Category Archives: Free Speech

Fight For Faith Religion In The Ranks White House Opposing Free Speech In The Military!

By: AmericaIdeology

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Fight For Faith Religion In The Ranks White House Opposing Free Speech In The Military! - Video

Reuters/Andrea Comas

The U.S. Supreme Court has already affirmed that corporations have free speech rights, but a new challenge to Obamacare could also declare that non-human businesses have a right to religious freedom.

America's highest court is expected to take up a fight soon over the hotly contested requirement in Obamacare that businesses pay for insurance that covers 100% of workers' birth control. Craft chain Hobby Lobby and at least 30 other for-profit companies with religious owners have filed lawsuits claiming the mandate violates their religious beliefs.

It might seem odd that a business would get to exercise its religious beliefs. But this is America, and corporations often get to be people, too.

In its bombshell Citizens United case of 2010, the high court found the Federal Elections Commission violated companies' right to engage in "political speech" by limiting the money they could spend promoting political candidates. That decision caused a lot of outrage but fell in line with a legal doctrine known as "corporate personhood" that says businesses have some of the same rights people do.

For their part, Hobby Lobby and the other businesses fighting the contraception mandate say it violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. That act puts the kibosh on laws that put a big burden on people's religious beliefs or the beliefs of businesses, depending on how the Supreme Court rules.

The Supreme Court is expected to take up the new Obamacare fight because two appeals courts ruled in opposite ways on the birth control mandate issue. Philadelphia's federal appeals court ruled in July that "for-profit, secular corporations cannot engage in religious exercise." That court found there was a "total absence of caselaw" suggesting corporations had the right to religious freedom.

In that case, a Mennonite family named the Hahns who owned a company called Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. was fighting the contraception requirement. Here's what the court said:

We accept that the Hahns sincerely believe that the termination of a fertilized embryo constitutes an "intrinsic evil and a sin against God to which they are held accountable" ... and that it would be a sin to pay for or contribute to the use of contraceptives which may have such a result. We simply conclude that the law has long recognized the distinction between the owners of a corporation and the corporation itself.

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After Gaining Right To Free Speech, Corporations Could Get Right To Religious Freedom, Too

Uncensored Free Speech
Uncensored Free Speech.

By: Mistone Fivethreetdt

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Uncensored Free Speech - Video

The Great Dissent arrives just when its insight is needed. To borrow from the books subject, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., it might even be a case of proximity and immediacy.

The book examines the jurisprudence of Holmes, who in 1919 began to reshape the law on free speech and First Amendment values in what author Thomas Healy considers the most important dissent in American law.

A Harvard law professor with roots back to the nations founding, Holmes initially came to free-speech issues with a fair amount of hostility toward the speakers the government was prosecuting.

In this period, the Supreme Court wrestled with several cases on this topic, and the outcomes were all the same: convictions upheld. The book centers on two cases from 1919. In Schenck v. United States, Holmes wrote the majority opinion, upholding the convictions of socialists who had created and distributed a leaflet criticizing the draft. Less than a year later, Holmes dissented in the almost identical case of Abrams v. United States, arguing that free-speech rights outweighed the vague potential for their words to cause harm.

What led Holmes to make such an about-face becomes the focus of the book.

Healy has made ample use of Holmes extensive correspondence with other intellectual and legal luminaries of his day to try to figure out how the justices outlook changed so markedly in less than a year. The answer has to do with Holmes wide reading and his encounters with the likes of Learned Hand, an influential federal judge; fellow Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who was to join in Holmes Abrams dissent; and future justice Felix Frankfurter.

Its impossible to know for sure, but Healy seems right in thinking that these men influenced Holmes and inspired his personal transformation, which Healy believes led to a transformation of First Amendment law. That second transformation, however, took decades to arrive. Holmes (and Brandeis) remained in the minority, dissenting in free-speech cases in the years after Schenck and Abrams. The court vacillated on these issues until a 1969 case, Brandenburg v. Ohio.

The tentacles of Holmes views on free speech have touched just about every First Amendment decision in the past 90 years.

As courts confront new challenges, particularly for free speech and the free flow of information, they will continue to look to Holmes for guidance. And Holmes is still providing an applicable rationale for relying on the marketplace of ideas.

Roy S. Gutterman is director of the Tully Center for Free Speech at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. He wrote for the Washington Post.

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Tracing triumph of free speech

Doug Christie Free Speech is the Issue. Speech from Oct 16 1997 in Toronto
[October 16, 1997] Doug Christie: Free Speech is the Issue! Doug Christie explains the importance of freedom and why it is so vital for society. Doug also documents the various state-funded...

By: freedomsite

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Doug Christie Free Speech is the Issue. Speech from Oct 16 1997 in Toronto - Video

Street performer fights off gag, vows to defend free speech rights
He #39;s got a megaphone, lots of opinions and he #39;s become a feature on Oxford street in London where he yells his political commentary at shoppers walking by. B...

By: RTQuestionMore

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Street performer fights off gag, vows to defend free speech rights - Video

Free speech fights
The WikiPlays article Free speech fights is composed of Creative Common Content. The Original Article can be location at en.wikinews.org/wiki/Free_speech_fights. Free speech fights are conflicts...

By: Vincet Polock

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Free speech fights - Video

Which is it...Free Speech or Hate Talk?
Thom Hartmann debates Chaplain Gordon James "Chaps" Klingenschmitt Bio: former Navy Chaplain / "Defender of religious liberty" Website: http://www.prayinjesusname.o...

By: thomhartmann

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Which is it...Free Speech or Hate Talk? - Video

Segment from Free Speech TV: Citizen #39;s United on Steriods
In this segment on Free Speech TV #39;s "Ring of Fire" program, Howard L. Nations, a nationally renowned trial lawyer, discusses how the U.S. Supreme Court could hear arguments on a case, McCutcheon...

By: HowardNations

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Segment from Free Speech TV: Citizen's United on Steriods - Video

The Daily Reveille: Opinion Vlog - The injustice of "Free Speech Campus"
Video by Multimedia Editor Chris Vasser Staff Videographer Alix Landriault Presented by Jana King The Daily Reveille @lsureveille -- "I feel like the Found...

By: The Daily Reveille

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The Daily Reveille: Opinion Vlog - The injustice of "Free Speech Campus" - Video