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hotbrownsauce
05-04-2008, 05:13 PM
Okay, if you want to help me I'd greatly appreciate it and maybe I'll post some of what I say. I need to find 2 different article from some United States news papers (Like new your post or new york times cause they sell papers and also have online) in which a controversy happens that is linked to a constitutional issue.

Example, someone holding a sign on the side walk that reads "I hate Bush" and a police officer asks them to put it away. <-- That is a constitutional issue because the police officer is violating that persons first amendment right.

Also I need 1 article of the same kind from a non USA news paper. Like maybe in England they tell people they don't have a right to a speedy trial. Maybe it wouldn't violate their constitution but it would violate our constitution here.

So if you guys know of any stories that happened since Januaray or have any links I'd much appreciate it. (These articles I will be using to write about 6-12 pages total tonight and Due tomorrow.)
My obligation not yours :)

hotbrownsauce
05-04-2008, 05:35 PM
bumpage :)

hotbrownsauce
05-04-2008, 06:44 PM
Okay, I just need one international article if anyone knows anything off the top of their head

hillertexas
05-04-2008, 06:50 PM
the "bong hits for jesus" case
...I'll look it up.

hillertexas
05-04-2008, 06:51 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/washington/26speech.html


June 26, 2007
Vote Against Banner Shows Divide on Speech in Schools

By LINDA GREENHOUSE
WASHINGTON, June 25 — The Alaska high school student who unfurled a 14-foot banner with the odd message “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” insisted that it was a banner about nothing, a prank designed to get him and his friends on television as the Olympic torch parade went through Juneau en route to the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.

The school’s principal insisted, to the contrary, that the banner advocated, or at least celebrated, illegal drug use, and that the student, Joseph Frederick, should be punished for displaying it. She suspended him for 10 days.

On Monday, by a narrow margin, the Supreme Court backed the principal in a decision that showed the court deeply split over what weight to give to free speech in public schools.

Six justices voted to overturn a federal appeals court’s ruling that left the principal, Deborah Morse, liable for damages for violating Mr. Frederick’s First Amendment rights.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. spoke, at least nominally, for five of the six. He said for the court that Ms. Morse’s reaction to the banner, which was displayed off school property but at a school-sponsored event, was a reasonable one that did not violate the Constitution.

While the banner might have been nothing but “gibberish,” the chief justice said, it was reasonable for the principal, who “had to decide to act — or not act — on the spot,” to decide both that it promoted illegal drug use and that “failing to act would send a powerful message to the students in her charge, including Frederick, about how serious the school was about the dangers of illegal drug use.”

He added, “The First Amendment does not require schools to tolerate at school events student expression that contributes to those dangers.”

Four other justices, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., signed the chief justice’s opinion, although Justice Thomas took a much different approach. He said that Mr. Frederick had no First Amendment rights to violate.

“In light of the history of American public education,” Justice Thomas said, “it cannot seriously be suggested that the First Amendment ‘freedom of speech’ encompasses a student’s right to speak in public schools.” The court’s precedents had become incoherent, he said, adding, “I am afraid that our jurisprudence now says that students have a right to speak in school except when they don’t.”

The sixth justice, Stephen G. Breyer, did not sign the chief justice’s opinion, but wrote separately to say that the First Amendment issue was sufficiently cloudy that the court should have avoided deciding it. Instead, he said, the court should have ruled in the principal’s favor on the alternative ground that she was entitled to immunity from the student’s lawsuit.

Under the court’s doctrine of “qualified immunity,” government officials may not be sued for damages unless they have violated “clearly established” rights “of which a reasonable person would have known.”

There were additional shades of opinion within the chief justice’s majority. Justice Alito, joined by Justice Kennedy, wrote separately to emphasize what they said was the narrowness of the court’s holding. They said the decision should be understood as limited to speech advocating drug use, and noted that the court had not endorsed the much broader argument, put forward by the Bush administration, that school officials could censor speech that interfered with a school’s “educational mission.”

The breadth of that argument had alarmed religious conservatives, on the ground that school officials would get a license to enforce political correctness. Justice Alito, who had expressed a similar concern as an appeals court judge, said that the “educational mission” argument “strikes at the very heart of the First Amendment” by allowing school officials to “suppress speech on political and social issues based on disagreement with the viewpoint expressed.”

Writing for the four dissenters, Justice John Paul Stevens said that even limited to drugs, the majority opinion distorted the First Amendment by “inventing out of whole cloth a special First Amendment rule permitting the censorship of any student speech that mentions drugs” in a way that someone might perceive as containing a “latent pro-drug message.”

Justice Stevens said that “carving out pro-drug speech for uniquely harsh treatment finds no support in our case law and is inimical to the values protected by the First Amendment.”

Noting that alcohol also posed a danger to teenagers, Justice Stevens wondered whether “the court would support punishing Frederick for flying a ‘Wine Sips 4 Jesus’ banner,” which he said might be seen as pro-religion as well as pro-alcohol.

The dissenters, who also included Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Breyer, agreed with the majority that the principal should not be held personally liable for monetary damages. The case was Morse v. Frederick, No. 06-278.

hillertexas
05-04-2008, 06:54 PM
the "nappy headed ho's" case:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/07/arts/television/07imus.html


April 7, 2007
Networks Condemn Remarks by Imus

By DAVID CARR
Corrections Appended

On Wednesday morning, Don Imus called the students who play for the Rutgers University women’s basketball team a bunch of “nappy-headed ho’s.”

Even for Mr. Imus, a nationally syndicated radio host who knows his way around an insult, it was a shocking remark, one that seemed to impugn both the physical and moral characteristics of a team composed mostly of black players.

What followed was a familiar dance for Mr. Imus and the media companies that profit from his ability to shock his way to big audiences: outrage, indignation and, eventually, the expression of deep regret.

And so on Thursday, Mr. Imus wondered aloud on his show what the big deal was, saying people should not be offended by “some idiot comment meant to be amusing.”

But as often occurs in a modern media drama, Mr. Imus’s remarks were picked up on the Web, in this case by the Media Matters for America site (mediamatters.org). And by Friday, both his radio and television outlets were getting out 10-foot poles.

MSNBC, which simulcasts Mr. Imus’s show on cable television, issued an apology, noting that the program is not a production of the network; NBC, its parent company, called the comments “deplorable.”

CBS Radio, which syndicates the radio show, was sorry as well: “We are disappointed by Imus’s actions earlier this week which we find completely inappropriate,” the company said in a statement. “We fully agree that a sincere apology was called for and will continue to monitor the program’s content going forward.”

For his part, Mr. Imus appeared doubly sorry: for a time on Friday, the printed version of his apology, made on Friday morning’s show — he termed his remarks “thoughtless and stupid” — appeared twice on his home page at msnbc.com.

Mr. Imus is one of the most popular radio hosts in the country, with millions of daily listeners on more than 70 stations around the country. The television simulcast of his show on MSNBC is surging in the ratings — “Imus in the Morning,” which the network simulcasts with the New York radio station WFAN, gained 100,000 viewers in the last year, for an average daily total of 358,000, according to Nielsen estimates.

But even with Mr. Imus’s success, his comments gave NBC executives pause. “We take this matter very seriously,” said Allison Gollust, senior vice president for news communications at NBC. “We find the comments to be deplorable, and we are continuing to review the situation.”

This is hardly the first time Mr. Imus has made racially insensitive remarks during a broadcast. In a 1997 interview with “60 Minutes,” he said he chose one white staffer to tell racial jokes on his show. He once referred to the PBS anchor Gwen Ifill as “a cleaning lady.” And in 2001 he took a pledge, guided by the Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page, to refrain from making further racist comments on his program.

Mr. Imus’s defenders say that he is actually an equal-opportunity offender: Jews, gays and Roman Catholics are also his frequent targets. Yesterday’s show, on Good Friday, included a song couplet that managed to rhyme the words “resurrection” and “erection.”

Mr. Imus made his on-air apology yesterday morning amid the topical humor.

“Want to take a moment to apologize for an insensitive and ill- conceived remark we made the other morning regarding the Rutgers women’s basketball team,” Mr. Imus said. “It was completely inappropriate, and we can understand why people were offended. Our characterization was thoughtless and stupid, and we are sorry.”

Yesterday’s show also included an interview with Tim Russert, the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” one of a great number of political and media heavyweights who appear regularly on “Imus in the Morning.” (The NBC spokeswoman said the statement expressing regret about the remarks reflected Mr. Russert’s feelings about the matter as well.)

Both Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, and Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, recently appeared on the show, and media figures including Frank Rich of The New York Times and Chris Matthews of MSNBC have also spent time with Mr. Imus. Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, appeared on the show some time ago to promote his book “Dreams From My Father.”

Richard Prince, a columnist who writes a blog called Journal-isms about media and diversity, said that Mr. Imus was inoculated to some degree by his powerful relationships.

“One of the most offensive things about the whole episode is not just MSNBC playing ball with Imus,” Mr. Prince said. “Not only is the network supporting this kind of program, but think of all the prominent journalists and politicians who are also enabling him and these kinds of comments.”

Mr. Imus’s radio show is idiosyncratic in tone, ranging from thoughtful discussions of politics to the kind of coarse talk that would turn heads in a locker room.

“That’s some rough girls from Rutgers,” Mr. Imus said on Wednesday. “Man, they got tattoos ...” The program’s executive producer, Bernard McGuirk, agreed: “Some hardcore ho’s,” he said. Imus continued, “That’s some nappy-headed ho’s there, I’m going to tell you that.”

Later in the show, Mr. McGuirk characterized the women’s collegiate basketball championship Tuesday night, between Rutgers and the University of Tennessee, as “the Jigaboos versus the Wannabes.”

In a joint statement, Myles Brand, the president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and Richard L. McCormick, the president of Rutgers, said Mr. Imus’s attempt at humor represented an assault on human dignity. “The N.C.A.A. and Rutgers University are offended by the insults on MSNBC’s Don Imus program toward the 10 young women on the Rutgers basketball team,” they said. “It is unconscionable that anyone would use the airways to utter such disregard for the dignity of human beings who have accomplished much and deserve great credit. It is appropriate that Mr. Imus and MSNBC have apologized.”

But for Bryan Monroe, the president of the National Association of Black Journalists and the editor of Ebony and Jet magazines, Mr. Imus’s apology was not enough and called on journalists to boycott the show. “It was stunning, insulting and unbelievable that he went there,” Mr. Monroe said. “But his apology was too little, too late. No matter how contrite, his words hurt so many so deeply that after 40 years in the radio business, it is time for him to go.”

For the time being, though, the apology seemed to be sufficient.

Correction: April 10, 2007


Because of an editing error, an article in The Arts on Saturday about condemnation of the radio host Don Imus’s remarks about the Rutgers’ women’s basketball team referred incorrectly to Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, one of many politicians and media figures who have appeared on Mr. Imus’s show. Although he was formerly a Democratic senator, he was re-elected as an independent.

Correction: April 12, 2007


An article in The Arts on Saturday about condemnation of the radio host Don Imus for his remarks about the Rutgers women’s basketball team misidentified the book that Barack Obama, then a senator-elect, was promoting when he appeared on Mr. Imus’s show in November 2004. It was “Dreams From My Father” — not “The Audacity of Hope,” which was published in 2006.

hillertexas
05-04-2008, 06:56 PM
Howard Stern vs the FCC:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/arts/09ster.html


January 9, 2007
Stern Likes His New Censor: Himself

By JACQUES STEINBERG
Howard Stern, who today marks his first anniversary on satellite radio, wasted little time over that period before setting off on an expedition deep into the wild, forested territories of a medium patrolled by neither the Federal Communications Commission nor, apparently, his own employer.

Listeners who have paid $12.95 a month to hear him on Sirius Satellite Radio have been treated to uncensored aural experiences like a standing bit in which he persuades a porn star or centerfold model (typically naked, sometimes in tandem) to climb onto a vibrating, mechanical contraption known as the Sybian. He (and they) then provide play-by-play commentary on their apparently escalating enjoyment — all over the roar of a motor as loud as a leaf blower’s.

Fans who, upon hearing these and other scenes described to them, have been seized by a desire to see what’s going on can do so too, for an additional $9.99 to $13.99 a month via Mr. Stern’s on-demand television channel, which is available on many cable and satellite television systems.

But one does not need to see Mr. Stern, or his supporting cast of producers and technicians and various hangers-on (long known to listeners of his former radio show as the “Whack Pack”), to hear them talk freely about topics like their apparent fondness for less conventional sexual practices — the very topics that once drew Mr. Stern steep F.C.C. fines — punctuated with locker-room language so colorful that it might make George Carlin blush.

“It’s free-form, free-flowing, one big party,” Mr. Stern said in an interview on Friday, in a tiny corner office adjacent to his studio in Midtown Manhattan that was virtually bare except for photos of his steady girlfriend, Beth Ostrosky, and two large bottles of Purel, the hand cleanser. “We’re talking about the stuff you can’t talk about. The show on terrestrial radio in the last 10 years had been so watered down,” he said. “Now it’s only great because of the freedom.”

Still, however obvious Mr. Stern’s enthusiasm, his argument prompts an immediate question: Having mined so much of his humor in the past from his frustration at butting up against seemingly insurmountable boundaries (variously thrown up by the F.C.C., and, before that, his wife, Alison, from whom he is now divorced), can he be as entertaining when no one is telling him that anything is off limits?

Mr. Stern says that he can, and that he has already been.

“I don’t know what it is in particular with my career,” Mr. Stern said, sprawling in an easy chair, his 6-foot-5 frame clad in leather jacket, stone-washed jeans and black work boots. “They wouldn’t say that about Chris Rock, that Chris Rock shouldn’t be in clubs, he should be on TV, because he would have restraint. For some reason people or critics latch onto this idea that I needed the F.C.C. in order to be funny. Which is ludicrous. I’m not funny because of the F.C.C.”

And yet Mr. Stern acknowledged that with no one else seeking to put the brakes on his show, it has occasionally fallen to him, in a vacuum, to do so. “There are times now when I’m the guy saying, ‘That went too far,’ which is a new role,” he said.

Pressed for an example, he recalled a regular staff meeting on a recent Thursday in which one cast member had made the following request: that Mr. Stern, as both the microphones and cameras rolled, knock him out with chloroform, strip him naked and replace his clothes.

“I said, ‘I’m not sure chloroform is legal,’ ” Mr. Stern recalled saying. “ ‘I don’t know if it kills you.’ I said, ‘Wait a second, I’m not going there.’ ”

The material that has passed Mr. Stern’s own personal litmus test — including the broadcast of a version of the children’s game ring toss, only this one involving meat balls and women’s bare bottoms — is being heard by a much smaller audience than Mr. Stern had before departing free radio in the fall of 2005.

Where once Mr. Stern could boast of reaching 12 million listeners a day, Sirius’s overall subscriber base, while growing dramatically, is half that. At the same time Mr. Stern has relinquished his role on the front lines of the battle against government encroachment on free speech because the F.C.C. has no jurisdiction over satellite radio.

Asked if he missed being heard by so many or being talked about quite so much, Mr. Stern said that he was delighting in being part of “a start-up business.” Still, he sounded almost hopeful that his critics had not gone away.

“We’re still up against the wall,” he said. “There isn’t a day we don’t have a television report where someone says I’m a piece of garbage. There are so many angry mobs out there to have my head.”

A moment later, though, he said he would not miss the fights of the past, over issues like whether there was a place for indecency and foul language on the public airwaves.

“I never got into it to be the poster boy for the fight against the F.C.C.,” he added, while acknowledging that he had stoked that very image by marketing a series of tapes from his show that he titled “Crucified by the F.C.C.”

“I was really uncomfortable with this notion that I was going on the radio and sticking my thumb in the eye of Senator Brownback,” he said, referring to one of his bętes noires, Senator Sam Brownback, a Republican from Kansas. “These people, these senators” — he paused to utter an expletive — “they were all sitting there like I was a personal attack on them, like I was doing this to defy mom and apple pie and corrupt our children.”

“I’m a comedian,” he said. “I just wanted to make people laugh in the morning.”

That may be. But asked if, now, there is at times little that distinguishes his show from that of the soft-core “Girls Gone Wild” video series (or even “Midnight Blue,” the longtime, soft-core chestnut of New York City public access television that had Al Goldstein as its host), Mr. Stern, of course, blanched yet again.

“I never thought Al Goldstein or ‘Girls Gone Wild’ was funny,” he said. “They’re salacious. But I don’t find any humor in ‘Girls Gone Wild.’ ”

“I’m not trying to tell you to come to satellite to hear a girl sit on the Sybian,” he said. “I’m telling you to come because the show is funny.”

As an example Mr. Stern relished how he had persuaded a guest known only as “Rappin’ Granny” — she was approaching 90, he said — to mount the Sybian, fully clothed and with her cane, to describe how it felt.

“Granny, can I increase?” he asked her, in reference to the power of the vibrations she was apparently feeling.

When she nodded, he instructed a producer, “Take it up to her age.”

On Friday he said he considered the segment a “human interest” feature, because it had led to a somewhat sober on-air discussion with her about “her generation and sex.”

“She didn’t know a thing about her private parts,” he said. “It’s great radio. You can’t do it on terrestrial.”

If he has any concern about how many people are tuning in to hear or see such bits, Mr. Stern can surely take comfort in thoughts of his bank account these days, though, there again, he said, “I didn’t do this for the money.” As it stands, he is paid $100 million a year by Sirius, which is meant to cover not just his salary but those of his staff, and to produce programming on two like-minded satellite radio channels, known as Howard 100 and Howard 101.

Though Sirius’s stock price has plunged in the last year — to $3.76 yesterday from $6.57 on the day he started — he has instead sought to emphasize another number, the increase in the company’s subscriber base over that same year: to 6 million from 3.3 million, a net gain 2.7 million, or 82 percent. (In Demand, a private company that distributes his pay television channel, has not released subscription figures.)

Asked if he would ever entertain returning to free radio when his contract is up in four years, Mr. Stern, who turns 53 Friday, said he would not.

“I swear to you on a stack of Bibles,” he said. “Load me with truth serum. I would never go back to terrestrial radio. This is it for me. This is where I will end my broadcast career.”

hillertexas
05-04-2008, 07:00 PM
From China:

"Gov't intensifies crackdown on horror videos"
http://www.china.org.cn/government/focus_news/2008-02/15/content_1242637.htm


Gov't intensifies crackdown on horror videos

China has ordered a ban on the sale of audio and video products containing elements of mystery and horror. The move is the latest initiative to "protect the country's children and teenagers' psychological development", according to a newly-issued government circular.

According to the General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP) circular, such audio and video products usually "involve alien-looking characters and fictional story telling, both specifically plotted for the sole purpose of terror".

It said the horror, violence and cruelty involved in these audio and videos were unfit for children, and extremely harmful for their psychological development.

The circular instructed all existing publications involving elements of mystery and horror to be off the market, and ordered audios and videos in production to delete any hint of mystery and horror.

China began its crackdown on so-called "terrifying publications" in April 2006, specifically targeting a Japanese comic story Death Note. It involved a notebook that can kill people if their names are written in it.

The comic depicted various scary ways of dying, according to GAPP.

China also started a cleansing campaign against "vulgar" content in video and audio products starting this year. It ordered audio and video producers to stop the production and sale of vulgar products and recall those already on the market.

(Xinhua News Agency February 14, 2008)

hotbrownsauce
05-04-2008, 07:00 PM
hahaha those are all great I have forgotten about them. thx

hillertexas
05-04-2008, 07:05 PM
oh damn...i didn't read that they should be recent. Well, the one from China is from Feb 08

hotbrownsauce
05-04-2008, 07:21 PM
thank you so much, that China one saved me probably another hour.

=D

*ALL DONE THX PPL*

pinkmandy
05-04-2008, 07:40 PM
How scary that a SC Justice thinks the 1st amendment is "cloudy". Better yet, that because you are in a "public" school you don't have any first amendment rights- so the rights stop at the school door and school officials have some sort of immunity? Wow. Our country really is f'ed up, you know that? How many people in this country think incidents like these are perfectly acceptable? I'm so thankful I'm able to homeschool my kids.

MelissaWV
05-04-2008, 08:53 PM
Very good hillerTX :) I think... you get an A+ in whatever class it is hotbrownsauce needed those articles for ;)

Fields
05-04-2008, 08:58 PM
How scary that a SC Justice thinks the 1st amendment is "cloudy". Better yet, that because you are in a "public" school you don't have any first amendment rights- so the rights stop at the school door and school officials have some sort of immunity? Wow. Our country really is f'ed up, you know that? How many people in this country think incidents like these are perfectly acceptable? I'm so thankful I'm able to homeschool my kids.

You're distorting the decision. The opinion concluded that although the banner's message was "cryptic," it was undeniably a "reference to illegal drugs" and the principal reasonably concluded that it "advocated the use of illegal drugs."

This was a "school speech" case not a "public speech" case.

pinkmandy
05-04-2008, 09:15 PM
You're distorting the decision. The opinion concluded that although the banner's message was "cryptic," it was undeniably a "reference to illegal drugs" and the principal reasonably concluded that it "advocated the use of illegal drugs."

This was a "school speech" case not a "public speech" case.

No, I'm not distorting it. I'm referring to specific statements made by certain justices- not the merits of the case or how it should have been decided or if it even warranted being heard. I'm just troubled by the language they used. Thomas clearly says that a students do not have first amendment free speech rights in public schools.

“In light of the history of American public education,” Justice Thomas said, “it cannot seriously be suggested that the First Amendment ‘freedom of speech’ encompasses a student’s right to speak in public schools.” The court’s precedents had become incoherent, he said, adding, “I am afraid that our jurisprudence now says that students have a right to speak in school except when they don’t.”

The "cloudy" comment also bothered me.

"The sixth justice, Stephen G. Breyer, did not sign the chief justice’s opinion, but wrote separately to say that the First Amendment issue was sufficiently cloudy that the court should have avoided deciding it."

I guess I don't see what's so cloudy about it. The Constitution doesn't say you have a right to free speech unless you're in a govt school. Sorry- I probably should have explained my own stance more.

Fields
05-04-2008, 09:21 PM
No, I'm not distorting it. I'm referring to specific statements made by certain justices- not the merits of the case or how it should have been decided or if it even warranted being heard. I'm just troubled by the language they used. Thomas clearly says that a students do not have first amendment free speech rights in public schools.

“In light of the history of American public education,” Justice Thomas said, “it cannot seriously be suggested that the First Amendment ‘freedom of speech’ encompasses a student’s right to speak in public schools.” The court’s precedents had become incoherent, he said, adding, “I am afraid that our jurisprudence now says that students have a right to speak in school except when they don’t.”

The "cloudy" comment also bothered me.

"The sixth justice, Stephen G. Breyer, did not sign the chief justice’s opinion, but wrote separately to say that the First Amendment issue was sufficiently cloudy that the court should have avoided deciding it."

I guess I don't see what's so cloudy about it. The Constitution doesn't say you have a right to free speech unless you're in a govt school. Sorry- I probably should have explained my own stance more.

Source your quotes. And I suggest you quote the actual opinion not someone else's interpretation.

Fields
05-04-2008, 09:24 PM
Also you are right about Thomas' thoughts on free speech. I didn't read his differing albeit concurring opinion. Sorry.

pinkmandy
05-04-2008, 09:28 PM
Also you are right about Thomas' thoughts on free speech. I didn't read his differing albeit concurring opinion. Sorry.

Not a problem. ;) I was just commenting based on the article posted, that's all. I think we both misunderstood each other. It happens.

hotbrownsauce
05-04-2008, 09:45 PM
Very good hillerTX :) I think... you get an A+ in whatever class it is hotbrownsauce needed those articles for ;)

lol well I'm doing the dirty work... the easy part is finding the articles (relatively that is). The hard part is writing it.... its for constitutional issues class. This is my last week before summer break. WOOOOOO!

Thanks hillerTX I'm half way done, another 3 articles to go..... its going to be another all nighter :-D!

hotbrownsauce
05-05-2008, 01:56 AM
Wow, 10 hours of work for this one class.... I hope I don't go to graduate school!