First Amendment News

The artistic director of a musical theater resigns after campaign disclosures show that he contributed to the Prop. 8 campaign to ban same-sex marriage. A dispute ensues over the balancing act between free speech and civil rights, the Sacramento Bee reports. Theater felt growing pressure before artistic director quit mcrowder@sacbee.com Published Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2008 The California Musical Theatre found itaself caught in a dramatic conflict between free speech and civil rights, a situation that

By Ben Baeder, Staff Writer San Gabriel Valley Tribune 11/07/2008 WEST COVINA – Politics at City Hall are getting personal. Over the past two months, a councilman has sought police protection at public meetings, alleging he’s been intimidated by fellow council members. And two top city staff members filed complaints about the same councilman, with one demanding $3 million and a guarantee he won’t be fired until he is 60. At the center of all

Oakland Tribune Contra Costa Times 11/03/2008 The Oakland Police Department on Monday returned a videotape confiscated last week from an Oakland Tribune staffer by Oakland school district police during an immigration rights protest at the Fruitvale BART station. The Alameda County District Attorney’s office has not decided yet if any charges will be brought against Tribune videographer Jane Tyska, who was detained during the protest on Friday. But that office authorized the return of the

The Supreme will decide a free speech case in which a municipality rejected the offer of an obscure religious sect to place a religious sculpture in a public park that was already home to a Judeo-Christian religious symbol: the Ten Commandments. The sect views the park as a public forum to which the sect’s religious symbol must be given equal access. The municipality argues that its own free speech rights are abridged if it is

Rebecca MacKinnon reports on her blog that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has met in China with the head of the government agency responsible for censorship of the Internet in China. Although access to Wikipedia has been regularly block by the China censors, the English language version was unblocked in the run-up to the Olympic games, and then remained substantially unblocked after the games were over. Jimmy Wales famously criticized Google for agreeing to censor its