First Amendment

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

SCOTUS homes in on Colorado’s contempt for Jack Phillips, not the First Amendment and free expression.

The Scrapbook remembers the days before social media and the Internet, and they weren’t marked by civility and well-informed dialogue. Even so, when someone in the pre-Internet era responded in print to an article or essay, he or she had usually read the article. Nowadays you just read the…

Sometimes the First Amendment isn’t enough.

It is a fact of history that we Americans believe all kinds of dumbass things. Different Americans believe different dumbass things at different times, but each of us must sooner or later fall for an urban myth, a lunatic philosophy, an obvious exaggeration, a prophecy of doom, or some other…

At oral arguments Tuesday for the case NIFLA v. Becerra, a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court seemed skeptical about the constitutionality of a California law that requires pro-life crisis pregnancy centers to advertise for "free or low-cost" government-funded abortions.

The Supreme Court heard arguments Monday morning in a case set to undo a seminal 40-year-old precedent that required all public sector employees to pay their union a “fair share fee” whether or not they’d elected to join.

"If unions are so good and doing such a great job, why do they have to force people to pay them?" That’s the question Mark Janus, an Illinois child services specialist, posed to assembled reporters on Friday. It’s the Supreme Court who will give him an answer. His case will be heard on Monday.

The First Amendment to the Constitution does not impose, as some believe, “a wall of separation between church and state.” That phrase comes from a letter by Thomas Jefferson in 1802 to Connecticut Baptists, cited approvingly by Supreme Court decisions in 1878 and 1947.

There’s a specter haunting Donald Trump’s presidency: the specter of powerlessness.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors filed evidence late Friday afternoon to demonstrate that Paul Manafort violated a court-mandated gag order by contributing to an op-ed defending himself in a Ukrainian newspaper.

In case you haven’t finished reading the 429-page House Republicans tax bill, go to pages 427 and 428 to see what it proposes to do regarding the Johnson Amendment. Passed in 1954 and named for its chief sponsor, Senator Lyndon Johnson, the amendment prohibits politicking by tax-exempt nonprofits,…

Who said there’s a free speech crisis on college campuses? As everyone knows, that’s just a figment of the right-wing imagination.

There is nothing natural about tolerating the views of others. If someone stands, as today’s righteous say, on “the wrong side of history,” why refrain from shutting him up? Yes, Justice Holmes warned against “attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught…

The New York Times has a report about an internal struggle at the ACLU. The organization helped sue to for the right of assembly for the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in August that resulted in the death of a young woman, after a car driven by one of the white supremacists plowed into…

Excerpts from the keynote address by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch at a luncheon celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Fund for American Studies, Washington, D.C., September 28

Comes this week from the Brookings Institution a new survey by John Villasenor demonstrating that undergraduate students at four-year colleges and universities have no idea what the First Amendment means.

This year’s winners have been announced in prizes recognizing advocates who support “First Amendment rights and rational [read licentious] sex and drug policies,” the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Awards. That’s right, Hugh M. Hefner. Is there anyone who wouldn’t have known for whom the prize was…

The Senate Judiciary Committee tackles social and philosophical questions out on the edges of constitutionality. They process proposed constitutional amendments, and their subcommittee on the Constitution oversees constitutional rights’ protection and enforcement. It was only a matter of time,…

After a school year marked by outbursts of protests, some of which escalated into violence on college campuses, the Senate Judiciary Committee convened a hearing to discuss the assault on the First Amendment occurring in higher education.

To restore free expression and the unfettered exchange of ideas to censorious college campuses, the nation's liberal thought leaders will have to admit we have a problem on our hands. Events of this week presented some encouraging signs that they're getting closer. While restless campuses erupted…

The Supreme Court announced Tuesday morning it would refuse to hear Stormans v. Wiesman, a case from the state of Washington where a family-owned pharmacy was objecting to a state regulation that forced them to prescribe the morning after pill, also known as "Plan B." Unlike traditional…

In the current issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, I have an editorial on the plight of Aaron and Melissa Klein—two Oregonians who used to own a bakery in a Portland suburb, who were run out of business and recently assessed a $135,000 fine for politely declining to provide a cake for a gay wedding. For…

Two weeks ago, George Will wrote a column about how progressives have exaggerated the prevalence of rape on college campuses. The column was not well received by some or even, as a great many of the histrionic responses would indicate, well understood. Last week a press release landed in The…

The Washington Free Beacon, which has broken several scoops related to Hillary Clinton, has been banned from using the Clinton archive at the University of Arkansas:

This week, the Supreme Court affirmed a New York town council's tradition of beginning its meetings with a prayer. In Town of Greece v. Galloway, the court held, by a bare majority, that the First Amendment's Establishment Clause does not prohibit such prayers led by local clergymen, even when the…

In Sioux City, Iowa, a local pastor is asking for the removal of a newly appointed member of the city's human rights commission. The city council appointed Scott Raasch to the commission, which adjudicates discrimination complaints, on July 8. However, the Rev. Cary Gordon, executive pastor of…

It's a well-known fact that on most college campuses, supposedly havens of academic freedom, you really have to watch what you say.

Muslim Americans in Michigan, including a local newspaper editor, will be rallying Friday in Dearborn to protest the YouTube film, "Innocence of Muslims" and advocate for blasphemy laws. Here's an image of a poster advertising the rally:

Buried in a Los Angeles Times report is this nugget:

The left has not been happy with the Obama administration’s handling of the war on terror for some time now. In addition to leaving Guantánamo open, the administration has maintained Bush-era practices such as open-ended detention for terrorist suspects, reaffirming the “state secrets” privilege,…

Ah yes, a classic case of being intolerant of supposed intolerance:

Terry Jones may have called off his Koran burning in Florida, but Iraqpundit writes that someone still owes the preacher a debt of gratitude: