First Amendment News

The Nevada Supreme Court, in an affirmation of the media’s editorial prerogative, ruled last week that MSNBC was free to exclude candidate Dennis Kucinich from a presidential debate that was ultimately limited to Democrat frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards. MSNBC, the debate’s sponsor, had promised to include Kucinich, but later changed its mind and disinvited him. Kucinich claimed he had a contract and MSNBC breached it. The Supreme Court, reversing the trial

James O’Shea is the fourth senior executive to depart over a budget dispute in recent years. By Thomas S. Mulligan and Dawn Chmielewski, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers January 21, 2008 The editor of the Los Angeles Times will leave the paper in a dispute over newsroom cuts, becoming the fourth senior executive in less than three years to depart after resisting budget reductions. James E. O’Shea, editor since November 2006, said Sunday that he

By SAMANTHA YOUNG Associated Press Writer SACRAMENTO (AP) … Invoking executive privilege, the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday refused to provide lawmakers with a full explanation of why it rejected California’s greenhouse gas regulations. The EPA informed Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., that many of the documents she had requested contained internal deliberations or attorney-client communications that would not be shared with Congress. “EPA is concerned about the chilling effect that would occur if agency employees

Legal Times/Akin Gump Since its disclosure by The New York Times in late 2005, the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program has generated a host of constitutional questions, chief among them whether the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — whose procedures Congress established as the exclusive means for federal monitoring of electronic communications inside the United States — conflicts with the president’s wartime duty to defend the nation from potential attack. But in the first petition

San Francisco Chronicle Tanya Schevitz,Sabin Russell, Chronicle Staff Writers Wednesday, January 16, 2008 The University of California at San Francisco has refused to release an independent review of its finances, citing objections of the accounting firm that conducted the work. UCSF officials last month said that the independent report, as well as two internal reviews, found “no evidence” of financial irregularities as alleged by former medical school Dean David Kessler after he was fired Dec.