Forget what you think about Julian Assange. It doesn’t matter whether you like him or loath him. Nor does it matter if you think Assange and company were wrong to have distributed the leaks, or alternately if you think he’s the champion of transparency and democracy…..

None of this is the point. Not anymore.

The issue now is the dangerous nature of the campaign launched against Assange and WikiLeaks and what it points beyond itself to portend. This is about freedom of speech and freedom of the press. And it is a scary business.

My friend Marc Cooper has it right when he points to the column by Dan Gilmore at Salon as mandatory reading on the matter. Here’s the opening:

Journalists cover wars by not taking sides. But when the war is on free speech itself, neutrality is no longer an option.

The WikiLeaks releases are a pivotal moment in the future of journalism. They raise any number of ethical and legal issues for journalists, but one is becoming paramount.

As I said last week, and feel obliged to say again today, our government – and its allies, willing or coerced, in foreign governments and corporations — are waging a powerful war against freedom of speech.

WikiLeaks may well make us uncomfortable in some of what it does, though in general I believe it’s done far more good than harm so far. We need to recognize, however, as Mathew Ingram wrote over the weekend, that “Like It or Not, WikiLeaks is a Media Entity.” What our government is trying to do to WikiLeaks now is lawless in stunning ways, as Salon’s Glenn Greenwald forcefully argued today.

These are also acts of outright censorship. No, Amazon is not bound by the First Amendment. But if it’s bowing to government pressure, it’s helping a panicked government tear up one of our most basic freedoms.

consitutional lawyer/columnist Glenn Greenwald, who has taken the lead on a lot of this, also has a column on how so much of the mainstream media has been recklessly repeating falsehoods and misinformation about the leaks and their affect.

Yet, at the same time, a small but growing number of journalists and editors are speaking out with a rising sense of unease.

For instance here’s what senior editor Amy Davidson said at the New Yorker:

…Beyond Assange and his own legal situation, there is something disturbing going on: Joe Lieberman hounding private companies (before any legal actions has been taken); the way the site was repeatedly taken down; calls by politicians and journalists to kill the leakers or have them treated as enemy combatants (what does that mean? Guantánamo?); the Swiss bank account frozen (the Swiss say Assange had a false address on his form; but our ambassador there has also said some heavy-handed things to them); Visa and MasterCard stopping all transactions related to WikiLeaks. One could say that this is part of the bargain WikiLeaks signed up for—what did they think would happen? But, if it is permissible to use these measures against the site, why couldn’t they be used against any media organization that published classified information? Why WikiLeaks and not the Times, Guardian, or Der Spiegel (or The New Yorker)? If it’s because they and we are more respectable—what does that even mean? Any talk of creative uses of the 1917 Espionage Act, as by Senator Dianne Feinstein, should make one wary. (Glenn Greenwald has been following the legal side of the story.) Not that that much due process seems to have been involved in efforts to shut the site down. Does it just take the Administration saying something is illegal for it to be illegal?

Good question.

A few days after administrators from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs made idiots of themselves by telling students that tweeting, linking, posting or otherwise traceably conversing about WikiLeaks would harm their future career prospects, Columbia has suddenly come to its senses and realized that their earlier career advice made them look….really, really bad.

So they’ve walked back their original POV and become more embracing of….oh…free speech and that sort of thing.

Wired has the story. Here are some clips:

Last week, the SIPA Office of Career Services sent an e-mail to students saying that an alumnus who works at the U.S. State Department had recommended that current students not tweet or post links to WikiLeaks, which is in the process of releasing 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables — many of them classified — because doing so could hurt their career prospects in government service.

“Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government,” the Office of Career Services wrote.

Now, SIPA Dean John H. Coatsworth has clarified the school’s policy and issued a ringing endorsement of free speech and academic freedom.

“Freedom of information and expression is a core value of our institution,” Coatsworth wrote in an e-mail to the SIPA community Monday morning (full e-mail message below). “Thus, SIPA’s position is that students have a right to discuss and debate any information in the public arena that they deem relevant to their studies or to their roles as global citizens, and to do so without fear of adverse consequences.”

SIPA Professor Gary Sick, the prominent Middle East expert who served on the National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan, went even further in repudiating the memo.

“If anyone is a master’s student in international relations and they haven’t heard of WikiLeaks and gone looking for the documents that relate to their area of study, then they don’t deserve to be a graduate student in international relations,” Sick told Wired.com in an interview.

Now if Attorney General Eric Holder, who appears to have gone actively insane on the topic, will have a similar come to Jesus the 1st Amendment moment.

JAMES FALLOWS AT THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY HAS A CONTEST FOR THE BEST WIKILEAKS QUOTE

No, he’s not downplaying the seriousness of the leaks Fallows assures us, it’s merely that there are some damn good quotes hiding in that quarter of a million document flood.

INTERPOL HAS ISSUED AN ALERT FOR THE ARREST OF WIKILEAKS’ FOUNDER JULIAN ASSANGE

Assanges mother is pretty distressed. Reuters has the story.

The mother of Australian WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said on Wednesday she was distressed by an international police alert for her son’s arrest and did not want him “hunted down and jailed.”

Global police agency Interpol issued a “red notice” on Tuesday to assist in the arrest of Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, who is wanted in Sweden on suspicion of sexual crimes.

Assange, 39, a former computer hacker now at the center of a global controversy after WikiLeaks released a trove of classified U.S. diplomatic cables at the weekend, denies the Swedish allegations…..

MEANWHILE…a “hacktavist” who calls himself Jester has claimed credit for crashing the Wikileaks website two days in a row, reports the LA Times..

HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYERS LEONARD WEINGLASS AND MICHAEL RATNER JOIN DEFENSE OF WIKILEAKS

Leading US human rights lawyers, Leonard Weinglass and Michael Ratner, have joined the defense team for Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, writes Tom Hayden.

Hayden also writes that the US Justice Department is seeking indictments on espionage charges [against Wikileaks] from a grand jury quietly impaneled this week in arch-conservative Alexandria, Virginia.

Why is this drama important? Not because of “life-threatening” leaks as claimed by the establishment, but because the closed doors of power need to be open to public review. We live increasingly in an Age of Secrecy, as described by Garry Wills in Bomb Power, among recent books. It has become the American Way of War, and increasingly draws the curtains over American democracy itself….

A WITNESS LIES, A MAN IS CONVICTED, THE 9TH CIRCUIT IS BORED, VETERANS ARE FURIOUS.

The NYT Times Adam Liptak has the story. Here’s how it opens.

Elven J. Swisher wore a replica of a Purple Heart on the witness stand when he testified that the defendant had tried to hire him to kill three federal officials.

Asked about the medal, Mr. Swisher pulled a document from his pocket to show that he was entitled to it and many others for his service in combat in the Korean War.

Mr. Swisher said the defendant, David R. Hinkson, an armchair constitutionalist with eccentric views about the tax code, had asked him how many men he had killed. “Too many,” Mr. Swisher recalled saying.

All lies. Mr. Swisher had never seen combat, had killed no one and had served without distinction. The document was a forgery. Mr. Swisher has since been convicted of lying to federal officials, wearing fake medals and defrauding the Department of Veterans Affairs of benefits for combat injuries.

But the jury knew none of this, and with Mr. Swisher’s testimony it convicted Mr. Hinkson of soliciting three murders. He was sentenced to 33 years for those crimes, along with 10 years for tax evasion, and he is serving his sentence in the maximum-security prison in Florence, Colo.

When Mr. Swisher’s lies came to light, Mr. Hinkson challenged his convictions for soliciting the murders. The jury had believed him guilty of more than loose talk, he said, only because Mr. Swisher had falsely presented himself as a battle-hardened killer.

But the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled against him last year by a 7-to-4 vote.

Mr. Swisher’s lies, the majority said, were no big deal…..

Read the rest and opine.

COMMUNITY HEALTH CLINICS WORK TO TAKE UP THE SLACK IN SOUTH LA

With MLK Medical Center not due to reopen until 2013, residents of surrounding South LA communities are relying for basic health care on overcrowded underfunded neighborhood health clinics.

Neon Tommy has visited several of those clinics and has returned with reports about at how these desperately-needed community health faculties—and the patients who depend on them for critical services—are getting by.

In one of the stories, Ryan Foughnder and Kaitlin Parker spent time at a Lynwood women’s clinic and found the place barely hanging on in terms of funds, but proud of the quality of care it was providing.

MORE THAN 1000 LAUSD WORKERS WILL LOSE THEIR JOBS WITH LATEST ROUND OF CUTS.

The LA Times reports.

THE CITY AND CHIEF BECK WANT TO HIRE MORE COPS, BUT THE LAPD UNION SAYS PAY OVERTIME FIRST

Joel Rubin and David Zahniser have the story—and it’s an interesting one.

Here’s how it opens:

It came as little surprise this week that the influential union that represents Los Angeles’ rank-and-file police officers waded into the debate over hiring more police during a major financial crisis.

What caught people off guard, however, was the union’s conclusion that the hiring should stop.

Los Angeles Police Protective League President Paul M. Weber, in an interview and an opinion article submitted to The Times, called on the city’s leaders to suspend their current policy of hiring new officers to replace those who resign or retire. It is a stance that, on the surface, runs counter to the union’s traditionally staunch support for a larger police force.

Instead, Weber said, the department should shrink itself in order to use its scarce funds to restore overtime pay that has been cut because of the city’s budget woes and to fill some of the hundreds of civilian posts at the Los Angeles Police Department that have gone vacant.

Police Chief Charlie Beck said the union’s plan would jeopardize public safety. “We’d all like to return to a time where officers are paid for the overtime hours they work,” he said. “But it is not in the interest of public safety to do that” by thinning the ranks of officers.

And Matt Szabo, deputy chief of staff for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, added, “It’s hard to imagine how the union is motivated here by the public’s safety,” noting that the LAPD has pushed down crime significantly in recent years.

ANNENBERG’S GENEVA OVERHOLSER TALKS ABOUT KEITH OLBERMANN, JOURNALISTIC BIAS AND ALL THAT JAZZ

Geneva Overholser, director, University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, was on the PBS News Hour on Tuesday night, talking about Keith Olbermann and the whole realm of journalistic ethics.

(The students in my Monday journalism class at USC and I were talking about that very thing.)

Here are a few clips from the News Hour.

GO: Well, objectivity has been a central ethic of journalism in the modern era. And the thinking, Jeff, is kind of, as you know, that, if we can show that we have approached a story with a completely open mind, and been fair-minded about it, then people will have a stronger sense of the story’s credibility.

The trouble is that we are in a new kind of Wild West atmosphere now. It’s never been totally clear that the public thought about this as a safeguard with the same strength — strength that we did, as journalists, you know?

But, in this current environment, it’s kind of an anything goes. We’re headed toward a different mode of being transparent or figuring out what the new ethics are. And so, right now, we’re kind of looking at little thin slices of defending the turf.

We have Keith Olbermann saying: Oh, you know, I’m paid to give my opinions.

Or people are saying it’s no surprise that Keith Olbermann is giving his opinions, that he works for a larger corporation, NBC, which is still kind of hewing to the traditional standards of objectivity. It is a very interesting time.

[SNIP]

GO: I think it really is going to be more and more about transparency, this is who we are, but not trying to stuff everybody into the same sock, because they’re not in that sock anymore.

Yep, exactly.

DEPORTATIONS HAVE INCREASED UNDER THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION—SO HAVE ATTEMPTS TO DEPORT THE WRONG PEOPLE

This is from ProPublica based on new data from Syracuse University. Here are some clips:

As deportations have increased under the Obama administration, immigration judges have also increasingly denied requests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport people who were legitimately entitled to stay in the country [1], according to new data obtained by Syracuse University’s Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse.

From July to September of this year, for instance, almost a third of all deportation cases brought by ICE were rejected by immigration judges—up from twelve months earlier, when the rate was one out of every four. According to TRAC, judges have rejected removal orders for more than a quarter of a million individuals in the past five years.

Read the rest.

Of course, the irony of all this is that the president has repeatedly been painted as soft on immigration by people in a position to know better—even as the Obama administration, in its quest to be tough on immigration, has enthusiastically been gathering thousands of people into its net who don’t belong there, with all the attendant expense, stress, and upending of lives.

AND WHILE WE’RE ON THE SUBJECT OF IMMIGRATION—THE SUPREMES CONSIDER GENDER DISCRIMINATION IN IMMIGRATION CASES

Do mothers have an advantage over fathers when it comes to getting citizenship for their kids born out of the US? The court may think so but will it do anything to fix the inequity?

Robert Barnes of the Washington Post has the story:

A majority of Supreme Court justices may be bothered by an immigration law that treats American fathers differently than American mothers. But it seemed unlikely after an hour-long oral argument Wednesday that a majority of justices thought they could do anything about it.

The court was considering a challenge to a federal statute that makes it easier for unmarried mothers than unmarried fathers to convey American citizenship to children born outside the country.

Ruben Flores-Villar, who was born in Mexico but raised by his father in San Diego, says he is a victim of the double-standard. Fighting criminal charges, Flores-Villar, now 36, was denied citizenship and deported because his father did not meet the requirements of the law.

FRED— I AM LOATHSOME ANTI-GAY NUTCASE—PHELPS BRINGS HIS HATE CAMPAIGN TO THE OC

See, now here’s someone whom it would be genuinely good to deport. If only we could find even a flimsy pretext.

Matt Coker at OC Weekly has the story:

Fred Phelps’ “God Hates Fags” crusade comes to Santa Ana Saturday night for another demonstration of a play about the murder of Matthew Shepard, whose funeral was infamously picketed by the pastor of Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas.

The threat has prompted a downtown Santa Ana business leader to essentially warn merchants: steer clear of Bible-thumping nutbars.

“Please show great restraint and don’t allow the media an opportunity to once again depict Santa Ana in the ignominious manner they have portrayed us in the past,” Downtown, Inc. executive director Vicky Baxter writes in a letter to merchants…..

SO, EXACTLY WHAT PART OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT DID JUDGE HILLERI MERRITT NOT UNDERSTAND?

Friday’s LA Times editorial explains it all:

A unanimous panel of California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal has at last cleaned up a shameful legal mess, ordering L.A. County Superior Court Judge Hilleri G. Merritt to end her prior restraint on the Los Angeles Times.

Earlier this month, after first granting The Times the right to photograph a criminal defendant appearing in her courtroom, Merritt changed her mind and ordered the paper not to publish the lawfully taken picture. The Times, showing more respect for the law than Merritt did, obeyed her order while it appealed, first to her to reconsider and later, when she refused, to the higher court. On Thursday, that court inevitably concluded, as it was required to, that she had violated the 1st Amendment.

Writing for himself and two colleagues, Judge Sanjay T. Kumar produced a stark reminder of just how far Merritt had strayed from well-established law in waging her campaign against open courts and a free press. Riffling through citations, the court noted that “an order enjoining publication of a photograph of a suspect in a pending court proceeding is classic prior restraint of speech.” Publishing “lawfully obtained, truthful information about a matter of public significance cannot be restrained unless it is necessary to protect a state interest of the highest order.” And the “barriers to prior restraint remain high and the presumption against its use continues intact.” Not once, as Kumar made clear, has any appellate court concluded that those barriers could be overcome in a case such as this…

Read the rest.

And here’s the news story by Andrew Blankstein on the same topic.

And here is a previous LAT editorial on the matter.

AND here’s what Wired Magazine had to say earlier this month.

By the way, it is not entirely comforting that a criminal court judge hearing high profile cases has such a high-handed and faulty an understanding of the legal principal prohibiting prior restraint.

FYI: The photo above is from an LAPD handout of murder defendant Alberd Tersargyan—whose in-court photo—taken originally with the permission of the judge—was the one in question.

South Park’s creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone have receive death threats based on references to the prophet Muhammad who, in the cartoon, was dressed in a bear costume. (Well, actually the Muhammad was thought to be in the bear outfit. However, it turns out it is actually Santa. So Muhammad is never pictured on the series—disguised or otherwise. But no matter.)

The LA Times (among others) has the story:

In its 200 shows, the irreverent animated program “South Park” has mercilessly satirized Christianity, Buddhism, Scientology, the blind and disabled, gay people, Hollywood celebrities and politicians of all persuasions, weathering the resulting protests and threats of boycotts.

But this week, after an ominous threat from a radical Muslim website, the network that airs the program bleeped out all references to the prophet Muhammad in the second of two episodes set to feature the holy figure dressed in a bear costume. The incident provides the latest example that media conglomerates are still struggling to balance free speech with safety concerns and religious sensitivities, six years after Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was slain for making a film critical of Islamic society.

Comedy Central declined to comment on the latest incident. But “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone clearly disagreed with their bosses’ handling of the situation. A statement posted on their website said that executives “made a determination to alter the episode” without their approval and that the usual wrap-up speech from one character didn’t mention Muhammad “but it got bleeped too.”

The network may have thought it had no choice after revolutionmuslim.com, the website of a fringe group, delivered a grim warning about last week’s episode, which depicted Muhammad dressed as a bear….

(Again, it turns out not to be Muhammad at all.)

On the site Matt and Tray were warned that “what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show.” A photo of Van Gogh’s body was posted along with the written threat.

May Trey and Matt—and their gross and glorious comedy work—stay safe from any kind of harm. And may those who would make such threats find tolerance.

Here is what Aziz Poonawalla, blogger and Muslim, said about the controversy, and the threats, on Beliefnet.

Some Poonawalla clips:

Most other blogs and news sites are not providing a link to RevolutionMuslim.com - which appears to have been hacked, possibly by angry fans of the show – but I think it’s important to let these idiots know that they are being critiqued. And my critique of them is much the same as my critique of Anwar al-Awlaki: they are cowards, who seek to gain publicity for themselves.

[SNIP]

In fact, it is precisely the over-reaction of extremist muslims who wave around threats of violence that leads to more depictions and insults to the Prophet, not less. The right way to inculcate respect for the Prophet among non-muslims is not to act like a barbarian but to simply express ourselves and explain our beliefs – and then excercise our own right, to walk away. It is by their own actions, supposedly in “defense” of the Prophet, that these extremists actually cause greater offense to the Prophet’s legacy than any mere cartoon…

UPDATE:

This was not posted last night, but here is what Jon Stewart had to say about the situation:

PS: For the record, I would appreciate it if CNN-–which has been bordering on the provocative and overly sensational in its coverage of this loathsome incident—would focus an equally harsh eye on those who suggest and provoke violence in the direction of political figures with whom they disagree.

PPS: Also, for the record: I love South Park.

WHY DOESN’T CALIFORNIA SAVE $$$ THROUGH “MEDICAL PAROLE?”

Two weeks ago I had lunch with a woman who is the Catholic pastor of a large California prison. I should mention that she is no neophyte in the corrections world. She’s worked at LA County’s jails, at an out-of-state prison, and at an in-state institution or two before she got to where she is now.

We were meeting about another matter entirely but, in the course of the conversation, talk turned to some of the guys she sees inside whom she really thinks ought to be let out—simply because they are so incapacitated, that keeping them locked up on our tab doesn’t, she said, make any sense.

The pastor wasn’t talking about any kind of compassionate parole. She was just talking cost/benefit.

This week in an excellent article in the Sacramento Bee, the federal monitor in charge of California’s prison health care system, J. Clark Kelso, has said much the same thing.

“I am keenly aware, as are the courts,” Kelso said, “that a dollar that we can save in the prison health care program is a dollar that can be spent on other important priorities for the state, such as education, money for children, the elderly, other health care programs.”

An aide in Kelso’s office said that, conservatively, the prison system could save $213 million over five years by paroling just 32 inmates identified as severely incapacitated.

Twenty-one of those 32 inmates are in nursing facilities or hospitals outside prisons, which requires spending for expensive guard time — including overtime — as well as huge health care costs.

These 21 inmates’ average annual health care and guard costs total more than $1.97 million apiece — a total of $41.4 million a year for 21 individuals, said Kelso aide Luis Patiño.

With all this and more in mind, on March 17, Sen. Mark Leno of San Francisco introduced a bill to create medical parole.

Leno said 1,300 inmates’ health care costs exceed $100,000 a year, and that up to 700 prisoners could qualify for a possible medical parole under his bill.

With full implementation of his bill, Leno said, the state could save at least a couple of hundred million dollars a year, more than the receiver’s initial $213 million estimate spread over five years.

There’s a lot more in the way of facts and figures on this issue, so read the rest.

DAD OF FALLEN MARINE HAS TO PAY VILE & CREEPY PICKETERS’ COURT COSTS???

Yeah, this is actually kind of usual, from a legal perspective, but given the situation, from a moral and emotional perspective it’s—what’re the words I’m looking for?—Oh, yeah. Intolerable and psychotic.

Here are the details from the Topeka Capital-Journal:

Only a few months before both sides square off in the U.S. Supreme Court, the father of a slain Marine has been ordered to pay legal costs for a Topeka-based church after the $5 million judgment he won from the congregation in 2007 was overturned on appeal.

Albert Snyder, the father of a Marine who was killed in March 2006 in Iraq, learned late last week that he had been ordered to pay legal costs for Westboro Baptist Church in connection with a lawsuit he brought against the congregation after some of its members picketed his son’s funeral in March 2006 in Westminster, Md.

Late Friday, Snyder learned he would be liable to pay the legal costs of the appeal by the Westboro church and the Phelpses in the amount of $16,500, said his attorney, Sean E. Summers, of York, Pa., in a phone interview late Monday night.

“We’ve been talking all day and all night,” Summers said of himself and Snyder. “He is disappointed. It’s kind of like rubbing his nose in it.”

I don’t know how this gets solved. As the C-J mentions, the case is on its way to the Surpremes—and the court is, I think, going to be reluctant to shut up the protesters, no matter how repellent they are. Sometimes freedom cuts against the righteous.

So what to do? I don’t know. But the idea of the family of the dead Marine having to pay up to these hate-filled Westboro people….it’s pretty hard to take.

BOSTON GLOBE GETS PEEK IN FBI’S “SPECIAL FILE” ROOM

Here’s a snippet of the Globe’s report. It explains itself.

It is where the government has hidden the most secret information: plans to relocate Congress if Washington were attacked, dossiers on double agents, case files about high-profile mob figures and their politician friends, and a disturbing number of reports about the possible smuggling of atomic bombs into the United States.

It is also where the bureau stowed documents considered more embarrassing than classified, including its history of illegal spying on domestic political organizations and surveillance of nascent gay rights groups.

It is the FBI’s “special file room,” where for decades sensitive material has been stored separately from the bureau’s central filing system to restrict access severely and, in more sinis ter instances, some experts assert, prevent the Congress and the public from getting their hands on it.

Established in 1948 under the reign of notoriously secretive FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, it remains in use today at FBI headquarters in Washington to safeguard what the bureau considers its most highly sensitive information.

Read the rest here.

Go Globe!

Go FOIA!

2 IMMIGRANTS FALL DISASTROUSLY THROUGH THE ICE DETENTION CRACKS

The LA Times & the Center for Investigative reporting have a disheartening tale by Andrew Becker about two mentally disabled men who had finished serving time on low level assault charges—but who were stayed in jails and prisons for years following the finish of their mandated sentences. One was kept for an extra four years, the other an extra five.

As for their crimes, one threw a rock during a gang fight, the other got in a scuffle over tomatoes picked without permission.

The problem is that both men were scheduled to be deported after their sentences were served-–but it was clear that neither could live on his own in Mexico.

Neither man was undocumented. Both had immigration papers. That wasn’t the issue. Yet, under current immigration law, their crimes mandated they be tossed back to their country of origin—which was Mexico.

So, unsure what else to do, the government merely held on to them—alleges a new lawsuit.

Here’s the story.

The Supreme Court will be looking at the case involving the Westboro Baptist Church—a hate group so uttlerly disturbed that it parodies itself, with members who revile long list of their fellow humans, gays and Catholics, at top of the list.

The court will have to decide whether to protect this group’s speech under the first amendment. This past weekend, the LA Times ran an editorial explaining—rightly—why we must protect the rights of these reprehensible, poison-filled people.

The word “vile” is inadequate to describe what members of the Westboro Baptist Church, a fringe group obsessed with homosexuality, did on the day of the memorial service for Marine Lance Corp. Matthew A. Snyder, who was killed in Iraq in 2006. The question for the Supreme Court is whether their despicable conduct is protected by the 1st Amendment — and the answer is yes.

Read the rest.

Can the Patriot Act make it a crime for an American to advise a group that has been designated a terrorist organization—if that advice pertains only to human rights and ways to seek peace?

It is this question that was heard before the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday.

The Americans challenging the restriction are the LA-based Humanitarian Law Project and its president, USC professor, Ralph Fertig, who has advised a Kurdish rebel group in Turkey.

This is from the AP:

The Supreme Court struggled Tuesday to balance the constitutional rights of humanitarian aid groups with the government’s efforts to combat terrorism.

The issue arose in a challenge by aid groups and individuals to parts of a key anti-terror law that bans “material support” to foreign terrorist organizations, even when that support consists of training and advice about entirely peaceful and legal activities.

The aid groups involved had trained a group in Turkey on how to bring human rights complaints to the United Nations and assisted them in peace negotiations, but suspended the activities when the U.S. designated the Turkish outfit a terrorist organization in 1997. They also wanted give similar help to a group in Sri Lanka, but it, too, was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. in 1997.

Now keep in mind, we are not talking about groups like Al Quaeda that have been designated as our enemies, and thus are subject to a host of restrictions, Patriot Act or no Patriot Act.

The organization in question is a Kurdish rebel group called the PKK.

NPR’s Nina Totenberg does a good job of teasing out more of the issues.

And the LA Times David Savage has this post-hearing update.

A ruling is expected in June—with Kennedy again the swing vote. (Or maybe Roberts will also have a sensible moment. At least it is comforting to think so.)

PS: AND THE TWISTED LOGIC AWARD FOR TUESDAY’S HEARING GOES TO Antonin Scalia for this dandy quote: “It hasn’t criminalized speech. Most of that aid and assistance that is prohibited is not in the form of speech, but it happens to include speech as well.I think that is quite different from a law that is directed explicitly at speech.”

(Um, Antonin. Dude. That’s like saying if you advise the criminal to turn his or herself in, or if you similarly tell the criminal not to shoot the hostage, we can criminalize that speech as aiding and abetting, and such a statute in no way impinges on the First Amendment. That’s—-what’s the phrase I’m looking for?—oh, yeah: totally whacked.)

I’m still doing light posting, but here’s a story from the Miami Herald that merits attention.

It is about a free speech case involving a student who said some angry things on Facebook about her teacher, and was punished by the school principle as a consequence.

Here’s how it opens:

A student who set up a Facebook page to complain about her teacher -- and was later suspended — had every right to do so under the First Amendment, a federal magistrate has ruled.

The ruling not only allows Katherine “Katie” Evans’ suit against the principal to move forward, it could set a precedent in cases involving speech and social networking on the Internet, experts say.

The courts are in the early stages of exploring the limits of free speech within social networking, said Howard Simon, the executive director of the Florida ACLU, which filed the suit on Evans’ behalf.

“It’s one of the main things that we wanted to establish in this case, that the First Amendment has a life in the social networking technology as it applies to the Internet and other forms of communication,” Simon said.

In 2007, Evans, then a senior at Pembroke Pines Charter High School, created a Facebook page where she vented about “the worst teacher I’ve ever met.”

But instead of other students expressing their dislike of the teacher, most defended the teacher and attacked Evans.

A couple days later, Evans took the page down.

But after Principal Peter Bayer found out about it, he bumped Evan from her Advanced Placement classes, putting her in classes with less prestige, and suspended her for three days.

There’s more. So read it here.

And here’s an MSNBC story about other incidents in which student speech is challenged, even outside school.