Category Archives: First Amendment

Future plans and First Amendment

By: Chase Carpenter

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Future plans and First Amendment - Video

I wanted to question Petreus about #39;successes #39; in Iraq, but got arrested - Ray McGovern
Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern will not let his First Amendment rights be infringed upon by the New York City Police Department or any other organization, the prominent anti-war activist told...

By: RT America

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I wanted to question Petreus about 'successes' in Iraq, but got arrested - Ray McGovern - Video

The First Amendment Bubble National Constitution Center
The growth of the Internet has made it ever harder to distinguish public from private, news from titillation, and journalists from provocateurs. Author Amy Gajda examines media today and its...

By: NCC Video

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The First Amendment Bubble National Constitution Center - Video

Breaking Windows and Burning Protesters
They exercised their first amendment rights, I exercised my right to burnnnnnn. Thanks for Watching! Leave a like, if you like, and subscribe for more 🙂

By: Aquagirl771

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Breaking Windows and Burning Protesters - Video

George Mason University

George Mason Universitys STEAM Table forum will present three theatrical works in February, March and April, relating science and the arts, as part of a season of innovation.

A few years ago, Daniel Beck, a member of the board of the now defunct Theater of the First Amendment at George Mason University, mentioned a pressing and growing problem that involved both the arts and sciences.

Beck, who works for Boeings Office of Defense, Space & Security, worried out loud to fellow board members about the retirements of what he called the creative working class.

According to Beck, many of the younger Boeing employees, although highly skilled and knowledgeable in their various fields, were far too specialized. Unlike their older, now retiring counterparts, they lacked exposure to the liberal arts, which combined with the sciences and math seems to engender more creative, often out-of-the-box thinking.

Among those actively listening were Kevin Murray, program manager for and faculty member of GMUs School of Theater as well as an actor, and Rick Davis, executive director of GMUs Hylton Performing Arts Center in Manassas and former co-artistic director of The Theater of the First Amendment.

Also a playwright, Beck, Murray said, is someone who truly gets it, gets the symbiotic connection between the arts and sciences and the need to reintegrate them in education.

Murray and Davis not only heard Becks concerns but also acted on them, thanks in part to a generous gift from Boeing dedicated to exploring ways to significantly include the Arts in educations growing STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) movement, turning it into STEAM.

One of their first steps was to establish an ongoing The STEAM Table forum (whimsy intended in naming). Sponsored in addition by GMUs College of Visual and Performing Arts, a goal of the STEAM Table, which has a website (www.steamtable.org) and newsletter, is to bring together individuals and organizations that are engaged in varied aspects of the arts and sciences to share their thinking.

For Davis, 57, who also teaches theater, directs and acts, the STEAM movement is not looking backward but a sorely needed return to something that worked better than todays too frequent demand to teach to the test.

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GMU goes full

Story highlights Supreme Court term opened by deflecting big cases But that quickly as the Court is poised to decide major issues

How things have changed.

By November, the Court accepted yet another challenge to the Affordable Care Actthe signature legislative achievement of the Obama administration. In a matter of weeks, the justices heard arguments concerning pregnancy discrimination in the workplace and the First Amendment implications of threats made on Facebook.

In January, they decided to take up a challenge to gay marriage, and for good measure, also agreed to hear a case regarding Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol.

"The term went from being one of the more uneventful terms in recent years to potentially one of the biggest ones in a generation" says Supreme Court expert Amy Howe who is the Editor of Scotusblog.com.

Here's a glimpse of some of what has been decided, what has been heard and what is to come:

WHAT HAS BEEN DECIDED

Religious freedom in prison: A unanimous Court ruled in favor of the religious freedom claims of Gregory Holt, an Arkansas inmate who wanted to grow a beard in accordance with his Muslim faith, but was blocked by the Department of Corrections' policy that forbid beards except for diagnosed dermatological problems. Justice Samuel Alito wrote the opinion holding that the prison policy violated a federal law designed to protect the religious exercise of prisoners. The Becket Fund for Religious Freedom proclaimed the decision a "huge win for religious freedom" for all Americans. But in a very brief concurring opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, distanced the case from last year's Hobby Lobby decision.

WHAT HAS BEEN HEARD

Separation of powers: A 12 year old American boy, born in Jerusalem, is caught in the middle of a significant dispute between Congress and the executive branch. The disagreement began in 2002 when the parents of Menachem Zivotofsky sought to have "Israel" recorded in his passport as the place of his birth pursuant to a federal law passed in 2002. Sounds simple right? Not according to the State Department, which refuses to implement the law. The executive branch says that because Israeli and Palestinian leaders have long been engaged in a dispute over the status of Jerusalem, it avoids any official act that might be perceived as taking sides. The current policy is to list "Jerusalem" as the place of birth instead of "Israel." The Zivotofskys seek to compel the State Department to follow the law. They argue that Congress has broad power over passports, and that this case is about the identify of a passport holder. A lower court disagreed holding that the law "impermissibly intrudes" on the president's authority to decide whether and on what terms to recognize foreign nations.

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Why this court term matters

1-30-15 Nicole Sandler Show - Lowlife Scum
It #39;s Protest Friday as Nicole Sandler looks at the nearly extinct First Amendment right to peaceably protest with activists Kevin Zeese and Medea Benjamin, b...

By: Nicole Sandler

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1-30-15 Nicole Sandler Show - Lowlife Scum - Video

January 31, 2015 11:31 AM

(Judge Marjorie Rendell, at the National Constitution Center, during a break in a schoolteachers forum on the First Amendment. Photo by Pat Loeb)

Pat Loeb's radio experience has the makings of a country song:s...

By Pat Loeb

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) Pennsylvanias former First Lady, Judge Marjorie Rendell, is giving up her full-time seat on the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals but shes hardly retiring.

Judge Rendell says she may be able to have a greater impact in her new role. Shell be a senior judge, with 80 percent of a full-time caseload, and shell be doing more work at the Rendell Center for Citizenship and Civics, an outgrowth of her focus as First Lady. She started the center just over a year ago with her husband, former governor Ed Rendell, from whom she is separated. Its currently piloting a fourth-grade civics curriculum and working with Annenberg on high school civics and a project on judicial independence.

Im looking forward to working with Annenberg to have impact, Rendell says. In fact, Im wondering whether that aspect of my life might have more impact than even what Ive been doing so far.

But giving up her seat now assures that President Obama will appoint her successor, a factor that she says figured into the timing of her decision.

Hes done a pretty good job, Rendell says. Were very fortunate that we have three new judges that Obama has picked, and our senators have been fabulous in agreeing on the nominees, because that can be an issue. So Im hopeful that my successor would be chosen fairly promptly.

Rendell will lose her vote on en banc cases, but she says shell still have a voice on the court where she served for 21 years.

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Former Pennsylvania First Lady Midge Rendell Takes On New Role

Published: Friday, January 30, 2015 at 05:25 PM.

On Feb. 17, the North Carolina Supreme curt is slated to hear two cases challenging the Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides low-income families the option to receive vouchers of up to $4,200 for their child to attend a non-public school of the parents choosing. Staunch supporters of the United States Constitutions First Amendment and secularists have cried foul, as the program opens old wounds of Zelman v. Simmons-Harris by enabling public tax dollars to fund not only religious schools but schools that can discriminate against applicants based on religion and schools that cant be held to education performance standards.

I am one such secular, non-religious United States citizen and North Carolina resident who believes public tax dollars shouldnt fund education that simultaneously indoctrinates its students in religion (e.g. Greensboro Islam Academy or Victory Christian Center School).

However, despite my belief in the Constitutions First Amendment and my disagreement with Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, I want the Opportunity Scholarship Program to be ruled constitutional in the state supreme courts upcoming hearing and so should secularists everywhere.

I want taxpayer backed school vouchers to continue to enable attendance at private schools, because on average, the private schools these students attend will provide a better education than North Carolinas failing public school system. And that better education and the critical thinking it facilitates, coupled with the wealth of knowledge available on the internet, will allow these students, as they come into adulthood, to see past the very indoctrination religious schools hope to achieve.

Religion is giving way to reason in this country as youth have more and more access to knowledge and opinion outside of their towns and schools through the internet. All the secular, non-religious community has to do is enable critical thinking skills through education, and the internet will take care of the rest. The Opportunity Scholarship Program is one such enabling tool. Lets allow that affront to our First Amendment values teach children to reason and focus our efforts on improving the critical thinking skills of the children left in the public school system.

Matthew Lindauer, New Bern

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Letter: Rooting for the Opportunity Scholarship Program

The First Amendment...(Historically Speaking) - Episode #12
A weekly program on UPTV hosted by Frederick Douglass Dixon.

By: UPTV6

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The First Amendment...(Historically Speaking) - Episode #12 - Video