Obama's Chilling Effect on Free Speech, Free Press

Obama appears not to have learned much about the Constitution at Harvard Law --

News from The Associated Press: ""In the Obama administration's Washington, government officials are increasingly afraid to talk to the press," wrote Downie, now a journalism professor at Arizona State University. "The administration's war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I've seen since the Nixon administration, when I was one of the editors involved in The Washington Post's investigation of Watergate.""

more news below

Follow @pubwx

Free Speech and the Harm Principle

Counterpoint: Free Speech and the Harm Principle | MIT Technology Review: " . . . The only principle I can imagine working is yours, where “harm” is interpreted to mean physical or commercial injury but excludes personal, religious, or ideological offense.

Pontin’s version is clearly correct insofar as it excludes “religious or ideological offense” from the category of what lawyers call “cognizable” harms. That odd term “cognizable” is meant to capture this dual understanding. The offense that people take at the conduct of others cannot be dismissed with a wave of the hand, given that these feelings are often deep and long–lasting. They are in fact real harms, subjectively experienced. So the willingness to cut them out of the harm principle cannot rest on a simple denial of the fact, but must rest on the awareness that for the long-term success of the system, each person must waive that claim against all others, no matter how acute the feeling. . . ."


more news below

Follow @pubwx

Free Speech and the Gagging of Great Britain

Interesting take on free speech--

The Gagging of Great Britain... and Beyond | Neurobonkers | Big Think: "There are many things we can criticise the US for, but freedom of speech is not (at present) one of them. The US not only have the valuable First Amendment rights to freedom of speech but these rights have been explicitly expanded by "The Speech Law", a law with the express purpose of protecting Americans from the toxic laws of the British libel courts. London has become the "global capital" of "libel tourism", a shameful place where the laws are so deeply in favour of wealth that rich dictators and crackpots can silence writers all over the world. . . . We are now at a tipping point, the end of a truly massive three year campaign for libel reform in the UK. The reform bill which received all party support before the last general election has now been dropped from the Parliamentary timetable after a sabotage attempt by a bunch of Lords whose "prior restraint" "wrecking ammendment" would see British law sent back to the stone age. The amendment would mean "censorship before publication – that has not existed in this country for 300 years and that is explicitly outlawed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)"... "the wreckers also wish to punish newspapers that do not submit to state-sanctioned regulation by obliging them to pay exemplary damages if defeated in actions for libel". There are now only nine days left to get the Defamation Bill back in to Parliament before the bill is killed for good. So, if you care about free speech, forward this news to your friends in the UK and ask them to write to their MP and ask them to keep their pre-election promise to protect freedom of speech and do everything in their power to block the prior restraint wrecking amendment that has been introduced at the eleventh hour. . ."


more news below

Follow @pubwx