News & Opinion

Using free trade to force China to permit more free speech By Nick Rahaim With the Beijing Summer Olympics approaching, the world has turned its focus toward China. From alt/pop musician Bjork lending her support to the Free Tibet movement while recently performing in Shanghai, to Steven Spielberg stepping down as artistic adviser of the Beijing Games citing objections to China’s ties to the Sudanese government, many see this as an opportune moment to put

Lights back on at wikileaks Wikileaks.org, which had gone dark as a result of a court order, is now back online. Following a 3-hour hearing Friday in San Francisco, federal Judge Jeffrey White ruled in favor of the whistleblower website on jurisdictional and 1st Amendment grounds. The judge previously had issued an order locking the wikileaks domain name–effectively shutting down the entire website–in response to a suit by Julius Baer Bank, a Swiss and Cayman

Public Citizen and CFAC seek to overturn court orders shuttering wikileaks.org San Francisco–Public Citizen and the California First Amendment Coalition, in pleadings filed in federal court today, seek to overturn injunctions that have shut down wikileaks.org, a whistleblower website CFAC and Public Citizen argue that the court did not have jurisdiction in the case, and therefore had no power to issue a temporary restraining order against wikileaks and a permanent injunction against wikileaks’ internet domain

Federal judge’s order shutting down wikileaks.org, a whistleblower website, is 1st Amendment travesty By Peter Scheer Wikileaks.org, a whistleblower website that enables the anonymous (and, in theory, untraceable) leaking of confidential government and corporate documents, has gone dark. Although Wikileaks’ silencing was sought by antidemocratic governments worldwide–including China, whose censors work mightily to block all access to the site–wikileak’s plug was pulled, ironically, by a federal judge in San Francisco. Acceding to the wishes of

Rating the leading Presidential candidates on First Amendment issues. And the winner is . . . By Peter Scheer Voters generally don’t pick a presidential candidate on the basis of a single issue–nor should they. But with the presidential campaign accelerating toward potentially decisive primaries in the next few weeks, it’s worth considering how the leading contenders compare in their commitment to First Amendment rights. All political leaders are champions of free speech and open-government–in