CTAs the political debates seem to be coming to an end, a new one is taking place right here in Mankato. Tonight, porn legend Ron Jeremy squared off with anti-porn activist Craig Gross, debating the pros and cons of the adult entertainment industry. Like it or not, porn has entered the mainstream... with stars like Jenna Jameson becoming best-selling authors, and Ron Jeremy himself breaking into mainstream films. But the industry has always had its critics... who insist that pornography has negative effects on adults, youth and relationships. Those concerns were spotlighted in tonight's debate at MSU. Ron Jeremy says, "We're having this debate because it's a multi-billion dollar business and I feel it deserves defending. Craig is a good guy, we're friends, but he attacks my industry. I'm not on the attack, he is. I like his career, I have no problem with his career." Pastor Craig Gross says, "I'm not here tonight to take away their right, to try to convince them that hey, you can't look at it. I'm here to say here's some truth about this stuff." Bresnan Arena at the MSU campus hosted the event entitled, 'Porn: Good or Bad?' A chance to let students and the public get a closer look and the inner-workings of the billion-dollar adult entertainment industry....(read more)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Pornography can still be seen on computers at Sacramento Public Libraries --for now.
Injunction against fee suspended pending state appeal "There is no human involvement or manipulation of results, which is why users(1) This is what Google's Technology Overview page used to say. Now, this phrase is noticeably missing.
have come to trust Google as a source of objective information untainted by paid
placement."
By KATY BISHOP
Friday, April 18, 2008
Are you breaking the law? When it comes to sexual expression, exploration and pleasure, you may be a criminal and not even know it. Both historically and currently, some of our most intimate moments have been made punishable by law.
And — wouldn’t you know it? — the United States takes the cake. While countries around the world are all guilty of trying to control our sex lives, the U.S. has more laws regulating sexual behavior than all the European countries combined.
Outdated, unthinkable, erotophobic and downright ridiculous, we should thank our lucky stars that enforcing them is another matter.
Sex toys are banned in some states, such as Alabama. Sexual intercourse between unmarried couples is illegal in Georgia. Flirting is banned in San Antonio, Texas. Oral sex is banned in Indiana. Anal intercourse is banned in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Sexual positions beyond missionary are illegal in Washington, D.C. Sleeping naked is illegal in Minnesota.
Laws protecting minors aside, most people will agree that the government should not be telling you what to do in your bedroom. As President Bush has said: "In our free society, people have the right to choose how they live their lives."....(read more)
Posted by Dan Slater 
Can you recite the first 10 words of the First Amendment?
Free speech is not a concrete concept. Guaranteed to us by the First Amendment, it’s idea is a little more complex than it may seem and evolves with time. What kind of speech is free? What kind of speech is too free? Is offensive, hateful, and/or harmful speech free nonetheless? While the idea of free speech is a fantastic one (let me acknowledge that it is because of the First Amendment that I sit here and write this article), there are many people out there who take it a step too far. People such as Rev. Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church, which is considered a hate group, perverse the liberty that we were given by our founding fathers to the point that we must question and limit it.....(read more)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday commended Turkey's government for seeking to revise a law that limits free speech, but urged it also to protect the rights of religious minorities. In remarks to the American Turkish Council in Washington, Rice encouraged predominantly Muslim Turkey, a key U.S. and NATO ally, to stay true to democratic secular principles.
"We commend Prime Minister (Tayyip) Erdogan for stating recently that parliament will amend Article 301 of the Turkish penal code, which criminalizes insulting Turkishness," she said.
Turkey's ruling AK party submitted to parliament last week the long-awaited revision to the law, which has been used to prosecute dozens of writers, including Nobel Literature Prize winner Orhan Pamuk.
"Expressing one's belief is not an insult to the state, it is one of the highest forms of citizenship," Rice said.
Turkish government officials acknowledge the law has embarrassed Turkey abroad, but reform has been delayed several times because of opposition from nationalists........(read more)
BERLIN — A court case sparked by the town's battle to keep an adult sex toy, video and "romance shop" from opening in a middle-class neighborhood played out Monday with dry legal arguments in state Supreme Court.
The Bush Administration is absolutely right - and Senator John McCain is absolutely wrong - on the issue of the so-called "media shield law" before Congress. The purpose of the law is to enable people claiming to be journalists to hide their anonymous sources of information even when those sources are involved in or have knowledge of criminal or terrorist activity
If Brigitte Bardot (73) had been fifty years younger, French President Nicolas Sarkozy might have made her France’s First Lady and her nude pictures might have been sold to help charities in Cambodia. Now, instead, the French are taking her to court. The former French sex symbol stood trial in Paris today for “inciting racial hatred” against Muslims. The public prosecutor demanded that the former filmstar be given a two-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 15,000 euros.
In December 2006, Bardot wrote a letter to Sarkozy, then France’s Interior minister, to demand that Muslims anaesthesize their animals before slaughtering them. In her letter she said, referring to Muslims, that she is “fed up with being under the thumb of this population which is destroying us, destroying our country and imposing its habits.”
Since 1997 Bardot has already been fined four times for “inciting hatred” against Muslims. Recently she was given a fine of 5,000 euros. Public prosecutor Anne de Fontette told the court today that she was seeking a tough sentence because she is getting “tired of prosecuting Mrs Bardot.” The former star refuses to shut up. The verdict of the Paris court is expected on 3 June.
Go to Article
By Daniel B. WoodApril 15, 2008
Los Angeles - Eleven-year teaching veteran Teri Hu was adviser to The Voice, the student newspaper of Irvington High School in Fremont, Calif., when school administrators told her not to let it publish a story critical of school policies on teaching assistants. Two months after she refused, Ms. Hu became "former" adviser to The Voice.
Janet Ewell, a tenured teacher in Garden Grove, was enjoying the praise in her 2002 school evaluation until she came to the part about her performance as advisor to journalism students. "[The principal] let me know he didn't like three student editorials, one about school bathrooms, one about the cafeteria and one about teachers who are not available to help students," recalls Ms. Ewell. "Then he told me I wouldn't be advising them the next fall."
Scenarios like those above occurring in schools across California have prompted the state to take the national lead again in protecting free speech rights on campuses.....(read more)
AUSTIN (Legal Newsline)-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is intending to appeal a judge's decision that the state's $5-per-patron fee on strip clubs is unconstitutional, a spokesperson told LNL.
" Can we now simply conclude that the adult entertainment industry has won its culture war with the religious right? "
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly handed down the 57-page decision on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, rebuffing the trade group's argument that the law violates the First Amendment rights of its members.
The group had also sought a preliminary injunction to prevent enforcement of the provision in the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, which requires trade associations to disclose the names of members, who contribute more than $5,000 in a quarterly period for lobbying activities, by April 21....(read more)
"It's difficult to understand how some of the conclusions she reached conform to the requirements of First Amendment law,"said Quentin Riegel, the group's vice president for litigation.
"A number of the conclusions were weak and the law itself has many problems that remain."
Saying that the goal is to fight the public view of the press as “unethical snoops” and restore them to the “heroic investigators” that they once were, the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) and the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) announced a new public awareness campaign at their 2008 Capital Conference in Washington, D.C., today.
Toni Locy, the USA Today reporter who is currently appealing her contempt-of-court citation for refusing to divulge her sources in the 2001 anthrax mailing controversy, was at the presentation and held up as one example of why such a campaign is necessary.
ASNE announced that it has formed a partnership with more than 1,000 news organizations to build up support for the First Amendment in unprecedented ways. They have created an ambitious campaign to digitize more government information and are working together to improve reporters’ capabilities as watchdog journalists and to offer readers more access to government documents online.
The Liberty Tree Initiative has also recently been launched to challenge public attitude and a general lack of awareness of the First Amendment. This coalition has the daunting task to reach out to a new generation with a highly interactive, integrated marketing campaign that is being currently being developed.
Street artists expressing their First Amendment rights in Union Square Park won a victory after successfully protesting their eviction from the park early last week.
On Friday, April 4, a Parks Department official approached artists who had set up in the park and told them that, due to the construction of the private restaurant in the north pavilion, they would not be allowed to sell their art on Wednesdays and Saturdays, two of the most popular days for artists to sell their work, and that the artists were to vacate the park....
By: Leah Fineran 14Apr08
A CONTROVERSIAL sex shop is set to open less than 10m from a $1 million Varsity Lakes youth skate park.
The Playhouse Adult Store at Burleigh Waters is relocating from a Reedy Creek Road industrial precinct where it operated illegally for three years.
The store, operated by Lucky Bitch Pty Ltd, was forced to move to a retail space after the council last year refused to approve an application to remain in the industrial precinct.
The store's move into a three-storey, mixed-use building at 14 Cassia Drive has sparked outrage from the local community, who say the shop's position will draw 'undesirables' to the residential area and long-awaited multi-purpose youth facility.
The youth park is a joint State Government and Gold Coast City Council project and is expected to open in six weeks, with a BMX track, events stage, skate bowl and public art.
The adult shop's move comes as Acting Premier Paul Lucas last week said the Government would review industry regulations after an adult shop recently opened opposite a Catholic primary school at Proserpine in north Queensland.
The Varsity Lakes location is almost 2km from Marymount College on Reedy Creek Road, but area councillor Jan Grew said an adult shop on Cassia Drive was 'wrong' as it was opposite a youth facility.....
Targeted online advertising, says the group, is “not only truthful advertising speech, but advertising speech that meets their [the audience’s] interest”.
Ads are a form of free speech so long as they are not misleading, the association wrote in its comments to the commission:
“Efforts to restrict what newspaper websites publish, and the basis by which editors and advertisers make decisions regarding what to publish, run directly counter to core First Amendment rights, and can amount to a prior restraint.”
Written by: Stephen Sabludowsky
How about first starting that when a member of an elective body gets ensnared in a sex ring, that member is automatically recalled from office regardless as to party affiliation, whether that gentleman or gentlewoman admits to any details related to a self-described “sin”? The statute of limitations could be ten years to include legislative hopping due to term limits or frailties in federal laws.
What about all prosecutors being compelled to release all names associated with a prostitution ring if that prosecutor is proceeding against anyone for prostitution or related crimes?
In light of Bobby Jindal’s desire to put sex offenders in Angola and place their pictures on the Internet, why don’t we put the pictures of “John’s” on the Internet so we will know who might be lurking in our neighborhoods and bar them from one hundred yards from all schools, libraries and public pools?
Senator Quinn is right when she says there are concerns about pockets of criminal activity sprouting up. Both political parties should be concerned about these criminal activities and should not lionize the perpetrators as if they are Godfathers with everyone kissing their rings. We have our public morals about which we should be concerned (which is not just limited to cock fighting) and a good place to start would be in our state legislature. Alternatively, if the legislature does not like these above ideas or question their constitutionality’s, why not just legalize prostitution. For one, it doesn’t require a high school education, it could fill plenty of vacant Louisiana jobs, I hear the pay can be great and it would certainly relieve some of the stress after those long special and regular sessions. Or, so, I have heard.
If you have any ideas, tell us on our “buzzboards” and we will pass them on to Senator Quinn to fill in her now vacant legislation.
Clay County to review its rules on signs after backlash from residents. 
RonMcMahon writes "Lawyers for the city of New York have subpoenaed the text message records of thousands of people involved in demonstrations at the 2004 Republican National Convention.
Just because you're a Republican congressional leader whose party tends to inveigh against trial lawyers at the drop of a legal brief doesn't mean you can't savor having a federal judge order a Democratic Party colleague of yours to pay you more than a $1 million in attorneys' fees."the First Amendment is stronger today, and shielded by new case law that
will buttress its capacity to protect the publication of truthful information on
matters of public importance long into the future,"
Kansas' war over porn may never end. Every year, family values advocates, politicians and countless local governments try to push strip clubs and adult video stores farther away.
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