... bill denies us the right to evaluate the merits of ideas and arguments for ourselves by banning "political" or "anti-religious" speech from class

Thought Police in the Lecture Hall

By Asheesh Kapur Siddique | Saturday, October 28, 2006; Page A15

Universities are the bulwark of democratic societies -- places where individuals with diverse viewpoints come together to learn and to produce new knowledge for addressing social concerns, free of ideological interference. But these centers of freedom are under attack from people who want to inject partisan politics into our classrooms.

Led by activist David Horowitz, some conservatives are pushing for the adoption of an "Academic Bill of Rights" (ABOR) across America. The bill takes the form of student resolutions or legislative proposals claiming to protect the academic freedom of college students from ideological indoctrination by professors.
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The College Access and Opportunity Act, passed by the House in March and under consideration in the Senate, aims to deny federal funding to institutions -- even private ones -- that refuse to comply with ABOR's limitations on speech.

In truth, these efforts only hurt the students they purport to help. Horowitz and his backers aren't protecting our rights; they're impeding our educations. The Academic Bill of Rights would substitute political correctness for the free exchange of ideas on campus by preventing faculty and students from discussing fresh or controversial ideas in class. It would restrict what professors can teach and what students can learn.

This exchange between teachers and pupils lies at the heart of liberal education. But ABOR's backers argue that professors presenting new ideas might "indoctrinate" or offend students. Their bill denies us the right to evaluate the merits of ideas and arguments for ourselves by banning "political" or "anti-religious" speech from classrooms. ...

Press Feedom: Although it ranked 17th on the first list, published in 2002, the United States now stands at 53, .. deteriorated after Bush actions

U.S. Rank on Press Freedom Slides Lower

By Nora Boustany | Washington Post Foreign Service | Tuesday, October 24, 2006; A15

Some poor countries, such as Mauritania and Haiti, improved their record in a global press freedom index this year, while France, the United States and Japan slipped further down the scale of 168 countries rated, the group Reporters Without Borders said yesterday.

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Northern European countries top the index, with no reported censorship, threats, intimidation or physical reprisals, either by officials or the public, in Finland, Ireland, Iceland and the Netherlands. All of those countries were ranked in first place.

Serious threats against the artists and publishers of the Muhammad cartoons, which caricatured the prophet of Islam, caused Denmark, which was also in first place last year, to drop to 19th place. Yemen, at 149th place, slipped four places, mostly because of the arrests of journalists and the closure of newspapers that reprinted the cartoons. Journalists in Algeria, Jordan, Indonesia and India were harassed because of the cartoons as well.

Although it ranked 17th on the first list, published in 2002, the United States now stands at 53, having fallen nine places since last year.

"Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of 'national security' to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his 'war on terrorism,' " the group said.

"The zeal of federal courts which, unlike those in 33 U.S. states, refuse to recognize the media's right not to reveal its sources, even threatens journalists whose investigations have no connection at all with terrorism," the group said. ...

Documents Reveal Scope of U.S. Database on Antiwar Protests

Documents Reveal Scope of U.S. Database on Antiwar Protests | By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: October 13, 2006

WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 — Internal military documents released Thursday provided new details about the Defense Department’s collection of information on demonstrations nationwide last year by students, Quakers and others opposed to the Iraq war.

The documents, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, show, for instance, that military officials labeled as “potential terrorist activity” events like a “Stop the War Now” rally in Akron, Ohio, in March 2005.

The Defense Department acknowledged last year that its analysts had maintained records on war protests in an internal database past the 90 days its guidelines allowed, and even after it was determined there was no threat.

A department spokesman said Thursday that the “questionable data collection” had led to a tightening of military procedures to ensure that only information relevant to terrorism and other threats was collected. The spokesman, Maj. Patrick Ryder, said in response to the release of the documents that the department “views with great concern any potential violation” of the policy.

“There is nothing more important or integral to the effectiveness of the U.S. military than the trust and good will of the American people,” Major Ryder said.

A document first disclosed last December by NBC News showed that the military had maintained a database, known as Talon, containing information about more than 1,500 “suspicious incidents” around the country in 2004 and 2005. Dozens of alerts on antiwar meetings and peaceful protests appear to have remained in the database even after analysts had decided that they posed no threat to military bases or personnel.

Some documents obtained by the A.C.L.U. referred to the potential for disruption to military recruiting and the threat posed to military personnel as a result.

An internal report produced in May 2005, for instance, discussed antiwar protests at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and was issued “to clarify why the Students for Peace and Justice represent a potential threat to D.O.D. personnel.” ...

Two major American Jewish organizations helped block a prominent New York University historian from speaking at the Polish consulate

In N.Y., Sparks Fly Over Israel Criticism | Polish Consulate Says Jewish Groups Called To Oppose Historian | By Michael Powell | Washington Post Staff Writer | Monday, October 9, 2006; Page A03

NEW YORK -- Two major American Jewish organizations helped block a prominent New York University historian from speaking at the Polish consulate here last week, saying the academic was too critical of Israel and American Jewry.

The historian, Tony Judt, is Jewish and directs New York University's Remarque Institute, which promotes the study of Europe. Judt was scheduled to talk Oct. 4 to a nonprofit organization that rents space from the consulate. Judt's subject was the Israel lobby in the United States, and he planned to argue that this lobby has often stifled honest debate.

An hour before Judt was to arrive, the Polish Consul General Krzysztof Kasprzyk canceled the talk. He said the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee had called and he quickly concluded Judt was too controversial.

"The phone calls were very elegant but may be interpreted as exercising a delicate pressure," Kasprzyk said. "That's obvious -- we are adults and our IQs are high enough to understand that."

Judt, who was born and raised in England and lost much of his family in the Holocaust, took strong exception to the cancellation of his speech. He noted that he was forced to cancel another speech later this month at Manhattan College in the Bronx after a different Jewish group had complained. Other prominent academics have described encountering such problems, in some cases more severe, stretching over the past three decades. ...

latest element in a dispute about restrictions on freedom of speech in the US in relation to comments on Israel.

US free speech row grows as author says Jewish complaints stopped launch party | · Row over postscript on Palestinians' plight | · British-born academic claims lectures cancelled | Ed Pilkington in New York | Wednesday October 11, 2006 | The Guardian

The British-based author and former publisher Carmen Callil has become embroiled in a growing dispute over the limits of freedom of speech in America after a party celebrating her new book on Vichy France was cancelled because of the opinion she expresses about the modern state of Israel.

A party in honour of Bad Faith, Callil's account of Louis Darquier, the Vichy official who arranged the deportation of thousands of Jews, was to have taken place at the French embassy in New York last night but was cancelled after the embassy became aware of a paragraph in the postscript of the book. In the postscript Callil says she grew anxious while researching the "helpless terror of the Jews of France" to see "what the Jews of Israel were passing on to the Palestinian people. Like the rest of humanity, the Jews of Israel 'forget' the Palestinians. Everyone forgets."

Article continues
The embassy said the passage had been brought to its attention after a guest declined the invitation because of it. A spokesman denied allegations from Callil, reported by Reuters, that "fundamentalist Jews" had complained and had the party shut down.

The row over Callil's book is the latest element in a dispute about restrictions on freedom of speech in the US in relation to comments on Israel. ...

arrested after he approached VP Dick Cheney: alleges that Howards was arrested in retaliation for having exercised his First Amendment rights

Man Arrested For Criticizing Cheney Files LawsuitCharlie Brennan, Rocky Mountain News | October 3 2006

A Denver-area man filed a lawsuit today against a member of the Secret Service for causing him to be arrested after he approached Vice President Dick Cheney in Beaver Creek this summer and criticized him for his policies concerning Iraq.
Attorney David Lane said that on June 16, Steve Howards was walking his 7-year-old son to a piano practice, when he saw Cheney surrounded by a group of people in an outdoor mall area, shaking hands and posing for pictures with several people.

According to the lawsuit filed at U.S. District Court in Denver, Howards and his son walked to about two-to-three feet from where Cheney was standing, and said to the vice president, "I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible," or words to that effect, then walked on.

Ten minutes later, according to Howards' lawsuit, he and his son were walking back through the same area, when they were approached by Secret Service agent Virgil D. "Gus" Reichle Jr., who asked Howards if he had "assaulted" the vice president. Howards denied doing so, but was nonetheless placed in handcuffs and taken to the Eagle County Jail.

The lawsuit states that the Secret Service agent instructed that Howards should be issued a summons for harassment, but that on July 6 the Eagle County District Attorney's Office dismissed all charges against Howards.

The lawsuit filed today alleges that Howards was arrested in retaliation for having exercised his First Amendment right of free speech, and that his arrest violated his Fourth Amendment protection against unlawful seizure. ..

why the 9/11 Commission report did not mention the July 10, 2001 meeting: Rice Loyalist Headed 9/11 Commission Probes

Monday, 02 October 2006 | Rice Loyalist Headed 9/11 Commission Probes

Bob Woodward's State of Denial provides evidence of the politicization of the 9/11 Commission's investigative process, conclusions, and certain omissions from its report, as well as then national security advisor Condoleezza Rice's likely role in burying unflattering, damning evidence through the appointment of Bush/Rice loyalist Philip Zelikow (PHOTO RIGHT) as the Commissions' chief investigator and Zelikow's reward (perhaps) of a top senior-level position in the State Department, which Rice now heads. First, some background.

One of the burning questions in newspapers, cable TV news, and blogs is why the 9/11 Commission report did not mention the July 10, 2001 meeting called by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet and his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, with then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. Tenet and Black hoped to impress on Rice the compelling need to act immediately against bin Laden because there was "a huge volume of data" suggesting strongly that a major attack was imminent.

"But both men came away from the meeting feeling that Ms. Rice had not taken the warnings seriously," writes Woodward.

The July 10 meeting between Tenet, Black and Rice went unmentioned in the various reports of investigations into the Sept. 11 attacks, but it stood out in the minds of Tenet and Black as the starkest warning they had given the White House on bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Though the investigators had access to all the paperwork on the meeting, Black felt there were things the commissions wanted to know about and things they didn't want to know about. (From "Two Months Before 9/11, an Urgent Warning to Rice," the Washington Post's excerpt of Bob Woodward's new book, State of Denial)

Woodward says the 9/11 investigators "had access to all the paperwork on the meeting." But Black suggests that the commissioners didn't want to hear about some the history, so the July 10 meeting got left out of the 9/11 Commission report.

Why? Perhaps it's that the Commission's investigation was politicized, and its investigators beholden to Ms. Rice.

The executive director of the 9/11 Commission was Philip D. Zelikow, a longtime intimate of Ms. Rice. Since February 2005, Zelikow has served with now-Secretary of State Rice in a "Senior Official" position as "Counselor of the United States Department of State."

In March 2004, Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman interviewed former Senator Max Cleland of Georgia, who served on the 9-11 commission. Goodman began the segment with a background report:

A pair of public interest groups, the 9-11 Family Steering Committee and the 9-11 Citizens Watch have called for the resignation of the Director of the Independent 9-11 Commission, Phillip Zelikow. It turns out that in Richard Clarke's book, he reveals how Zelikow participated in Bush administration briefings on Al Qaeda prior to 9-11 and they're saying that this compromises him, since the mandate of the commission was to investigate the source of failures. It is now apparent why they said there has been so little effort to assign individual culpability. We can now see that trail would lead to the staff Director himself. ...

INCREDIBLE! FOX 'NEWS' LABELS [Republican child emails] FOLEY AS DEM DURING O'REILLY FACTOR!

10/3/2006 6:07PM INCREDIBLE! FOX 'NEWS' LABELS FOLEY AS DEM DURING O'REILLY FACTOR! Three Different Video Cutaways, 15 Seconds or More Each, Credit Disgraced REPUBLICAN Congressman as Being a Florida DEMOCRAT!

Just amazing. Fox's O'Reilly Factor just covered the Mark Foley (R-FL) issue in two different segments, one of them with a page who says he received communications from Foley, and another with Ann Coulter.

Never mind the content of either segment for now. Incredibly during a total of three different cutaways to video footage of Foley, he was labelled at the bottom of the screen eachtime as "(D-FL)" !

Three different times. In two different segements. Each cutaway about 15 seconds or more. Showing Foley as a DEMOCRAT. Amazing. ...