A panel of five Tunisian judges on Thursday convicted TV magnate Nabil Karoui of “disturbing public order” and “threatening public morals” by broadcasting the French movie “Persepolis,” an animated film that contains a fleeting image of God. Read full article > >

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Tunisian who showed ‘Persepolis’ on TV fined in free speech case

Outside the courthouse, 16 armed police officers screen all comers, including hundreds of lawyers in flowing black robes. Beyond a wall of barbed wire, a throng of bearded young men angrily shout slogans. The scene sends a clear message: Could be trouble here. Read full article > >

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Tunisian court case exposes rift over free speech in new democracy

The Jordanian authorities are violating people’s right to free speech and undermining the credibility of reform efforts, Human Rights Watch says.

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Jordan ‘suppressing free speech’

The shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida is reverberating today in an unlikely place: the executive suites of major corporations. In recent days, advocacy groups have targeted more than a dozen corporations over their financial support for the conservative organization that encouraged states to pass the “ Stand Your Ground ” legislation cited as a defense for George Zimmerman , the man charged with second-degree murder in the Feb. 26 shooting. Read full article > >

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Trayvon Martin shooting spurs protests against companies with ties to legislative group

Jon McNaughton, a conservative Utah artist, has released a controversial new painting: an image of President Obama burning the Constitution. The painting is called “One Nation Under Socialism.” McNaughton, who is described by Salon as “the right’s Shepard Fairey” and who also creates Thomas Kinkade-esque landscapes and holiday paintings, has gained notoriety for some of his previous anti-Obama paintings: He has depicted the president trampling the Constitution and enslaving Americans in chains . In response to an article on the Blaze asking whether his work was free speech or offensive, McNaughton replied on his Facebook page , “I for one am deeply offended. I can’t believe I had to paint this in our own country. Stand up and be heard America!!” Read full article > >

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Artist depicts Obama burning Constitution

Peter Van Buren, a foreign service officer who wrote an unflattering book about his year leading two reconstruction teams in Iraq, was stripped of his security clearance, banned from State Department headquarters for a time and transferred to a telework job that consists of copying Internet addresses into a file. Read full article > >

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State Dept. moves to fire Peter Van Buren, author of book critical of Iraq reconstruction effort

Iowa, the country’s top producer of pork and eggs, attracted national attention this month when it became the first state to adopt a law that’s designed to curtail the undercover operations of animal rights activists on farms. Read full article > >

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Iowa law sets up fight between animal activists, farms

A student’s first-person essay in an online newspaper raises issues of free speech at Stern College for Women.

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Yeshiva University Stunned by Tale of a Tryst

RICHMOND, Va. — New cigarette warning labels that show the sewn-up corpse of a smoker or a picture of diseased lungs shouldn’t be prevented from appearing on packs next year while a federal judge determines whether they violate tobacco companies’ free speech rights, the Food and Drug Administration said Friday. Some of the nation’s largest tobacco companies, led by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Lorillard Tobacco Co., sued last month to block the labels, questioning their constitutionality and saying that changing cigarette packaging will cost millions of dollars. Read full article > >

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FDA says judge shouldn’t stop graphic new cigarette warning labels

DENVER — A harassment charge has been dropped in the case of a 35-year-old Colorado man who faced prosecution for displaying his middle finger to a Colorado State Patrol trooper. The State Patrol said in a statement late Friday that it asked that the case be dropped. The American Civil Liberties Union had argued that while the gesture may be have been rude, it amounted to protected free speech. Read full article > >

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Harassment charge dropped against man who gave Colorado state trooper the finger

The food and advertising industries are pushing back against an Obama administration proposal that calls for food makers to voluntarily limit the way they market sugary cereals, salty snacks and other foods to children and teens. From yogurt makers to candy manufacturers, they lined up Tuesday to tell regulators that the first-ever proposed guidelines for marketing to children would not stop the childhood obesity problem but would certainly hurt their businesses and abridge their right to free speech. Read full article > >

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Food makers resist lawmakers’ proposal for guidelines in marketing to children

The Stolen Valor Act is a 2006 law that makes it a federal crime to lie about being a military hero. But some federal courts have said it violates the right to free speech.

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Fighting for the Right to Lie About Military Service

COLUMBIA, S.C. — The U.S. Justice Department believes a South Carolina jail is violating inmates’ free speech rights by barring them from any reading material other than the Bible

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US Justice Department wants to intervene in lawsuit against SC jail’s Bible-only policy

The Supreme Court majority that struck down campaign spending restrictions as assaults on free speech seems ready to do the same with Arizona’s public financing plan.

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Supreme Court skeptical about Arizona’s campaign finance law

If there is any interest group more intellectually dishonest in its approach to free speech than anti-abortion activists, I have yet to encounter it. Their solicitude for their own speech rights is equaled only by their hostility to the speech rights of abortion providers and patients. Two respective laws recently passed by the New York City Council and the South Dakota legislature illustrate these hypocrisies. I’d bet my last contribution to Planned Parenthood that centers in South Dakota, which women are forced to consult, provide inaccurate or deceptive information. To discourage if not effectively prohibit women from obtaining abortions, South Dakota now requires them to endure a three-day waiting period (in a state with only one abortion clinic) and to submit to counseling at an anti-abortion “crisis” center. In addition to unduly burdening abortion rights, the South Dakota law ignores women’s First Amendment rights to decline to attend anti-abortion lectures. If this seems reasonable to you, think about a similar law that would require pregnant women, or women planning pregnancies, to undergo counseling about the risks of childbirth, the economic costs of raising children, and the possibility that they’ll break your heart. And think about the opposition of pro-lifers to a recently enacted New York City law requiring “crisis pregnancy centers” to describe the medical services they offer and disclose whether or not they are licensed medical providers. These disclosure requirements were prompted by evidence that the crisis centers regularly engage in deceptive practices, which you can find partly described here . I’d bet my last contribution to Planned Parenthood that centers in South Dakota, which women are forced to consult, provide similarly inaccurate or deceptive information. But pro-lifers apparently feel constitutionally entitled to their deceptions; and they do have a right to call themselves pregnancy crisis counselors, however misleading the label seems, while preaching against abortion — so long as they refrain from providing pregnant women with objectively inaccurate information. But insisting that New York’s disclosure law “strips” them of their First Amendment rights, crisis centers have hired the American Center for Law and Justice to challenge it. Compare this righteous opposition to requirements that anti-abortion counselors present women with accurate information about their services and licenses, (or lack thereof) to the righteousness with which pro-lifers defend laws requiring abortion providers to present women with lists of horribles possibly attendant upon abortion, (a requirement upheld by the Supreme Court; the Court has also upheld a law barring recipients of federal funds from informing women about abortion options.) In other words, on the pro-life planet, abortion providers lack free speech rights to counsel patients without interference from the state, while anti-abortion activists enjoy very broad speech rights, including the utterly unregulated right to dispense inaccurate medical information and the power to force it upon pregnant women, who have no right to refuse it. As Nat Hentoff has said, “free speech for me, but not for thee.” I hope, under the circumstances, that Hentoff, who opposes abortion rights, won’t think I’m taking his name in vain.

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Free Speech Hypocrisies of Pro-Lifers