Freedom Of Speech

Grover Cleveland High School Principal Bob Marks has his limits. On Thursday, it was the labeled diagram of a vagina splashed across the front page of the student newspaper's Valentine's Day issue. Flustered teachers rushed to confiscate the publication, but with some copies already in circulation and the Reseda campus in an uproar, it quickly became a hot read for the school's roughly 3,700 students. And some of the contraband issues made their way home, getting a quick reaction from parents.

Joey Cheek was shocked yet no longer surprised that a number of countries have tried to stifle what their athletes at this summer's Beijing Olympics say about China. Cheek has learned quickly that it is one thing for Olympic officials to espouse the humanitarian ideals expressed in the Olympic Charter and another to insist those officials stand behind the ideals to help alleviate a humanitarian crisis.

A coalition of media and public interest organizations went to federal court in San Francisco on Tuesday urging a judge to reconsider his order to shut down a muckraking website that publishes leaked documents from businesses and government agencies worldwide. Lawyers for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, Public Citizen and several news organizations, told U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White that two orders he issued last week against wikileaks.

If a city allows a monument with the Ten Commandments to be erected in a public park, must it also allow other religions and groups to display monuments of their choosing? The Supreme Court agreed Monday to take up that question in an unusual dispute over the reach of the 1st Amendment and freedom of speech. In the past, the court has said the free-speech rule applies in parks and officials may not discriminate against speakers or groups because of their message.

Vice President Dick Cheney does not have to testify as an eyewitness in a civil lawsuit filed against Secret Service agents by a man who says he was wrongfully arrested for criticizing the vice president -- at least not yet, U.S. District Magistrate Judge Craig Shaffer ruled Tuesday.

In a setback for the animal rights movement, a U.S. appeals court Friday struck down on free-speech grounds a federal law that made it a crime to sell videos of dogfighting and other acts of animal cruelty. All 50 states have laws against the abuse of animals, the appeals court said, but "a depiction of animal cruelty" is protected by the 1st Amendment. The ruling overturns a Virginia man's 2005 conviction, the nation's first under the law. Robert J. Stevens of Pittsville, Va.

A federal appeals court agreed Tuesday with a lower court ruling that struck down as unconstitutional a 1998 law intended to protect children from sexual material and other objectionable content on the Internet. The decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia is the latest twist in a decade-long legal battle over the Child Online Protection Act, which now could head to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a nod to criticism that it is stifling free speech during the Olympics, China intends to designate space in three public parks as "protest zones" for people to vent their grievances, officials said Wednesday. Protesters will have to obtain permission from the Ministry of Public Security in advance, giving the names of organizers, the topic and the number of participants. Still, the protest zones are a break from the Chinese government's zero tolerance of dissent.

On a sunny May afternoon, teenagers dismissed from a Beverly Hills middle school gathered outside a restaurant four blocks away and gossiped about their friends. Amid lots of giggling, the conversation among the eighth-graders touched on the prom and limousines but was dominated by an unflattering assessment of a girl at school, who was called a "spoiled brat" and a "slut." "I don't hate her, it's just, I wouldn't prefer to hang out with her for a million years," one girl declared.

"Shocking facts . . . suspicions about Choi Jin-sil." The post about one of South Korea's most beloved actresses surfaced in an online club for stock investors last month, days after an actor friend of hers committed suicide. The post went on to claim that the dead actor had owed Choi money. The rumor was copied and spread widely over the next days, with online posters blaming Choi's money lending for the actor's death.