donal brown

Kathleen Hall Jamieson in the Boston Globe, April 23, 2019, argues that the media erred in reporting hacked information from the Democrats during the 2016 presidential election without including enough details of the hacking. There should have been more pointed references to the illegality of the hacks obtained by Russian cyber attack. And rather than accrediting the information to WikiLeaks, it should have been attributed more specifically to Julian Assange and Russian operatives. Given that context,

The National Security Archive at The George Washington University, April 22, 2019, finds fault with the excessive redactions made by the Justice Department of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The archive points to the example of Robert Stone, references to whom are meticulously omitted. The archive writes that it is most troubling that the report reveals that President Donald Trump is dismissive of record-keeping in general, a dangerous practice

Animal rights and food safety activists filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging Iowa’s latest ag-gag law making it a crime to conduct undercover investigations of livestock facilities. A previous ag-gag law was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge in January. (Courthouse News Service, April 22, 2019, by Rox Laird) The ACLU brought the lawsuit on behalf of the activists, and the legal director of Iowa ACLU said in outlawing deception, the new law targets

The city council of Peachtree City, Georgia found themselves at the wrong side of a controversy in considering a resolution to charge citizens when city officials filed lawsuits against citizens for defaming them in the social media.  In picking up the tab for the lawsuits, the city would be using taxpayer money to sue taxpayers. Facing scorching citizen response at a city council meeting, the council backed off, distancing themselves from their unadvised proposal. (The

U.S. companies like Facebook are struggling with how to deal with hate speech, complying with restrictive foreign laws while upholding the traditions of free speech in America guaranteed by the First Amendment. Even though Facebook and Google allocate personnel to stamp out hate speech and phony information, some want even more restrictions just as American conservatives fear that would silence conservative voices. (The New York Times, April 21, 2019, by Cecilia Kang) Daphne Keller of the Stanford