Senator Gillibrand Statement on Egypt: An Incredible Moment for Freedom and Liberty

As Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigns the presidency, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand issued the following statement:

“Today, the world is witnessing an incredible moment for freedom and liberty as President Mubarak leaves office. Now Egypt’s leaders must emerge and take concerted steps that will result in a stable, orderly transition to a real democratic society that fosters prosperity for its people and peace with its neighbors. My hope is that the situation remains non-violent and stability returns to the country.”

Why Shouldnt Freedom of the Press Apply to WikiLeaks? by Tim Dickinson - Rolling Stone Politics

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You may not like Julian Assange, but the campaign to silence WikiLeaks should appall you.

Here’s a thought experiment: Imagine for a moment that the quarter of a million secret government cables from the State Department had been leaked, not to Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, but to Bill Keller, the executive editor of the New York Times.

First, let’s state the obvious: The Timeswould never have returned the confidential files to the Obama administration. Most likely, the newspaper would have attempted to engage with State to try to scrub life- and source- threatening details from the cables — as Assange and his lawyers did.

And if the administration had refused to participate in that effort -- as it did with WikiLeaks? The Times would have done what any serious news organization has the imperative to do: It would have published, at a pacing of its own choosing, any cable it deemed to be in the public interest. In this digital age, it’s likely the Times would have even created a massive searchable database of the cables.

The optics of the information dump would likely have been very different -- overlaid with the Times’ newspaper-of-record gravitas. But the effect would have been identical: Information that the U.S. government finds embarrassing, damning, and even damaging would have seen the light of day.

Now let’s extend the thought experiment:

How would you react if top American conservatives were today baying for Bill Keller’s blood? If Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had called on Keller to be prosecuted as a “high-tech terrorist”? If Sarah Palin were demanding that Keller be hunted down like a member of Al Qaeda? If Newt Gingrich were calling for the Timeseditor to be assassinated as an “enemy combatant.”

What if Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, had successfully pressured the Times’ web hosting company to boot the newspaper off its servers? What if Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal suddenly stopped processing subscriptions for the paper?

Imagine that students at Columbia University’s graduate school of international affairs had been warned not to Tweet about the New York Times if they had any hopes of ever working at the State Department.

Imagine U.S. soldiers abroad being told that they’d be breaking the law if they read even other news outlets’ coverage of the Times’ exclusives.

Imagine that the Library of Congress had simply blocked all access to the New York Times site.

You can’t imagine this actually happening to the New York Times. Yet this has been has been exactly the federal and corporate response to Assange and WikiLeaks.

The behavior is outrageous on its face and totalitarian in its impulse. Indeed, we should all be alarmed at the Orwellian coloring of the Obama administration’s official response to the publishing of the cables:

“President Obama supports responsible, accountable, and open government at home and around the world, but this reckless and dangerous action runs counter to that goal.”

Secrecy is openness. What the fuck?!

Listen: You don’t have to approve of Assange or his political views; you can even believe he’s a sex criminal. It doesn’t matter. What’s at stake here isn’t the right of one flouncy Australian expat to embarrass a superpower. It’s freedom of the press. And it’s a dark day for journalists everywhere when the imperatives of government secrecy begin to triumph over our First Amendment.

Chicago Tribune: Court Limits Student Free-Speech Rights by Pete Yost...

A high school student's "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner got slapped down by the Supreme Court in a decision Monday that restricts student speech rights when the message seems to advocate illegal drug use.

The court ruled 5-4 in the case of Joseph Frederick, who unfurled his handiwork at a school-sanctioned event in 2002, triggering his suspension and leading to a lengthy court battle.

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High court sides with school in 1st amendment decision (CNN)



Class photo (Getty Images/Mark Wilson)

"The message on Frederick's banner is cryptic," Chief Justice John Roberts said. But the school principal who suspended him "thought the banner would be interpreted by those viewing it as promoting illegal drug use, and that interpretation is plainly a reasonable one," Roberts said in the majority opinion.

In a concurrence, Justices Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy said the court's opinion "goes no further" than speech interpreted as dealing with illegal drug use.

"It provides no support" for any restriction that goes to political or social issues, they said.

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said the ruling "does serious violence to the First Amendment."

Students in public schools don't have the same rights as adults, but neither do they leave their constitutional protections at the schoolhouse gate, the court said in a landmark speech-rights ruling from Vietnam era.

The court has limited what students can do in subsequent cases, saying they may not be disruptive or lewd or interfere with a school's basic educational mission.

Frederick said his banner was a nonsensical message that he first saw on a snowboard. He intended it to proclaim his right to say anything at all.

Frederick displayed his handiwork on a winter morning as the Olympic torch made its way through Juneau, Alaska, en route to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

School principal Deborah Morse said the phrase was a pro-drug message. Frederick denied that he was advocating for drug use and brought a federal civil rights lawsuit.

Former independent counsel Ken Starr, whose law firm represented the school principal, called it a narrow ruling that "should not be read more broadly."

Taking issue with that, Steven R. Shapiro, national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said, "It is difficult to know what its impact will be in other cases involving unpopular speech."

The Students for Sensible Drug Policy said it was sad that the court thought there should be a drug exception to the First Amendment.

In their concurrence Alito and Kennedy said that the decision "goes no further than to hold that a public school may restrict speech that a reasonable observer would interpret as advocating illegal drug use."

Nor does it address political or social issues such as the wisdom of the war on drugs or of legalizing marijuana for medicinal use, Alito and Kennedy said, embracing language from Stevens' strong dissent.

Stevens said the First Amendment protects student speech if the message itself neither violates a permissible rule nor expressly advocates conduct that is illegal and harmful to students.

"This nonsense banner does neither," Stevens said.

Justice Stephen Breyer said the court should not have decided the First Amendment issue, but should have simply held that Frederick's claim for monetary damages because school officials have qualified immunity in carrying out their duties.

Frederick, now 23, said he later had to drop out of college after his father lost his job. The elder Frederick, who worked for the company that insures the Juneau schools, was fired in connection with his son's legal fight, the son said. A jury recently awarded Frank Frederick $200,000 in a lawsuit he filed over his firing.

Joseph Frederick, who has been teaching and studying in China, pleaded guilty in 2004 to a misdemeanor charge of selling marijuana at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, according to court records.

The case is Morse v. Frederick, 06-278.