donal brown

A three judge panel of the D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals seemed to side with a lower court decision to block former President Donald Trump’s lawsuit to keep the National Archives from releasing his presidential records to the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. In their questions to Trump’s lawyers, they indicated that history and precedent granted a standing president with the authority to decide when to disclose presidential records. (The Washington Post,

A recently published book reveals how, despite the scant instances of suppression of conservative speech, Fox News and other right wing media outlets have conjured up a bogus free speech crisis in the nation’s colleges. Ralph Wilson and Isaac Kamola report that the claims are well funded and organized. “This orchestration,” they write, “involves a tightly controlled network of conservative business people, philanthropists, state and federal lawmakers, and academics, whose policy decisions, speeches, and teachings

Zach Wheeler in TechCrunch, November 23, 2021, recounts that a year after filing a story about a hack of a server at Mexico’s embassy in Guatemala, the FBI contacted him at the request of the Mexican government. Wheeler said such contacts are common in reporting cybersecurity as are attempts to kill a story or obtain a retraction. In addition he said, “Journalists covering cybersecurity — a beat rarely known for its chipper and upbeat headlines

The ACLU and the Knight Institute are challenging the 40-year-old ruling that prevents former government employees from writing or speaking publicly without permission from the government. They say the ban prevents the public from hearing from informed former employees on issues of vital importance. In their petition to the court, the groups argue, “Petitioners here, and millions of former public servants like them, are subject to an onerous and far-reaching system of prior restraint that