Freedom Of Speech

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.

A federal judge barred the state from prosecuting an online merchant who sells shirts that list names of thousands of troops killed in Iraq. U.S. District Judge Neil Wake did not strike down the 2007 law against selling products that use military casualties' names without families' permission. But he ruled that using the law to prosecute Dan Frazier would violate the Flagstaff man's 1st Amendment rights because his "Bush Lied -- They Died" shirts are "core political speech."

The Virginia Supreme Court declared the state's anti-spam law unconstitutional Friday and reversed the conviction of a man once considered one of the world's most prolific spammers. The court unanimously agreed with Jeremy Jaynes' argument that the law violated the free-speech protections of the 1st Amendment because it does not restrict only commercial e-mails. Most other states have anti-spam laws, and there is a federal spam law as well.

"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.

The American Civil Liberties Union has sued a high school in north San Diego County, saying it violated free-speech rights by scrapping its journalism class and removing the faculty advisor to the student newspaper. The dispute centers on two articles -- a November 2007 story that reported on the superintendent's alleged refusal to close Fallbrook High School during last year's wildfires, and a May editorial that questioned abstinence-only sex education. In its lawsuit filed Monday in San Diego County Superior Court, the ACLU asks that the journalism class be restored and that Dave Evans be returned to his job as faculty advisor.

One of the favorite rallying cries on conservative radio these days is that the president-elect might face demands from his crazed lefty pals to revive the "Fairness Doctrine" to muzzle Rush, Sean and their allies on the right end of the radio dial. Commentators like Larry Elder of KABC here in Los Angeles have been sounding the warning about the possible imminent return of federal rules mandating that broadcasters balance out political views on radio and television.

Iman Bakry has a fortuneteller's voice, husky and cracked. It coaxes you into her colloquial poems, which once were about romance, but have since shifted to a cutting critique of President Hosni Mubarak's government and an Egypt plagued by self-doubt, repression, corruption and a dangerous divide between rich and poor. "I see a storm coming," begins a stanza in one of her poems.

Do military officers have the right to publicly voice dissent about their commander in chief and U.S. war policy? That question highlighted last week's pretrial hearing at Ft. Lewis Army base near Seattle for 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, the nation's first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to Iraq. Watada faces a court-martial and six years in prison for failing to deploy with his Stryker Brigade last year and for making four public statements criticizing President Bush and the Iraq war.