The Israeli Knesset became the latest legislative body to ban skinny models. The new law prohibits both Israeli and foreign ads with “underweight” models and requires disclosure of when pictures have been manipulated to make the model look thinner.
Continue reading “The Rubens Regulation: Knesset Tells Skinny Models To Eat Or Starve”
A court in Moscow has upheld a lower court decision declaring books on Scientology to be extremist literature and banning publication or distribution of such books. This decision follows moves by other countries against Scientology as a criminal or fraudulent enterprise as well as testimony against the church by former high-ranking church members.
Continue reading “Russian Court Bans Scientology Books As “Extremist””
We have been following the constitutional challenges to the new cigarette advertising regulations requiring graphic images on packages. I have been highly critical of those images and agree with the constitutional and policy concerns raised by the regulations. Now we have two decisions — one from the Sixth Circuit and one from the D.C. district court — reaching opposing results on the constitutionality of regulations. The district court decision sets up the possibility of a split in the circuit with the appeal now going to the D.C. Circuit.
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
When the Patriot Act was signed into law back in 2001, there was significant discussion about and distrust in the broad powers granted to the FBI and other intelligence gathering agencies. I won’t go into the uproar that ensued back then, but I do want to discuss the latest events pertaining to the infamous Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Section 215 of the Patriot Act is the section that has been dubbed as the “business records” provision of the Act. In the last few days, two United States Senators reconfirmed their concern over the possible misuse of the broad powers granted to the government in Section 215. Senator Ron Wyden and Senator Mark Udall have made public their recent letter to Attorney General Holder expressing their grave concerns on just how Section 215 is being interpreted and used to spy on Americans. Continue reading “How Patriotic is the Patriot Act?”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
This video of Collinsville, Illinois K9 officer Michael Reichert violating the civil rights of two guys returning from a Star Trek convention.
Submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
It is a truism that most technology is a two-edged sword. Something created with a beneficial use can and (due to human nature) turned into something harmful is the way the scenario usually plays out. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule where the inverse is true and something harmful turns out to have a beneficial application. To illustrate this point, here is the Vortex Gun.
You saw correctly. This is a gun that can fire concentrated blasts of tear gas, pepper spray or any other aerosol agent moving at 90 miles per hour at targets up to 150 feet away. The “smoke rings” are still moving at 60 miles per hour reaching targets over 90 feet away. What possible benefit could come from such a weapon? Let’s look at the non-military application of the weapon before jumping the gun (pun fully intended).
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
Being in my late 60’s and having grown up in a liberal family, politics and history have been always among my greatest interests. Those much younger than I would no doubt list 9/11 as the most traumatizing historical event of their lifetime. While 9/11 of course affected me greatly, no historical event in my life has affected me as much as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I believe that it traumatized my generation so extensively that most of us have not been able to fully believe in our country and its government since that tragic day and its aftermath. Most Americans alive today, who were born in 1960, or afterwards, have only second hand accounts of the total turbulence of the 60’s and the trauma experienced by those who lived through it. There is no doubt that 9/11 has traumatized this nation, but initially it drew most of us together, only to have that unity frittered away by the Bush Administration. The 60’s did that for my generation and that trauma led directly to our current political chaos and deep distrust of government as my generation took the reins of political power.
To most people growing up in the 50’s, on its surface America was the land of opportunity. The USA was a great democracy, unparalleled in human history in the prosperity of its citizens and its standing among nations. For many though, there were obvious cracks in this version of the America Myth. If you were a Black American you faced the viciousness of “Jim Crow” in the South and the somewhat more “genteel” racism pervading the rest of the country. People of Spanish speaking heritage also faced the status of second class citizenship. Native American’s were treated just as badly as they had been from the first European landing on these their shores. Women were, with few exceptions, expected to be subservient to male expectations and were uniformly portrayed as being intellectually inferior. Homosexuals were viciously and violently persecuted. And so it went in 1950’s America. Some great white writers like Mailer, Kerouac, Steinbeck and many others were taking on the myth of the America Dream. Africa American writers like Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin were standing on the shoulders of their predecessors from the Harlem Renaissance, in exposing the oppression Black people faced. There was among many Americans a weariness of the canards of the Eisenhower Administration, the fear based militarism of the Cold War and a recognition that all was not well with a good portion of the population. There was also for many, a hope for purposefulness in their own lives, beyond marriage, house in the suburbs, new car and two kids.
Arriving on the scene, promising to revitalize the country, was JFK, a brilliant speaker, handsome man and charismatic leader. He won a close election against the unlikable Richard Nixon and proceeded to galvanize the nation with the dreams of his New Frontier. JFK also was the source of great enmity among the Washington Establishment. Seen as nouveau riche by the plutocracy, too idealistic and naïve by the Defense, State Departments and CIA, hated by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, too “Nigra Friendly” for Southern racists and a threat to the “business as usual” Corporate status quo. He was murdered on a Friday Afternoon in 1963 as my University suspended activities and I sat with friends stunned with grief listening to a car radio and puffing Marlboro’s. That day is etched permanently in my mind and the disturbing events that followed it throughout those turbulent 1960’s forever changed the way I viewed the world. Lee Harvey Oswald was improbably murdered as I watched on TV that Sunday; a flawed Warren Commission Report arrived filled with holes; the murder of Martin Luther King and then Bobby Kennedy; along with the prosecution of a vicious and illegal war; with all this my faith in American Democracy and exceptionalism faded into skeptical disbelief. Life for us ordinary citizens, however, still went on and pleasure, friends, lovers, spouses, families and careers took up most of our time and attention. Nevertheless I devoured everything I could read about the JFK murder and indeed about the history taking place as I lived my mundane life. Recently a book brought all those strange feelings back to the surface and provided a possible explanation why our world seems so much crazier these days. Continue reading “A Real History of the Last Sixty-Two Years?”
There is an interesting controversy in New York where The New York Times ran an ad calling on Catholics to leave their church, but refused to run a similar ad targeting Muslims. Conservatives have jumped on what they say is a double standard. They may have a point.
Rick Santorum is continuing his faith-based campaign with a pledge to wipe out pornography in his Administration. The problem is that pornography is lawful and now a multi-billion dollar industry. It is obscenity that can be criminalized, but what is obscene remains exceptionally vague and ill-defined. Indeed, many may find parts of this presidential campaign to border on the obscene.
Given the recent reports on our latest filings in the World Bank case (Chang v. United States), below are the two most recent filings asking for a resumption of hearings on the alleged destruction of evidence by the government.
The Arizona Senate has overwhelmingly passed the so-called “wrongful birth” bill — a piece of legislation that not only strips citizens of core torts protections but is based on a legal mythology of abusive litigation. The law would prevent lawsuits against doctors who withhold information on health problems of a fetus — even withholding the information intentionally.
We have been following a trend toward firing or disciplining public employees for their activities in their private lives, including statements made on Facebook or associations with unpopular groups. One group of employees are teachers and school employees who previously worked in the pornography industry (here and here). Shawn Loftis, 36, faced the same barrier to teaching due to his work as a gay porn actor as well as the director and owner of his own company, World of Men. After a campaign against him and a decision to bar him from teaching, Loftis secured a ruling that he could in fact return to teaching last Friday. He holds a master’s degree in public administration.
Continue reading “Former Gay Porn Star Secures Right To Pursue Florida Teaching Certificate”
I recently wrote a column on how the West is curtailing free speech under blasphemy, hate speech, and anti-discrimination laws. As if on cue, lawyer Gloria Allred has called for the criminal prosecution of Rush Limbaugh for calling law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and “prostitute.” I previously wrote that I believe Limbaugh’s comments were protected speech under the first amendment and constitute opinion for the purposes of any libel action. Such a prosecution would threaten core free speech principles and the law cited by Allred would appear not only inimical to free speech but overtly sexist.
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Bishop William Lori, a representative of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that mandating insurance companies cover contraception is like mandating kosher delis serve ham sandwiches. Lori likens the obvious health benefits of not getting pregnant to the claim that “pork is good for you.” Lori calls this the Parable of the Kosher Deli.
Below is today’s column in The Los Angeles Times exploring the growing attacks on free speech in the West and the recent controversy of the “Zombie Mohammad” case.
Continue reading “Free Speech Under Fire”