Goodbye 1st Amendment: New Bill Seizes Assets of Anyone Who Plans or Participates in Protests that ‘Disturb the Public Peace’

Imagine having all your assets seized because you planned a peaceful protest that disturbed the peace? That could be a reality under SB1142, which just passed the Arizona state senate.

Under SB1142, Arizona’s racketeering laws are expanding to include rioting. This gives the state government the right to criminally prosecute and seize the assets of everyone who planned a protest that turned violent and everyone who participated.

Paul Ryan’s idiotic power play: Just maybe, his move to squelch future protests will backfire

Last summer Democrats in the House of Representatives felt so excluded from the legislative process that they staged a Civil Rights-style sit-in on the chamber’s floor to protest Speaker Paul Ryan’s refusal to allow a vote on a gun-control bill. Ryan and his Republican majority heard their complaints and, in the spirit of magnanimity and bipartisan comity for which the GOP is so well-known, have now responded with a proposal that will punish any members of the chamber who ever go to such lengths to get their voices heard again.

What Silicon Valley's billionaires don't understand about the first amendment

No major American cultural force is more opposed to examination and more active in suppressing it today than Silicon Valley. So when it was revealed this week that Facebook board member Peter Thiel had been secretly bankrolling a lawsuit to inflict financial ruin on the news and gossip site Gawker, Silicon Valley cheered.

The investor Vinod Khosla wrote on Twitter that the “press gets very uppity when challenged”. And that these bad journalists need “to be taught lessons”.

The First Amendment Hasn't Stopped Police From Harassing Copwatchers

At a protest in downtown Denver, on April 29, 2015, a police officer stole Jessica Benn's smartphone.

Benn had been filming her husband, Jesse, from the safety of the sidewalk as police arrested him. That was enough for her to be targeted and to have her property illegally seized.

"An officer just stepped up to me and grabbed it right out of my hand," she told Truthout. "Right behind him was an officer in SWAT gear who then took me and pushed me up against a bus with a baton across my neck and held me there."

No One Is Violating Donald Trump’s First Amendment Rights

The increasingly violent nature of campaign events supporting Donald Trump, the current Republican presidential front-runner, built to a crescendo Friday night as protesters in Chicago, Illinois came out in full force, prompting Trump to cancel the rally he had planned there. Trump was quick to decry the “thugs who shut down our First Amendment rights” and other figures on the right echoed that message.

'To Protest Is A First Amendment Right': New Yorkers Defy Mayor's Request To Pause Demonstrations

NEW YORK -- Hundreds of protesters gathered in New York City Tuesday evening, showing they don’t plan to halt demonstrations, despite Mayor Bill de Blasio’s call to suspend their actions until the two NYPD officers killed over the weekend have been laid to rest.

About 300 demonstrators clogged city streets after gathering at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, proceeding as they'd planned weeks earlier. Followed by a trail of cops, they marched uptown toward Harlem, holding signs that expressed condolences to the families of the slain officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, while openly criticizing de Blasio's request to pause protests.

Mayor Forces Man To Leave Public Meeting Because He Won’t Stand During Prayer

A Florida mayor ejected one of his constituents from a City Commission meeting on Thursday because he declined to stand during the invocation and pledge to the flag at the beginning of the meeting.

Winter Garden Mayor John Rees, a nonpartisan official leading an Orlando suburb of about 37,000, was caught on video demanding that an audience member stand for a prayer, which thanked God for “allowing us to live in a country where we’re free to believe, think, and pray.”

Alabama Chief Justice Thinks The First Amendment Only Protects Christians

The judge best known for refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama Judicial Building suggested earlier this year that the First Amendment only protects the religious speech of Christians.

Roy Moore, the chief justice of Alabama's state Supreme Court, spoke at a January luncheon hosted by Pro-Life Mississippi. In a video of the event obtained by Raw Story, Moore spoke on his interpretation of the First Amendment.

Is It Time to Jump Down the First Amendment Rabbit Hole With Clarence Thomas?

It’s painful to say, but given the perverse logic of the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision and Wednesday’s plurality ruling in McCutcheon v. FEC, Justice Clarence Thomas—the uber-conservative known for invoking his right to remain silent during oral arguments—may be correct about the direction of federal campaign finance law. If he is, the court may soon be ready to make even more drastic changes in the law, taking what some legal commentators have called a final jump down the First Amendment “rabbit hole.”

Supreme Court Watch: Campaign Spending, Union Busting and the Subversion of the First Amendment

Although predicting the outcome of Supreme Court cases is never a sure thing, two decisions that may be handed down any day—McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission and Harris v. Quinn—have the clear potential to transform the meaning of the First Amendment and once again expose the court’s radically pro-corporate and anti-union agenda.

Argued in October, McCutcheon was filed by Alabama businessman Shaun McCutcheon and the Republican National Committee to overturn the present legal limits on the aggregate amount of money a person or corporation can contribute directly to candidates for federal office, political parties and political campaign committees during any two-year election cycle. Currently, the biennial maximum is $123,200. The issue of whether the limit on direct campaign contributions is constitutional was left unresolved by the court’s 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case.

Blogger’s Incarceration Raises First Amendment Questions

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — For over six years, Roger Shuler has hounded figures of the state legal and political establishment on his blog, Legal Schnauzer, a hothouse of furious but often fuzzily sourced allegations of deep corruption and wide-ranging conspiracy. Some of these allegations he has tested in court, having sued his neighbor, his neighbor’s lawyer, his former employer, the Police Department, the Sheriff’s Department, the Alabama State Bar and two county circuit judges, among others. Mostly, he has lost.

But even those who longed for his muzzling, and there are many, did not see it coming like this: with Mr. Shuler sitting in jail indefinitely, and now on the list of imprisoned journalists worldwide kept by the Committee to Protect Journalists. There, in the company of jailed reporters in China, Iran and Egypt, is Mr. Shuler, the only person on the list in the Western Hemisphere.

The Right to Evade Regulation - How corporations hijacked the First Amendment

Every time you fill a prescription at a drug store like Walgreens, the pharmacy keeps a record of the transaction, noting information such as your name, the drug, the dosage, and the issuing doctor. It’s a routine bit of bookkeeping, and for a long time it raised few eyebrows. Then a firm called IMS Health starting buying up the data. Mining pharmacy records, the company assembled profiles of hundreds of thousands of American doctors and millions of individual patients, with names and other identifying details encrypted. IMS Health turned around and sold access to those files to pharmaceutical companies, making it easier for the firms to target (and reward) the physicians most likely to prescribe expensive, brand-name drugs.

'Reporter's Privilege' Under Fire From Obama Administration Amid Broader War On Leaks

RICHMOND, Va. -- The Obama administration Friday morning continued its headlong attack on the right of reporters to protect their confidential sources in leak investigations.

Before a panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, a Department of Justice lawyer argued that New York Times reporter James Risen should be forced to testify in the trial of former CIA agent Jeffrey Sterling, who is charged with leaking classified information to Risen about a botched plot against the Iranian government.

Rather than arguing the specifics of the case, DOJ appellate lawyer Robert A. Parker asserted that there is no reporter's privilege when a journalist receives an illegal leak of national security secrets.

'Gasland' Journalists Arrested At Hearing By Order Of House Republicans

WASHINGTON -- In a stunning break with First Amendment policy, House Republicans directed Capitol Hill police to detain a highly regarded documentary crew that was attempting to film a Wednesday hearing on a controversial natural gas procurement practice. Initial reports from sources suggested that an ABC News camera was also prevented from taping the hearing; ABC has since denied that they sent a crew to the hearing.

Josh Fox, director of the Academy Award-nominated documentary "Gasland" was taken into custody by Capitol Hill police this morning, along with his crew, after Republicans objected to their presence, according to Democratic sources present at the hearing. The meeting of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment had been taking place in room 2318 of the Rayburn building.

HuffPost has obtained exclusive video of the arrest of Josh Fox. Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, can be heard at the end of the clip asking Republican Chairman Andy Harris (R-Md.) to halt the arrest and permit Fox to film the public hearing. Harris denies Miller's request as Fox is escorted out of the hearing in handcuffs.

Journalist Chris Hedges Sues Obama Admin over Indefinite Detention of U.S. Citizens Approved in NDAA

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges has filed suit against President Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to challenge the legality of the National Defense Authorization Act, which includes controversial provisions authorizing the military to jail anyone it considers a terrorism suspect anywhere in the world, without charge or trial. Sections of the bill are written so broadly that critics say they could encompass journalists who report on terror-related issues, such as Hedges, for supporting enemy forces. "It is clearly unconstitutional," Hedges says of the bill. "It is a huge and egregious assault against our democracy. It overturns over 200 years of law, which has kept the military out of domestic policing." We speak with Hedges, now a senior fellow at the Nation Institute and former New York Times foreign correspondent who was part of a team of reporters that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism. We are also joined by Hedges’ attorney Carl Mayer, who filed the litigation on his behalf in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Video
Source: Dmocracy Now! 

The First Amendment Upside Down: Why We Must Occupy Democracy

You've been seeing this across the country... Americans assaulted, clubbed, dragged, pepper-sprayed... Why? For exercising their right to free speech and assembly -- protesting the increasing concentration of income, wealth, and political power at the top.

And what's Washington's response? Nothing. In fact, Congress's so-called "super committee" just disbanded because Republicans refuse to raise a penny of taxes on the rich.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court says money is speech and corporations are people. The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision last year ended all limits on political spending. Millions of dollars are being funneled to politicians without a trace.

And a revolving door has developed between official Washington and Wall Street -- with bank executives becoming public officials who make rules that benefit the banks before heading back to the Street to make money off the rules they created.

Other top officials, including an increasing proportion of former members of congress, are cashing in by joining lobbying power houses and pressuring their former colleagues to do whatever their clients want.

The First Amendment and the Obligation to Peacefully Disrupt in a Free Society

Mayor Bloomberg is planning Draconian new measures to crack down on what he calls the "disruption" caused by the protesters at Zuccotti Park, and he is citing neighbors' complaints about noise and mess. This set of talking points, and this strategy, is being geared up as well by administrations of municipalities around the nation in response to the endurance and growing influence of the Occupation protest sites. But the idea that any administration has the unmediated option of "striking a balance," in Bloomberg's words, that it likes, and closing down peaceful and lawful disruption of business as usual as it sees fit is a grave misunderstanding -- or, more likely, deliberate misrepresentation -- of our legal social contract as American citizens.

Some kinds of disruption in a free republic are not "optional extras" if the First Amendment governs the land, as it does ours, and are certainly not subject to the whims of mayors or local police, or even DHS. Just as protesters don't have a blanket right to do everything they want, there is absolutely no blanket right of mayors or even of other citizens to be free from the effect of certain kinds of disruption resulting from their fellow citizens exercising First Amendment rights. That notion, presented right now by Bloomberg and other vested interests, of a "disruption-free" social contract is pure invention -- just like the flat-out fabrication of the nonexistent permit cited in my own detention outside the Huffington Post Game Changers event this last Tuesday, when police told me, without the event organizers' knowledge and contrary to their intentions, that a private entity had "control of the sidewalks" for several hours. (In fact, the permit in question -- a red carpet event permit! -- actually guarantees citizens' rights to walk and even engage in political assembly on the streets if they do not block pedestrian traffic, as the OWS protesters were not.)