Civil Liberties
Reviewing the background of hate-speech policies at the international level, Jacob Mchangama notes an interesting dynamic that one encounters in other areas of human interaction: Human-rights agencies are sympathetic to hate-speech laws partly because international human-rights conventions at the United Nations were instrumental in globalizing and mainstreaming them. The U.N.’s International Covenant on Civil and…
This is the sort of thing about which all Americans should strive to be aware: Hot on the heels of recent threats from Vice President Joe Biden and Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel directed at sites offering unauthorized movies and music, last month U.S. authorities targeted several sites they claimed were connected to the…
The banner has been on display at Cranston West High School since 1958. On it is a simple, innocuous prayer. Our Heavenly Father, Grant us each day the desire to do our best, To grow mentally and morally as well as physically, To be kind and helpful to our classmates and teachers, To be honest…
I would very much like to be won over by Ramesh Ponnuru’s argument against libertarian reservations about the Civil Rights Act (recently in the public consciousness thanks to Republican U.S. Senate Candidate from Kentucky Rand Paul. But I cannot escape the conclusion that Ponnuru’s dual structures of legalism and appeals to legislative judgment never quite…
So, the Mojave Desert cross honoring American servicemen and -women has been stolen: A cross erected on a remote Mojave Desert outcropping to honor American war dead has been stolen less than two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed it to remain standing while a legal battle continued over its presence on federal land.…
A rowdy crowd (notice that, in the interest of avoiding “hate” speech, I didn’t say “mob”) succeeded in preventing Ann Coulter from speaking at the University of Ottawa Tuesday evening. Is it too obvious, by the way, to point out the irony that “hatred”, the offense that Ann Coulter is purportedly guilty of, was not…
According to Steve Peoples of the Projo’s 7-to-7 newsblog, Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch (to no one’s surprise, really) is not interested in joining a potential lawsuit by the states challenging the Federal government’s power to require that individuals purchase something…“I don’t like a lot of the decisions that the legislature makes every day.…
…and do we have a new issue in both the Rhode Island Attorney General’s and the Governor’s races, based on this facebook post from the Attorney General of Texas (h/t NRO)…Texas attorney general Greg Abbott Facebooks: “I am organizing a conference call tonight for AGs across the country. We will discuss our litigation strategy about…
This essay by Alex Rose has loitered about my desk for better than a month, because I’ve been unable to decide whether it’s worthy of response. One gets the strong impression that Mr. Rose’s primary intention is to execute a faux-daring poke in the eye of an acceptably accosted group — traditionally religious people —…
Joseph Bottum notes a piece of legislation in the United Kingdom that looms as a logical subsequent step for liberal legal and cultural trends in the United States: … the bill’s most controversial provision would enjoin churches and other religious bodies from discriminating on the basis of gender or sexual orientation in the selection of…