Freedom Of Expression

All Kelley Coffman-Lee wanted to do was broadcast her love of tofu to the driving public. So the Colorado vegan applied to the state's Department of Revenue for a vanity license plate for her Suzuki SL7 carrying the message: ILVTOFU. Clerks at her local motor vehicle office approved the plate -- but it did not escape the discerning eyes of state revenue officials, who detected another way that Coffman-Lee's penchant for tofu could be read.

When Saddam Hussein was in power, Adil Kadhim would rise at 6 each morning in his cramped apartment, set a pot of water on the stove for tea, and begin writing. His work, like that of all authors, had to pass regime censors. One of his television series was an allegory about power, and made it to the screen by being set in 1950s Baghdad rather than in the later Baathist era.

The California Supreme Court appeared inclined Thursday to overturn the felony conviction of a teenage boy whose violent poetry was deemed a criminal threat. The case of the felonious poetry has received national attention, with prominent writers, including Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee and Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon, weighing in on behalf of the boy.

Zimbabwe's highest court struck down sections of tough media legislation that had made it an offense to publish "falsehoods." Government lawyers acknowledged that the provisions violated the constitutional protection of freedom of expression and planned an amendment to bar "falsehoods" spread out of malice or recklessness. The law took effect shortly after President Robert Mugabe was reelected in 2002 amid allegations of fraud.

The boy was shy, 15 and new to his high school in San Jose. He wrote poems in his notebooks and carried them everywhere. One day in honors English, he approached a classmate who had been kind to him and asked her to read one of them. "Is there a poetry club here?" the gangly teenager wanted to know. The girl read the poem, but it did not spark a friendship. Instead, fearing for her life, she fled the campus. Police went to the boy's home two days later and arrested him.

Kevin Dimmick has withstood a two-year federal court battle to display his HIV-positive status on the back of his Harley. The 42-year-old Kensington man sued the state Department of Motor Vehicles in 1996 after it refused to approve his application for a motorcycle license plate that read "HIV POS," saying it could be considered offensive. After the victory, Dimmick picked up his new license plate Friday. Dimmick, who now has AIDS, ran a support group for heterosexuals called Positive Support.

Charging that his 1st Amendment rights were infringed, a man who tried to rent a poster listing the Ten Commandments in the outfield of a Downey High School baseball diamond has sued the city's school district. Businessman Edward Di Loreto said he was trying to instill moral values by renting the $400 advertising space. Revenues from the posters were to benefit the school's sports programs.

A Pomona Superior Court judge has denied an ACLU request for a restraining order to block Claremont McKenna College's suspension of a student for publishing an allegedly obscene newsletter. After reviewing several copies of the Wohlford Free Press published by the 19-year-old student, Bradley Kvederis, Judge Wendell Mortimer Jr. decided Tuesday that the weekly newsletter "may well contain obscene and libelous material and, therefore, [is] not constitutionally protected."

The 1st Amendment and freedom of speech have been consistent winners in the Supreme Court of late, but some liberals are none too happy about it. Throughout this century, the cherished notion of free speech had a unique power to unite liberals. The "freedom to think as you will and to speak as you will" are the "indispensable means" to a just and democratic society, Justice Louis D. Brandeis, a liberal hero, once wrote--albeit in dissent.

Don't look for Cotton Mather's 303-year-old Puritanical screed, "Wonders of the Invisible World," to be reissued and rocket to the top of the bestseller list. Nor is the specter of Carrie Nation likely to stalk today's college campuses in a quest to halt binge drinking. But there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that America is moving into a new puritanical era that echoes some of the themes sounded when Mather portrayed New England as a battleground of sin and puritanism.