From MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” on 5-14-08.
Part 1
Part 2
Archive for the 'Freedom of Speech' Category
TWIN FALLS, Idaho - A high school student said he may file a lawsuit against a physical education teacher who took a Mexican flag he had brought for Cinco de Mayo and put it in the garbage.
Clint Straatman denied Froylan Camelo’s version of events but said he took the flag Monday because “white kids” might have hurt the 16-year-old. He said he put it in a garbage can because he had no place else to keep it.
Camelo said he was changing into gym clothes at Minico High School in Rupert when Straatman told him, “Give me the flag.”
“I said, ‘What’s the problem?’” Camelo, speaking in Spanish, told The Times-News of Twin Falls. “He said, ‘The problem is that we are in the United States and not in Mexico.’ He grabbed it from me. He threw the flag in the garbage can.”
Camelo said that Straatman told him the flag would be returned at the end of the school day, but that Straatman taunted him instead.
“I asked, ‘Where is my flag?’” Camelo said. “He said, ‘What, the U.S. flag?’ I said, ‘No, the one for Mexico.’ But he wouldn’t give it to me.”
Camelo said he then took the undamaged flag out of the garbage.
Straatman denied saying the words Camelo attributed to him, and said the student may have misunderstood him because of his poor English skills.
“I had to confiscate it so it wouldn’t escalate any problems in class,” Straatman told The Times-News. “We’re worried about that stuff all the time. We always have kids saying stuff to each other, and we have a lot of fights between kids.” More…
Don Blankenship Grabbed an ABC News Reporter’s Camera During the Incident
By BRIAN ROSS and MADDY SAUER
April 3, 2008—
“If you’re going to start taking pictures of me, you’re liable to get shot,” the chairman of one of the country’s biggest coal mining companies, Don Blankenship of Massey Energy, told an ABC News reporter before grabbing the reporter’s camera.
The incident this week, in the parking lot of a Massey Energy office in Belfry, Ky., is just the latest chapter in the saga of Blankenship’s controversial relationship with the West Virginia Supreme Court, which is hearing appeals that could cost his company hundreds of millions of dollars.
Photographs recently emerged showing Blankenship vacationing on the French Riviera with the state Supreme Court Chief Justice Elliott “Spike” Maynard.
Earlier, Blankenship helped to raise $3.5 million for a television advertising campaign that led to the defeat of another Supreme Court justice.
Massey Energy has also moved to have another justice recuse himself from cases involving the company because of an alleged bias against Massey and Blankenship.
The parking lot incident took place as ABC News sought to ask Blankenship questions for a report to be broadcast Monday on ABC News’ “World News With Charles Gibson” and “Nightline.”
In a letter to ABC, Blankenship’s lawyers said, “Mr. Blankenship has been a frequent target for harassment and physical attacks over the years, so his reaction is not so surprising when you consider that he was approached unannounced by an intruder on private property.”The lawyers claimed the ABC reporter “pushed his camera closer to Mr. Blankenship’s face” without “having identified himself or his news organization.”
Tape of the incident shows the reporter twice identified himself as being from ABC News as he walked up to Blankenship.
As seen on the tape, Blankenship first issued his warning about being “shot” and then approached the reporter and put out his left hand to grab the camera, twisting the view finder and breaking off the microphone in the process.
The tape was not damaged, and the video will be included in the ABC News report Monday.
Article Continues @ Sourced Site See the Pics, here.
By Taylor Atkins, The Capital-Journal
The Million Fag March, started by Chris Love, of Leavenworth, drew more than 400 demonstrators with signs, shirts, even pants touting messages of compassion and tolerance.
Homosexual, heterosexual and transgender pickets lined the corner of Gage Park. They hugged, danced and cheered as passersby honked their support.
“It’s about time we did something like this again,” said Hope Prescott, of Topeka, who waved a rainbow banner. “We feel somewhat responsible for the Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church. It’s about time we show our support for gays rights and all rights.”
Love said the idea for the march came after Westboro members picketed actor Heath Ledger’s stateside memorial service, but the theme for Sunday’s event encompassed more than funeral picketing.
“It’s not just about the Heath Ledger thing,” Love said. “We’re against everything that church does. The theory has been to ignore them, and they’ll go away. It’s been 20 years, and they’re still here. Now we are too.”
“I invited Westboro to come out and join us, but they didn’t come,” he said. More…
ATLANTA — A federal judge in Atlanta sided Tuesday with a Conyers man whose satirical Web site likens Wal-Mart to the Holocaust.
U.S. District Judge Timothy C. Batten Sr. rejected Wal-Mart’s claims that Charles Smith’s Web site and satirical products violated the company’s trademark. In an 87-page order, Batten said Smith’s products qualified as protected noncommercial speech.
The 50-year-old computer store owner from Conyers, Ga., said Wal-Mart is “taking over the world.” He set up the Walocaust Web site, and later a Wal-Qaeda Web site, to make his point.
On the site, Smith said: “When I came up with the word (Walocaust), I was thinking of all of the destruction that has been taking place in the world in the last few years. Massive layoffs, jobs and investment capital going over seas, record bankruptcies, lost pensions, millions of uninsured, and wars. Behind most of this destruction lurk giant corporations.” More…
By Carol D. Leonnig, Washington Post Staff Writer
The Bush administration violated the public’s right to free speech by keeping protesters far removed from the 2005 inaugural parade, a judge ruled yesterday.
U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman found that the National Park Service violated its own regulations by giving the inauguration’s private organizers preferential treatment and extraordinary control over access to Pennsylvania Avenue. The Presidential Inaugural Committee roped off most of the parade route and allowed only those with tickets inside: largely a crowd of Bush administration donors, supporters and friends coming to celebrate the start of President Bush’s second term.
Protesters were limited to small, specific areas, leading to a lawsuit by antiwar activists.
“The inauguration is not a private event,” Friedman said in his ruling. “The National Park Service, on behalf of the PIC, cannot reserve all of Pennsylvania Avenue for itself, leaving only the Ellipse and the northern part of John Marshall Park to protesters.”
Unless overturned on appeal, the ruling would force the Park Service to make more room for passing spectators, activists, residents and tourists in the next presidential inauguration, in January.
Friedman said the Park Service allowed the Presidential Inaugural Committee to apply almost a year ahead of anyone else for a permit, contrary to its usual regulations. It then granted the committee exclusive use of nearly all of the parade route from the Capitol to the White House and allowed the group to use the area for five months before Inauguration Day, instead of the typical three weeks. More…
WASHINGTON - At least 33 people have been arrested in anti-war protests in D.C. Wednesday. The protests mark the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war.
Police made the arrests at the Internal Revenue Service as demonstrators crossed barricades and blocked the front and side entrances to the building. The protesters were chanting “This is a Crime Scene” and “You’re arresting the wrong people.”
At 13th and L Streets, WTOP’s Kristi King reports laid down in street. They were carried to the curb by police.
Police also stopped protesters who tried to connect their bicycles together with a chain.
Other anti-war protests and vigils are planned throughout the day. More…
From Save the Internet:
There was huge turnout at today’s public hearing in Boston on the future of the Internet. Hundreds of concerned citizens arrived to speak out on the importance of an open Internet. Many took the day off from work — standing outside in the Boston cold — to see the FCC Commissioners. But when they reach the door, they’re told they couldn’t come in.
The size of the crowd is evidence that many Americans don’t want giant corporations like Comcast and Verzion to decide what we can do and where we can go on the Internet.
But will the FCC hear these voices? For many people who showed up on time for the hearing, apparently not.
Comcast — or someone who really, really likes Comcast — evidently bused in its own crowd. These seat-warmers, were paid to fill the room, a move that kept others from taking part.
[Update: Comcast admits to paying people to stack the room in their favor. Read the report.]
They arrived en masse some 90 minutes before the hearing began and occupied almost every available seat, upon which many promptly fell asleep (picture above).
One told us that he was “just getting paid to hold someone’s seat.”
Story Continues @ Sourced Site.
By PETER SVENSSON, Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Most of the world’s Internet users lost access to YouTube for several hours Sunday after an attempt by Pakistan’s government to block access domestically affected other countries.
The outage highlighted yet another of the Internet’s vulnerabilities, coming less than a month after broken fiber-optic cables in the Mediterranean took Egypt off line and caused communications problems from the Middle East to India.
An Internet expert said Sunday’s problems came after a Pakistani telecommunications company complied with the block by directing requests for YouTube videos to a “black hole.” So instead of serving up videos of skateboarding dogs, it sent the traffic into oblivion.
The problem was that the company also accidentally identified itself to Internet computers as the world’s fastest route to YouTube, leading requests from across the Internet to the black hole.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority had ordered 70 Internet service providers on Friday to block access to YouTube.com because of anti-Islamic movies on the video-sharing site, which is owned by Google Inc.
The authority did not specify what the offensive material was, but a PTA official said the ban concerned a trailer for an upcoming film by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, who has said he plans to release a movie portraying Islam as fascist and prone to inciting violence against women and homosexuals.
YouTube confirmed the outage Monday, saying it was caused by a network in Pakistan. More…
From BusinessWeek:
As Comcast Executive Vice-President David Cohen began his remarks at a hearing held by the Federal Communications Commission at Harvard Law School on Feb. 25, he knew he was in for a rough day. “It’s a pleasure to be here as a participant and hopefully not as the main course for your meal.”
Those hopes were quickly dashed as Comcast (CMCSA) drew the ire of many participants during the six-hour proceedings. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin convened the hearing to explore allegations that Comcast is acting improperly by blocking certain kinds of Internet traffic.
At issue is consumers’ access to Web content and whether network owners can lawfully impose limits on how people access certain forms of traffic, service, or speech over the Internet. Proponents of Net Neutrality say Comcast and other cable TV companies, as well as phone carriers such as Verizon Communications (VZ), which provide much of the country’s Web access, should not favor some kinds of content over others. “Consumers don’t want the Internet to be another version of old media, dominated by a handful of media giants,” said FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, who called for creation of an “Internet Bill of Rights” to ensure equal access to all lawful content on the Web.
Story Continues @ Sourced Site.
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