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CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (NEWSPLEX) -- The American Civil Liberties Union and the Rutherford Institute say a decision to move the Unite the Right rally to McIntire Park raises First Amendment concerns.

According to a letter sent to Charlottesville city officials, the "belated demand" to move the Aug. 12 demonstration from Emancipation Park "undermines [the] ability of demonstrators to effectively communicate their message."

The letter also calls the timing and justification for the demand a "callous disrespect for the rights of free speech and assembly."

Jason Kessler submitted a request for a permit to protest the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue from Emancipation Park about two months ago.

According to an annotation on the letter, city code says requests for demonstration permits are deemed granted unless they are denied within ten business days following the application.

Kessler has said the protest will still take place in front of the Lee statue despite the city's actions regarding the permit on Monday.

"We are going to exercise our First Amendment rights no matter what," he said on Monday. "At this point, this is a civil rights issue. They have done everything in their power to deny me and my friends our civil rights and we're going to fight that."

"The city must provide factual evidence to support its attendance estimate and justify revoking the permit to demonstrate in Emancipation Park," said the letter. "While the city relies upon a forecast that 'many thousands' will attend the event, it has not disclosed the sources of the information it is relying on for that estimate and whether such sources have any factual basis. When First Amendment rights are at stake, the city should be transparent about the evidence and information underlying its action so that citizens can be sure that fears of overcrowding are not simply a pretext for censorship and meet the requirement for proof that a compelling government interest underlies its decision."

The organizations call the city's justification for revoking the permit specious in light of approval for permits for counter demonstrations on the same day in Justice and McGuffey parks that are reportedly expecting more than 1,000 people to attend.

They also say the city's decision amounts to a "hecklers' veto," saying the revocation violates the principle that the rights of speech and assembly cannot be restricted because one group may be met with opposition.

"The city must act in accordance with the law, even if doing so is distasteful to members of the community who disagree with the views espoused by the Unite the Right organizers," added the letter. "At the very least, the city must explain in more than just generalities its reasons for concluding that the demonstration cannot safely be held in Emancipation Park."

The ACLU and the Rutherford Institute are asking for a response from the city by Aug. 9.

To read the full letter and its annotations, click on the document in the Related Documents box.

Original post:
ACLU, Rutherford Institute say permit revocation violates First Amendment - The Charlottesville Newsplex

When we talk about the importance of a free press, what we're really talking about is how important it is for the press to serve as a watchdog on the government. The highest responsibility of journalism is to supply the people with information about what their government is doing, so that the people can hold the government accountable, and make the best possible decisions when they vote.

But if you're not a journalist (full disclosure: I am not), you may not give a lot of thought to how journalists get that information in the first place. Official government press releases and briefings aren't really the place to find information about government misconduct. Obviously, leaks are a much better source when it comes to getting the real dirt. But the recent emphasis on prosecuting leakers is likely to have a major chilling effect on that source of information.

But there is a way that journalists can get their hands on FBI records, secret military policy memos, and NSA email exchanges without having to worry about their sources getting arrested or fired.

They can ask the government for them.

The Freedom of Information Act is a law that requires the government to hand over its records if someone asks for them. The act applies to federal government agencies, but every state has laws that allow the public to access its government records. Anyone can request information, whether they're a U.S. citizen or foreign national. And anything can be requested.

A government agency can, of course, deny your request if it decides that the information you're seeking falls into an exemption category, like information that would threaten national security, or invade someone's privacy. But if you think your FOIA request was unfairly denied, you can appeal, and if that doesn't work, you can sue.

Nabiha Syed, assistant general counsel for BuzzFeed, is intimately familiar with this process. A large part of her job involves getting government agencies to give up information that they would rather not share information that often ends up being crucial to BuzzFeed's reporting. She sees the right of the public to access government information as an exciting First Amendment frontier. "For the most part, the First Amendment says, 'This is hands off, the government's not going to be involved, you guys figure out speech,'" Syed says. "And then you have the First Amendment right of access, which says, 'Yes, but also, we are going to allow you to use the law as a sword to get access to judicial proceedings, to official records...to administrative proceedings.'"

Requesting or fighting for government records is an instrumental part of BuzzFeed's reporting strategy. Such records have allowed the BuzzFeed News team to report on misconduct in death penalty executions, for-profit foster care scandals, and the widespread abuse of seasonal migrant workers. Just last month, BuzzFeed News obtained a secret Department of Defense report that stated that Chelsea Manning's disclosure of Iraq-related documents would be unlikely to have any impact on U.S. operations in Iraq (directly contradicting the government's position at Manning's trial).

To be sure, the system is far from perfect, as many information-seekers can attest. As Jason Fagone wrote in his article "The Secret to Getting Top-Secret Secrets," "The Freedom of Information Act, passed in 1966 to increase trust in government by encouraging transparency, has always been a pain in the ass. You write to an uncaring bureaucracy, you wait for months or years only to be denied or redacted into oblivion, and even if you do get lucky and extract some useful information, the world has already moved on to other topics."

But when it does work, the payoffs can be enormous. As Nabiha Syed says, "How do we at least inject the information we need into the commons, into the public square, to try and heighten the conversations we're having? At least getting the underlying facts out there, in ways that are hopefully more authoritative than anecdotal, I think would be really helpful."

Lata Nott is executive director of the First Amendment Center of the Newseum Institute. Contact her via email at lnott@newseum.org, or follow her on Twitter at @LataNott.

See the original post:
Inside the First Amendment: When leaks dry up, we turn to FOIA - Meridian Star

TOLEDO, Ohio (ChurchMilitant.com) - The Toledo city council is considering a new city ordinance designed to keep pro-life advocates away from Toledo's two abortion mills.

The ordinance, proposed on July 10 and called "Impeding Access to Health Care," would make it a misdemeanor offense for pro-life advocates to physically block access to an abortion facility.

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It also forbids pro-life advocates from "Engag[ing] in a course of conduct within twenty feet of the premises of a Health Care Facility or Reproductive Health Care Facility when that behavior places another person in reasonable fear of physical harm."

Pro-life advocates are crying foul over the rule, noting there are already laws making it illegal to harass people outside of abortion mills.

Jeff Barefoot, president of Greater Toledo Right to Life (GTRL), called it "a criminal ordinance in search of a perpetrator." He noted to Church Militant that, so far, no protesters have been charged or arrested for harassing women seeking abortions.

He adds that the ordinance doesn't define what "reasonable fear of physical harm" is and that it can be interpreted subjectively.

Abortion mill worker, Schuyler Beckwith, commented women seeking abortions at the Capital Care Network facility "are being screamed at, and they're being accosted with photographs that depict images that are not accurate about what we do at the clinic." She goes on to complain, "They're being prayed to, they're being harassed on a regular basis, and they come in, and they're mentally hurt."

Ed Sitter, executive director of Greater Toledo Right to Life, slammed the law as "unnecessary," calling it a "direct assault on an individual's freedom of speech and of assembly."

Greater Toledo Right to Life asserts, "Regardless of personal beliefs, this is an issue of free speech." The group asserts, "Sharing one's views in the public domain without physically threatening or harming anyone is a constitutional right."

The legislation was sponsored by Steven Steel, the president of the city council and a staunch abortion activist. The ordinance is expected to be put forward for a vote on August 30.

Pro-life advocates are asking Toledo residents to phone their city council member to voice their disagreement with the proposed ordinance.

Greater Toledo Right to Life is hosting a petition, asking people to vote "No" at the next meeting.

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Read more:
Toledo Pro-Lifers Face Muzzling of First Amendment Rights - Church Militant

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

File this as a Youve Got to Be Kidding Me moment. Hillary Clinton wants to be a spiritual leader.

Thats right. Clinton wants to preach the word of God, according to her pastor, the Rev. Bill Shillady.

Cue the smoke and dramatic dark music. Not to be impolite, but the idea of Clinton imparting biblical wisdom to the masses isnt that rather like Satan instructing Eve in the way she should go?

Bite the apple, Eve. Go head, its good for you.

Shillady has a new book out, Strong for a Moment Like This: The Daily Devotions of Hillary Rodham Clinton. And within, are 365 of the more than 600 devotions written for Clinton, along with personal notes, portions of her speeches and headlines that provide context for that days devotion, publisher Abingdon Press announced.

Not sure which is more surprising in that announcement that Clinton accepted devotions from pastors during the election season, or that she accepted them on a daily basis. Certainly, she must have missed at least a day or two of godly reflections.

How about on this day, for example, when the Daily Mail ran this headline: Blow up! Days before losing the election Hillary and [husband] Bill had a screaming match over who to blame for her flagging campaign the ex-president so angry he threw his phone off the roof of his Arkansas penthouse.

Ouch. Seems that days devotion may have fallen on deaf ears. But then again, all humans are fallible. Thou shalt not judge, and so on. But now?

Clinton wants to preach, the Atlantic wrote. Thats what she told Bill Shillady at a recent photo shoot for his new book about the daily devotionals he sent her during the 2016 campaign. Scattered bits of reporting suggest that ministry has always been a secret dream of the two-time presidential candidate: Last fall, the former Newsweek editor Kenneth Woodward revealed that Clinton told him in 1994 that she thought all the time about becoming an ordained Methodist minister.

Apparently, Clinton asked Woodward to keep a lid on the hope, however. She thought it would make me seem much too pious.

Oh, not at all, Mrs. Clinton. Not at all.

But now, post-epic election fail, the woman whose face and name have become synonymous with Political Scandal, wants to go public and reinvent with religion. On one hand, strange but true. But on the other? Well, consider this: There is a lot of money to be made on the television preaching circuit. So in that respect, perhaps the job switch perhaps the reinvention from politics to pulpit isnt quite so odd after all.

Read this article:
Hillary Clinton, the wanna-be preacher - Washington Times

Still taken from the video

Donald Trump is currently on what he insists is a working vacation in Bedminster, New Jersey, where his wedding-crashing hasnt prevented him from also battling the fake news media. Hes launched a new series of propaganda-like videos on his Facebook page, including this one from former CNN contributor Kayleigh McEnany, which Meyers summed up as like state news crossed with a school announcement. He added an imitation of McEnany for good measure: Its pizza day in the cafeteria, but you wont hear that from the failing New York Times! (Sadly, that pizza will probably be Dominos.)

Of course, we all know where Donald Trump gets his news: directly from Fox News, where it seems all the contributors are living in an alternate reality where Hillary Clinton won the presidency. How else, Meyers argues, can you explain their continued obsession with her? And when Fox News is obsessed, Trump is obsessed, as he proved last week while at a rally in West Virginia, where he again brought up Clintons emails and prompted a chant of Lock her up!

Theres a good chance [Trump] sees all that and thinks Hillary Clinton is actually the president, said Meyers, imagining how Trump would respond to news that North Korea launched a nuclear missile: Dont worry, Hillary will take care of that. Now, if youll excuse me, I have some wedding guests to greet. Wheres the bride?

See original here:
Seth Meyers Thinks Republicans Are Living in an Alternate Universe Where Hillary Clinton Became President - Slate Magazine (blog)