Commentary
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Firestorm started by Vietnamese newspaper shows both owners and demonstrators in need of free speech remedial training By Peter Scheer All newspapers from time to time should publish articles that give offense to a sizable segment of their readers. Such provocations--challenging readers to think differently about an issue--are part of the editorial independence that is the right and obligation of all credible news organizations. Subscriber response may range, depending on the gravity of the offense, from a flurry of angry letters-to-the-editor, to a  the offending article blizzard of emails…
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Commentary
Friday, June 06, 2008
Senator Lieberman calls for misguided internet censorship, but the marketplace of ideas demands that free speech flourish.
By Kelly Dunleavy On May 19th, Senator Joe Lieberman sent a letter to the CEO of Google, with copies to many major newspapers, demanding that Google remove videos that feature Islamic extremists, or are produced by terrorist organizations, from its video-sharing website YouTube. Worse, Lieberman hinted that if YouTube and other websites didn’t remove such videos voluntarily, he would introduce legislation to force them to. The Senator’s demands may make for good publicity—he is…
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Commentary
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Vallejo’s bankruptcy highlights need for transparency in city-union contracts
By Peter Scheer The city of Vallejo has taken the extraordinary step of filing for federal bankruptcy protection. While the financial distress of this San Francisco suburb (population 117,000) is especially acute, its fiscal problems are fundamentally the same as those facing many California cities and counties--and, indeed, the state itself. To the familiar litany of causes--falling sales tax revenue, the home mortgage crisis leading to collapsing home prices and lower real estate taxes--there needs to be added one more: Too much…
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Commentary
Monday, April 21, 2008
Make no mistake, China’s censorship of the internet is a crime against liberty on a mass scale. Still, American firms can’t just steer clear of the world’s biggest market. What to do? By Peter Scheer A milestone of sorts was passed in the first quarter of this year when China blew past the United States to become the biggest internet market in the world. At 225 million users, and still growing at double-digit rates, China’s internet is a business opportunity so grand and irresistible that it can blind normally circumspect people to the moral compromises that…
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Commentary
Monday, March 24, 2008
Locy and Risen cases renew debate over protecting journalists’ confidential sources By Peter Scheer Just when you thought it was safe again for journalists to promise anonymity to confidential sources, federal judicial power is being applied with renewed enthusiasm to force reporters to out their sources. A federal grand jury in Alexandria, VA has subpoenaed New York Times reporter James Risen to testify about his confidential sources for a chapter in his book, “State of War,” dealing with the CIA’s efforts to infiltrate Iran’s nuclear program during the Cinton and Bush administrations. Whether the…
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Commentary
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Using free trade to force China to permit more free speech By Nick Rahaim With the Beijing Summer Olympics approaching, the world has turned its focus toward China. From alt/pop musician Bjork lending her support to the Free Tibet movement while recently performing in Shanghai, to Steven Spielberg stepping down as artistic adviser of the Beijing Games citing objections to China’s ties to the Sudanese government, many see this as an opportune moment to put pressure on the People’s Republic. Here at the California First Amendment Coalition, we have had our eyes on China’s “Great Firewall”…
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News
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Lights back on at wikileaks Wikileaks.org, which had gone dark as a result of a court order, is now back online. Following a 3-hour hearing Friday in San Francisco, federal Judge Jeffrey White ruled in favor of the whistleblower website on jurisdictional and 1st Amendment grounds. The judge previously had issued an order locking the wikileaks domain name--effectively shutting down the entire website--in response to a suit by Julius Baer Bank, a Swiss and Cayman Islands bank, over leaked banking records that had been posted to wikileaks. The judge both rescinded the locking order…
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News
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Public Citizen and CFAC seek to overturn court orders shuttering wikileaks.org San Francisco--Public Citizen and the California First Amendment Coalition, in pleadings filed in federal court today, seek to overturn injunctions that have shut down wikileaks.org, a whistleblower website CFAC and Public Citizen argue that the court did not have jurisdiction in the case, and therefore had no power to issue a temporary restraining order against wikileaks and a permanent injunction against wikileaks’ internet domain name registrar. The organizations also argue that, even if the court had jurisdiction, both court orders are invalid under the First…
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Commentary
Monday, February 18, 2008
Federal judge’s order shutting down wikileaks.org, a whistleblower website, is 1st Amendment travesty
By Peter Scheer Wikileaks.org, a whistleblower website that enables the anonymous (and, in theory, untraceable) leaking of confidential government and corporate documents, has gone dark. Although Wikileaks’ silencing was sought by antidemocratic governments worldwide--including China, whose censors work mightily to block all access to the site--wikileak’s plug was pulled, ironically, by a federal judge in San Francisco. Acceding to the wishes of a Swiss bank complaining that Wikileaks had published confidential bank records, federal district Judge…
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Commentary
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Rating the leading Presidential candidates on First Amendment issues. And the winner is . . . By Peter Scheer Voters generally don’t pick a presidential candidate on the basis of a single issue--nor should they. But with the presidential campaign accelerating toward potentially decisive primaries in the next few weeks, it’s worth considering how the leading contenders compare in their commitment to First Amendment rights. All political leaders are champions of free speech and open-government--in a vacuum. The real question is how they would balance those principles against competing interests in decisions involving issues…
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