firstamendment

A bill approved by the California Assembly Education Committee would provide transparency in charter school operations to stem financial abuse of public funds. -DB CalAware May 01, 2009 OPEN GOVERNMENT — Charter schools would be subject to the California Public Records Act, their board meetings subject to the Brown Act and their board members required to file public statements of economic interest under the Political Reform Act under a bill approved Wednesday by the Assembly

Former pro-Israel lobbyists saw the U.S. government drop espionage charges against them for conspiring to pass classified information to journalists and Israeli officials. First Amendment advocates feared that the case might chill normal exchange of information between journalists, lobbyists and think-tank analysts. -DB The Washington Post May 1, 2009 By Jerry Markon The U.S. government is abandoning espionage-law charges against two former lobbyists for a pro-Israel advocacy group, federal officials announced this morning. Prosecutors said

Information provided to consumers online by commercial ventures is protected speech according to a judge in a federal district court. -DB PRWeb Press Release April 30, 2009 A federal judge has ruled the internet fax website FaxCompare.com is protected by the First Amendment. In the ongoing litigation between J2 Global Communication and co-defendants ChooseWhat.com, LLC and Zilker Ventures, LLC, Judge Otero of the Federal District Court in the Central District of California, case # CV08-07470

A prominent blogger sees a future for print newspapers especially if they forgo breaking news to report nuanced stories of high interest. -DB MediaShift April 27, 2009 By Michael Josefowicz Common sense tells us that print is not going away. If print is no longer an important part of your life, that is undeniable. But to extrapolate from personal experience to a statement about what is going to happen in the world doesn’t work. But

In assessing Obama’s first 100 days in office, Wired rated him low in privacy and copyright, high in science and net neutrality and gave him a B- for transparency. -DB Wired April 29, 2009 By David Kravets As President Barack Obama marks his 100th day in office today, we’ve set out to grade the 44th president’s performance on the bread-and-butter issues near and dear to Wired.com: copyright, cyber security, science, net neutrality, transparency and privacy.