Category: First Amendment rights

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First Amendment rights

Roll Your Eyes, Sigh

People disagree. When it comes to government policy, people not only disagree, but on occasion even get hot under the collar. Why? Governments have so much power and tend to waste so much money. Our money. Yours.

That’s why, in public meetings, we should expect citizens to fly off the handle every now and then.

And that’s why those who run public meetings must retain a measure not merely of civility, but lenience. When some citizens disagree, that disagreement will sometimes be . . . disagreeable. But understandable.

I’m preaching the obvious here, but to town officials in Elmhurst, Illinois, I’m preaching a message they don’t want to hear. When citizen Darlene Heslop rolled her eyes and sighed out loud as they moved to hire a state lobbyist, the officials running the meeting objected. They threw her out, saying she was disorderly.

And then they told the city attorney to look into the guidelines for public meetings — you know, everything from state statutes to Robert’s Rules (I kid you not) — to find a definition of “disorderly conduct” that would allow them to keep Heslop out of their hair. Her eyes! Her sighs!

Heslop is all for settling on a definition. Perhaps she knows state law, which defines disorderly conduct as acts of “such unreasonable manner as to alarm or disturb another, or to provoke a breach of the peace.” Her eye-rolling and sighing in no way qualifies — and should be tolerated . . . maybe even as free speech.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights free trade & free markets property rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Hooray for IJ

Let a thousand floral arrangements bloom.

Louisiana has just abolished the “demonstration” section of the state’s licensing exam for florists. The new law came in response to a lawsuit by florists working with the Institute for Justice. IJ argued that the four-hour demonstration requirement was “arbitrary, subjective and antiquated,” and allowed state-licensed florists to determine the fate of their future competitors.

The outcome represents yet another victory for the “merry band of libertarian litigators” who regularly do battle “in the courts of law and in the court of public opinion on behalf of individuals whose most basic rights are denied by the government. . . .”

Founded in 1991, the Institute for Justice has successfully fought to lift caps on the number of licensed taxis in Minneapolis; eliminate laws around the country that prevent competition in every kind of occupation, from animal husbandry and interior design to hair braiding and pest control; restore freedom of speech undermined by vague and arbitrary campaign finance regulation in Florida and enemies of property rights in Tennessee; protect businessmen and home owners from eminent domain abuse in Arizona and Ohio.

IJ’s many successful efforts to defend the rights of individuals are having a major impact. Looking back over the many installments of Common Sense, I find that I mention this group’s work again and again.

With good reason. They keep fighting the good fight, and winning.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights incumbents national politics & policies

The Kill-Political-Discourse Act

Sometimes politicians name their legislation the better to hide what they are trying to do. The name fails to disclose, you might say.

Consider the so-called DISCLOSE Act, which just passed the House of Representatives by a mostly party-line vote of 219-206 and is now awaiting action in the Senate. The full name of the monstrosity is the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections Act. It should be called the Democracy Is Undermined by Rigging the Game to Favor Incumbents and Especially Democrats Act.

The goal is to hamper political advertising by independent groups and corporations by requiring disclosure of the names of contributors who give above $600 a year. The new rules would harm corporations more than unions, and would foist anew some of the same burdens on First Amendment rights just overturned by the Supreme Court. The same court that threw out chunks of McCain-Feingold on free speech grounds would also likely find DISCLOSE unconstitutional.

But could the court do so before the 2010 elections? Democrats like Hank Johnson ― who told fellow partisans that the Act, if passed, would stop Republicans from being elected ― are betting that it can’t. Their hope is that with the speech-shackling new law skewing things in their favor until the high court acts, they’ll be more likely to escape political annihilation in November.

No, we can’t wait for the Supremes on this one. Call your senator.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights media and media people too much government

Liberty and Licenses

Oh, no. We’re being drowned — in alternatives.

Remember the good old days, with three choices for national broadcast news, Walter Cronkite and whoever the other guys were? Plus the local paper and the New York Times? Sure, there were other avenues. But if the big boys happened to have a unitary government-approved perspective on something, you could battle uphill for years with hardly anyone noticing your particular flag.

Then cable arrived. The Internet. Zillions of webzines and blogs. If you want an alternative to whatever the Official View is, you don’t have to look very far or for very long. It’s harder for the powers that be to burble baloney unchallenged.

Big, big problem, all this competition, right?

It is according to Michigan State Senator Bruce Patterson. He wants to license journalists the way Michigan licenses plumbers and hair dressers.

From what I can tell, the state can’t be trusted with protecting us from bad hair cuts, let alone tell us who’s best suited to toot out the news. But Patterson says we’re being overwhelmed by all the media outlets. Poor us! So we need guvmint — which always puts the truth first, of course — to tell us good reporting from bad.

Think about this: The traditional job of journalism is to provide a check on lying politicians. Now politicians will vet those who get the privilege to criticize them?

Puh-leeze.

Patterson, we’ll take a pass.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom

Videotape Police Abuse, Go to Jail?

George Donnelly may be wondering what country he is in right now.

Recently, he and other activists trying to hand out pamphlets published by the Fully Informed Jury Association were confronted by U.S. marshals in Manhattan. Attempting to record the encounter, Donnelly found himself being pushed to the pavement by the marshals. Then arrested. He is accused of “assaulting a federal marshal.” Another FIJA activist on the scene, Julian Heicklin, was also arrested.

The Libertarian News Examiner is among those reporting about the injustice.

In another recent case, documented by Reason magazine’s Radley Balko, a Maryland motorcyclist was arrested for videotaping an encounter during which a state trooper pulled a gun. Andy Gruber thought this out of bounds. So he posted the video, which he had captured with a camera tucked in his helmet, on the Internet. This resulted in a raid and arrest, and the possibility of imprisonment. Maryland police officers claim that it’s “illegal” to record anybody’s voice — ever — in Maryland, a willful misinterpretation of the state’s wiretapping laws.

Miscarriages of justice have often been rectified only when video comes to light exposing falsehoods in the official story. As inconvenient as it is for law enforcers to be held accountable for how they do their jobs, the alternative of letting them make up the rules as they go along and hide or destroy evidence of their conduct is grotesquely unreasonable and dangerous, and should be itself punishable by law.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights

Free Speech Assault Dropped

America has a relatively robust tradition of respecting freedom of speech. Nevertheless, our government officials often find criticism not only annoying but actionable.

But actionable how?

Campaign finance regulation offers officials one avenue to go after political critics. The CFR regime is so ambiguous and complex that it often seems to cover anything anybody might say at any time about anybody running for office. But the ever-metastasizing repressive power of campaign finance regulation was probably not what Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett was relying on when he subpoenaed Twitter, the micro-blogging company, to try to learn who was savaging his conduct as attorney general.

Corbett demanded names, street addresses and IP addresses of two Twitter subscribers who have been claiming that his investigation into public corruption was politically motivated. Twitter representatives were threatened with arrest if they failed to appear before a grand jury to “give evidence regarding alleged violations of the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”

Corbett’s office claims that the subpoena had nothing to do with aversion to political criticism but was related to a particular prosecution. Perhaps the angry tweeters were really a single disgruntled defendant, only pretending to be contrite in court?

Regardless, the attorney general was obviously on a fishing expedition, one that targeted First Amendment rights. The outcry from Twitter users, the ACLU, and others was swift and vehement, so Corbett has dropped his abusive subpoena.

Perhaps he should also drop his gubernatorial campaign.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights national politics & policies too much government

Congress Moves to Censor the Net?

The Internet is not safe. Congress wants to regulate it. The most recent idea is to sic the Federal Elections Commission on Net freedom.

Recent hearings on something called the DISCLOSE Act disclosed that the act would “extend the FEC’s control over broadcast communications to all ‘covered communications,’ including the blogosphere.” Or so say the Center for Competitive Politics’ Bradley Smith and Jeff Patch, writing on Reason.com.

It’s hard to imagine a worse idea. No groundswell of citizens demanded this. So of course Congress is considering it.

Would they really try to regulate the blogosphere?

The lead “reformers” in Congress say all they want to regulate are political ads on the Internet, not bloggers. But, as Smith and Patch note, the actual language of the current bill quite clearly leaves open the blogosphere for regulation. They also doubt the good intentions of the would-be regulators, explaining how, in the early days of McCain-Feingold advocacy, “the ‘good government’ crowd . . . denounced a deregulated Internet as a ‘loophole’ in campaign finance law, a ‘poison pill,’ ‘anti-reform’” etc.

How can respectable Americans advocate regulation of speech, as if the First Amendment did not exist? It’s as if they are baffled by plain language: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging freedom of speech, or of the press. . . .”

How can they live with themselves?

For me, it’s a consolation to know that at least censors in Congress can still be thrown out, peacefully, with votes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Allergic to the First Amendment

The drug manufacturer Allergan is taking the Food and Drug Administration to court.

The FDA has ordered Allergan to violate the FDA’s own rules against disseminating information about “off-label” uses of a drug, uses that may be medically common but which, unlike “on-label” uses, were not specifically certified as safe and effective during the FDA’s approval process.

Once a drug has been approved, doctors may legally prescribe the drug for safe off-label uses.

The FDA now wants Allergan to send detailed safety information to physicians about both off-label and on-label uses of Botox®. Yet the FDA bans promoting drugs for off-label uses. A company may convey truthful information about such uses in only very restricted ways.

Companies have paid through the nose for violating these restrictions. In 2009, Pfizer had to pay $2.3 billion for promoting off-label uses of its drugs. Another $1.4 billion was looted from Eli Lilly for the same “crime.”

Allergan is understandably reluctant to obey a government agency’s edict to disobey other edicts promulgated by that same agency — especially when the price of disobedience can be so high. Better to solicit some judicial clarity.

Better, certainly, than following orders and hoping for the best.

Will the court vindicate and enforce constitutional protections for freedom of speech in the realm of pharmaceuticals? Such a ruling would unshackle drug companies from ludicrous hindrance, freeing them to speak.

And it would help doctors and patients.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom national politics & policies

Riot Cops to a Tea

Here’s a federal budget cut: Air Force One and all other presidential travel services. The prez doesn’t need to travel. Keep the Executive Entourage in Washington, DC.

This struck home to me when I saw video of police in full riot gear, called up specifically to keep Tea Party people from gathering to greet the president at an event in Quincy, Illinois.

The cops marched around and repelled the Tea Party folk, moving them back, away from the president and his admirers.

President Obama’s Secret Service and crowd control experts are carrying on the tradition of George W. Bush. I haven’t heard Orwellian talk of “free speech zones,” but that doesn’t mean that free speech or the mere waving about of signs is encouraged by the president.

Presidential outings and speeches are tightly controlled. They are now mere political events, designed to shore up the president’s party.

So there’s no reason, in the age of mass media, for American taxpayers to continue to pay for them. The president can speak in front of the camera, on radio and the Internet, and he can speak on the White House steps. But spending one more cent on presidential roamings to rally partisan troops just isn’t very American. Not if all sides aren’t allowed to participate.

What was unacceptable under Bush remains unacceptable under Obama. But I doubt if we’ll hear many on the left protest this marginalization of dissent.

Wrong crowd, I guess.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights too much government

You Go, Google

A few weeks back I asked what was going on with Google’s pledge to stop helping the Chinese government censor search results for sensitive topics like Falun Gong and Tiananmen Square. Google was presumably using its threat of withdrawal from the Chinese market as a negotiating chip to wrest privileged status from the Chinese authorities.

But the hope was naive. It was unlikely in the extreme that China would give up its program of censoring mainland culture and especially politics. It wants to control the dialogue and thwart political dissent. So I told Google, “Google, ya gotta go. Stop enabling Chinese censorship. Do as you promised and provide a desperately needed and inspiring example of refusing any longer to cooperate with tyranny.”

I feared Google would retreat from its public commitment. But now Google agrees that for the Chinese government, “self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement.” So Google is redirecting Chinese users of its search engine (Google.cn) to its Hong Kong search engine (Google.com.hk), where results are not currently censored because of the “one country, two systems” policy that has been at least roughly followed since China took over Hong Kong in 1997.

Whether citizens on the mainland will be able to get uncensored search results from the Hong Kong Google search engine is an open question at best. But any censorship of those results will now be perpetrated by China without Google’s active cooperation. Good for Google.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.