First Amendment

New Jersey Judge Orders Newspaper to Take Down Article; Newspaper Refuses

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Here’s a very interesting case in which Bergen County Superior Court Judge Jane Gallina-Mecca issued an order directing the Bergen Dispatch to remove a news article. The newspaper refused the demand. Techdirt reports:

This seems to happen all too often, but a local judge has forgotten about the whole 1st Amendment thing. Last week, Bergen County Superior Court Judge Jane Gallina-Mecca ordered the Bergen Dispatch to take down a news article. The article was about a specific family court case, involving custody of a child. It’s not surprising that there might be some concern over privacy rights in such cases, but even so, that does not allow a judge to flat out order a newspaper to take down an article — even more so when the order came out of a closed hearing where no one from the newspaper was even present. In response, the Bergen Dispatch posted a fairly snarky article that reiterates some of the details from the case, and concludes with this wonderful paragraph:

While the Bergen Dispatch reviews its options we have confirmed that Bergen County does currently remain part of the State of New Jersey and that currently New Jersey is still part of the Union of states that is governed by the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights. As such, Bergen County citizens continue to enjoy the right to freedom of speech and the right to a free press.

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U.S. Government Wants to Charge $1,500 to Take a Photo in Federal Wilderness Areas

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Screen Shot 2014-10-10 at 11.16.44 AMGo ahead and file this in the ever expanding category of: “WTF, how is this possible, America is becoming a crazy banana republic.”

When I first saw this headline, I was certain it had to be misleading. Someone had to be exaggerating in the pursuit of click-bait. Incredibly, it was another case of truth being stranger than fiction, with the article actually far worse than I imagined.

You ready for this? Have a seat, take a deep breath, and brace yourself for unbridled fascism. From OregonLive:

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A Tale from Post-Constitutional America – This is What Happens if You Turn Your Back on Hillary Clinton

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Screen Shot 2014-10-01 at 11.48.52 AMThe name Ray McGovern should be familiar to longtime readers of Liberty Blitzkrieg. The former C.I.A. analyst has been a vocal critic of the oligarch cesspool of fraud and deception that these United States has decayed into. I highlighted some of his criticisms a year ago in the post, Ray McGovern: “Obama is Afraid of the C.I.A.”, in which he memorably stated:

I think he’s just afraid and he shouldn’t have run for president if he was going to be this much of a wuss. 

Well, Mr. McGovern is back in the news. This time it’s for daring to turn his back on your royal highness, Hillary Rodham Clinton, in an act of non-violent public protest. We learn from Bill Moyers that:

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Video of the Day: Veterans Arrested at Vietnam Memorial in NYC

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The following is a powerful, touching and very well done video that includes veterans of various wars, ranging from World War II to Vietnam as well as some of our recent imperial adventures. It is entirely clear that this is no stunt, but rather a heartfelt and genuine expression of grief and disillusionment from Americans … Read more

Texas Teen Faces 8 Years in Jail for an Insensitive Joke on Facebook

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A very disturbing pattern is becoming evident all across the nation.  For a country that has 5% of the world’s population yet 25% of the entire planet’s prisoners, we sure do seem to eager to bump that figure up even higher. My guess is the trend has a lot to do with the private prison system in the country, which means higher levels of incarceration equals higher profits.  I think it also has to do with a troubling move toward criminalizing speech and an attack on the First Amendment generally.  This particular case occurred in Austin, Texas and nineteen year old Justin Carter now faces eight years in jail for an insensitive joke on Facebook. Thanks to the site Texas Prison Bid’ness, we can gain some perspective on the private prison industry in the Lone Star State:

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Now, here’s the story from KHOU in Houston:

Justin Carter was 18 back in February when an online video game “League of Legends” took an ugly turn on Facebook. 

Jack Carter says his son Justin and a friend got into an argument with someone on Facebook about the game and the teenager wrote a comment he now regrets. 

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California Man Faces 13 Years in Jail for Writing Anti-Bank Messages in Chalk on the Sidewalk

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This is so horrifying and despicable that I am, for once, literally at a loss for words.  From the Huffington Post: Jeff Olson, a 40-year-old man from San Diego, Calif., will face jail time for charges stemming from anti-big bank messages he scrawled in water-soluble chalk outside Bank of America branches last year. The San Diego … Read more

James Goodale: “Obama Worse than Nixon” on Press Freedom

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For those of you unaware, James Goodale was chief counsel to the New York Times when they published the Pentagon Papers.  In this excellent interview with the Columbia Journalism Review, he warns all Americans, in particular journalists, about the significance of the U.S. government’s prosecution of Wikileaks.  He notes that what Wikileaks did was no different from what the New York Times did back in the 1970’s.  They broke news that the powerful didn’t want exposed.  That is the heart and soul of journalism, and if that is criminalized, so will be the profession of journalism itself.  It’s a full on attack against free speech.  From the CJR:

James Goodale has a message for journalists: Wake up. In his new book, Fighting for the Press (CUNY Journalism Press, 2013), Goodale, chief counsel to The New York Times when its editors published the Pentagon Papers in 1971, argues that President Obama is worse for press freedom than former President Richard Nixon was.

The Obama administration has prosecuted more alleged leakers of national security information under the 1917 Espionage Act than all previous administrations combined, a course critics say is overly aggressive. Former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller wrote in a March op-ed that the administration “has a particular, chilling intolerance” for those who leak. If the Obama administration indicts WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act, Goodale argues, the president will have succeeded where Nixon failed by using the act to “end-run” the First Amendment.

Could you talk a bit about President Obama’s approach to classified information and press freedom?

Antediluvian, conservative, backwards. Worse than Nixon. He thinks that anyone who leaks is a spy! I mean, it’s cuckoo.

Well, I think it’s very much the same thing. We have a leak of classified information. And by the way — you’ve got to remember [Bradley] Manning’s the leaker. Everyone says Assange is a leaker. He’s not a leaker. He’s the person who gets the information.

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