[Rhodes22-list] Politics- 1st Amendment v. Defamatory Speech (That Delicate Balance)

[Brad Haslett]

Ben,

Did you follow any of the Mark Levin trial in Canada?  Levin found
himself under the microscope of the Canadian "speech police" for
writing an article (mostly true IMHO) about some Canadian Muslim
clerics.  I really, really, hope we don't go down that path in the US.
 Unfortunately, we already have a head start in that direction and Ivy
League universities are blazing the trail. What on earth do we send
our children to college for anyway?  Are we doing them a favor by
protecting them from differing opinions and alternative views? Most of
these so-called "anti bullying" groups aren't so interested in
protecting anyone so much as their singular point of view of the
world.  Our founding fathers must be turning in their grave. This
reminds me a bit of the week I spent this summer in Kunming China with
a "cyber cop" looking over my shoulder.  We really don't want to go
down this road.

Brad

On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 3:49 PM, Ben Cittadino <bcittadino at dcs-law.com> wrote:
>
> Friends and Neighbors;
>
> The following news item appeared in "The Daily Briefing", a news and recent
> court decision service published in the Garden State, today. Frankly, I'm
> not sure how I feel about it. It is interesting though and I welcome your
> learned observations and opinions.
>
> "AG'S CYBER-BULLYING PUSH RAISES 1ST AMENDMENT ISSUES
> Freedom of speech advocacy groups claim that Attorney General Anne M.
> Milgram's August letter to all New Jersey college presidents calling for
> penalties for students engaged in cyber-bullying could encroach on protected
> speech on campuses. "An open-ended directive (to) punish the use of
> computers for 'bullying' will invariably cause some administrators to
> penalize lawful speech that falls within the protection of the First
> Amendment," the advocates' letter to Milgram notes. The Student Press Law
> Center, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and the New
> Jersey chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists weighed in on the
> issue ahead of a series of meetings between the Attorney General and college
> administrators scheduled for this month. The push for anti-bullying
> regulations on college campuses arose after the disclosure of gossip- and
> slander-laden discussions by Princeton University undergraduates on
> www.JuicyCampus.com earlier this year. 11-12-08 "
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Ben C.
> --
> View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Politics--1st-Amendment-v.-Defamatory-Speech-%28That-Delicate-Balance%29-tp20469981p20469981.html
> Sent from the Rhodes 22 mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
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