropped more quickly. But still it is on the fourth number in the list.

Switzerland is considered a peaceful nation in the world. Do you know what the reason behind this beautiful reality is? Basically it is only because it has about 200 years without war and this is a greatest record in the world. It is also one of the most beautiful and richest countries in the world. Its inhabitants have the right to raise their voice and every individual has the liberty to speak and raise his own voice.

Canada is one of the famous countries for the best education in the world. It is taking a great part in the most libertarian countries in the world. Here every person has the liberty to speech and express and has the right to work and perform his own ideas. And as the result Canada is given the second rank in the list of countries that are famous for the most speech freedom.

Ireland is considered one of the most socially free countries in the world. Here the inhabitants enjoy all type of freedoms that are making it one of the best and free countries in the world. People have the right to speak, right to share their ideas and to raise their voice. Ireland is also one of the richest countries in the world. All the people are enjoying the freedom of speech and it is the freest country in terms of liberty of expression.

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Top Countries with most Freedom of Speech - WhichCountry