Plunderbund » Free Speech

State employees: Know your rights about SB 5 and political activity in the workplace

ModernEsquire — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 05:06:53 +0000

[Disclaimer: This post is being offered for educational purposes only. It is not intended to be legal advice, nor am I creating any attorney/client privilege. The scope of this review is what is prohibited under Ohio law. Individual agency policies may vary. As always, I would advise anyone to independently consult with an attorney for questions about their legal rights in their particular situation.]

I’ve gotten at least one State employee who has e-mailed me an agency “policy” statement that suggests that any political activity by classified employees are prohibited on state property. The general structure is a memorandum that [...]

Tibet, China, and Net Neutrality

Brian — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 21:17:42 +0000

Via Wired:

Access to YouTube.com, usually readily available in China, was blocked after videos appeared on the site Saturday showing foreign news reports about the Lhasa demonstrations, montages of photos and scenes from Tibet-related protests abroad.

The internet is a tremendous tool for democratization. While access, even in the US, is not yet universal, if some poor person without a personal computer and internet access can get online at the local library, a tremendous amount of user-generated content is readily available.

For now.

The problem is, a very similar problem is rearing it’s head here in the West; the [...]

‘Mocking’ the Last Supper

Brian — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 13:01:21 +0000

The other day I pointed out the Catholic League’s overreaction to a poster for a gay pride festival that took it’s inspiration from da Vinci’s “Last Supper”. Lisa Renee mentioned in the comments that she found it insulting (perfectly valid for her to feel that way) and that it ‘mocked’ Christianity.

I wanted to point out that the ‘Last Supper’ is nearly iconic, and is often used as a source of inspiration for more ‘base’ sentiments. Dan Savage has an extensive collection of ‘Last Supper’ themed images, most or all with nary a peep from the [...]

Verizon censors traffic on their network

Brian — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 15:51:48 +0000

While not “Net Neutrality” related, this underscores the potential power and abuse allowing common carriers to regulate the content transmitted on their networks would permit.

Saying it had the right to block ?controversial or unsavory? text messages, Verizon Wireless has rejected a request from Naral Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group, to make Verizon?s mobile network available for a text-message program.

The other leading wireless carriers have accepted the program, which allows people to sign up for text messages from Naral by sending a message to a five-digit number known as a short code.

Verizon has essentially said that [...]

Bush administration infringing on freedom of religion

Brian — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 12:43:47 +0000

Well, anything that impugns on the separation of church and state infringes on freedom of religion, so it’s not exactly like this is a new thing for these guys. But this is pretty blatant. Prisons Purging Books on Faith From Libraries:

Behind the walls of federal prisons nationwide, chaplains have been quietly carrying out a systematic purge of religious books and materials that were once available to prisoners in chapel libraries.

The chaplains were directed by the Bureau of Prisons to clear the shelves of any books, tapes, CDs and videos that are not on a list of approved [...]

A win for Dancers for Democracy

Brian — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 13:18:51 +0000

The strip-club regulation law will be going to the polls this fall.

In the battle for popular support, strip-club owners and dancers claimed an edge yesterday.

They turned in 120 boxes of petitions — 382,508 signatures total — to Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner’s office. Citizens for Community Values, the Cincinnati-based group behind tougher rules, submitted more than 220,000 signatures to get the legislative ball rolling early this year.

Funny that the party of “smaller government, out of your lives” feels the need to micro-regulate this. I don’t think this should be the province of state government, and instead [...]

The President and Press should not be exposed to negative opinions

Brian — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:20:50 +0000

We’ve all known that Bush’s public appearances have attempted to carefully control access to “lock out” any kind of protesters. However, that just scratches the surface.

To counter any demonstrators who do get in, advance teams are told to create “rally squads” of volunteers with large hand-held signs, placards or banners with “favorable messages.” Squads should be placed in strategic locations and “at least one squad should be ‘roaming’ throughout the perimeter of the event to look for potential problems,” the manual says.

“These squads should be instructed always to look for demonstrators,” it says. “The rally squad’s task [...]

UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee: terrorist sympathizers

Brian — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 12:34:42 +0000

This Abukar Arman mess just won’t go away. It seems the Ohio right-wing blogosphere is obsessed with this man, and unwilling to take his writings at face value. Just yesterday, BizzyBlog had this to say:

Abukar Arman has expressed support in his writings for known terrorists, terrorist organizations, and groups that wish to impose Sharia law on their populations.

As I’ve said before, this is a tremendous over-simplification. His characterization of this is “extra-constitutional”. I’m not quite sure what Tom means by this – is it “extra-constitutional” to write that ?internally, ICU, with its various shortcomings, is [...]

Net Neutrality

Brian — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 11:42:31 +0000

When corporations talk about opposing “Net Neutrality”, what they want to protect is their ability to censor. For example, AT&T webcast Lollapalooza, and decided to censor Pearl Jam for some rather innocuous political speech. Here is the web cast:

And here is what it looked like from the crowd.

Media corporations shape how we view the world. They don’t act in our best interests; they act in the best interests of the money of the people that own and control them. AT&T got caught this time for being sloppy. From Pearl Jam’s statement:

This, of course, troubles [...]

For all our frustration with Democrats…

Brian — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 16:05:10 +0000

You know, it’s natural to get frustrated when stuff like the “Protect America Act” manage to get passed in a Democratic Congress. But before you get too worked up, check this out.

Still think there’s no difference between the GOP and Democrats? CorrenteWire generated the chart, and has some analysis as to what’s going on.