News & Opinion

Ed Code gives public school students stronger free speech protection than First Amendment, California appeals court affirms By Anthony Sanchez (CFAC) Public school students enjoy greater free speech protections from California’s Education code than under the First Amendment, a recent California court ruling confirms. The ruling by the 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco focused on an anti-immigrant editorial published in the Novato High School’s newspaper in 2002 by then senior Andrew Smith.

In landmark open records case, court rules Santa Clara County must disclose parcel map database to California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) Santa Clara County must make public–at minimal cost and without restrictions on use–its digital “basemap” showing parcel boundaries, the assessor’s parcel number for each parcel, parcel address, and other similar data for all properties in the county, a court has ruled. In a lawsuit filed by CFAC, the Superior Court for Santa Clara County

MediaNews, Hearst and Clint Reilly should not be allowed to keep their secret settlement a secret By Peter Scheer News organizations are notoriously bad at covering news stories in which they are participants. Recent examples include the Wall Street Journal, whose top editors knew about Rupert Murdoch’s offer to purchase Dow Jones (owner of the Journal and related businesses) for days before the news was made public–not by the Journal, but by CNBC, a competitor.

By Nick Rahaim One of the most hotly contested bills in the California state legislature is one you have probably never heard of. Tech blogs are buzzing about AB 1668, which was introduced by Mark Leno (D-San Francisco). The bill would require that documents produced by government agencies be created in an “open extensible markup language-based, XML-based file format,” or more simply put, an open file format for all text, spreadsheet, and presentation documents. Open

Don Imus, Snoop Dogg and the 1st Amendment: Suppose the “marketplace of ideas” stops buying “bitches,” “hos” and the N-word? By Peter Scheer Don Imus may be gone, guilty of one too many assaults on his audience’s sensitivities and sensibilities, but outrage over racist shock-talk in the mass media continues to build, with hip-hop lyrics the most likely, and most deserving, next target. If “bitches,” “hos” and the N-word were to disappear from our public