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Call it the Charles Schumer Anti-First-Amendment Act of 2014. Its the bill our senior senator promises to bring to the floor by the years end. Schumer wants to put a dagger through the heart of the Bill of Rights.

He embraced this brainstorm at a Senate Rules Committee hearing last week. He said hed work to pass a constitutional amendment to allow Congress and the states to restrict the peoples freedom to finance elections.

Whats so fascinating about this is that it puts a senator from New York in the league of the cranks. It reminds me of the billboards Impeach Earl Warren, put up by those who couldnt abide the Supreme Courts decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The high court decisions Schumer doesnt like are the recent ones known as McCutcheon and Citizens United.

In McCutcheon, the justices threw out a law that capped the total amount of money a person could donate to various campaigns. In Citizens United, the court let a not-for-profit group distribute a movie criticizing Hillary Clinton, even though she was running for president. In effect, the ruling let labor unions, not-for-profit groups and corporations participate in the public debate at election time.

The two rulings have produced among Democrats a petulance not seen in their party in years. One would have to go back to the 1960s, when another Democrat, Alabama Gov. George Wallace, vowed to stand in the schoolhouse door to block the Supreme Courts integration decisions.

The comparison is not that Schumer is a racist (hes not). Its that the resistance to the court is similar. Particularly since Citizens United, which was handed down in 2010, didnt hamper the Democrats ability to re-elect President Obama by a wide margin.

Yet Democrats still want to gut the First Amendment. Its the one that guarantees freedom of religion, speech and the press, as well as the right to petition the government and peaceably assemble. Citizens United strengthened every one of those freedoms.

The measure Schumer embraced last week was hatched by another unhappy Democrat, Sen. Thomas Udall of New Mexico. It would let Congress block people from deciding how much of their money to contribute to political advocacy during campaign season.

Its not just the federal government the Schumer amendment would unleash against people. Its also state governments, a point that was made by Udall. The amendment being planned would allow the regulation of not just partisan spending but even independent spending.

Schumer is trying to palm off the idea that his scheme wouldnt limit freedom of the press. No, it instead would unleash Congress and state governments to go directly after voters and other citizens. Its hard to recall a more cynical measure having been laid before Congress.

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Chucking the First Amendment: Schumers cranky scheme

A coalition of more than a dozen news outlets is telling the Obama administration that its ban on the commercial use of dronesand "drone journalism" in generalgoes against the First Amendment.

"This overly broad policy, implemented through a patchwork of regulatory and policy statements and an ad hoc cease-and-desist enforcement process, has an impermissible chillingeffect on the First Amendment newsgathering rights of journalists," the media told the National Transportation Safety Board.

The filing was submitted in a Federal Aviation Administration appeal to a National Transportation Safety Board administrative judge's ruling that said the FAA illegally adopted the ban on the commercial use of small drones, and therefore the 2007 regulations are unenforceable.

Tuesday's filing comes four days after the National Park Service announced a rule barring all drone flights from Yosemite, a regulation that experts said was legally questionable.

Regulators' attacks on the commercial use of drones have included everything from drone journalism to a nonprofit search-and-rescue outfit using drones.

The media groups signing on to the filing include Advance Publications (the owner of Cond Nast, Ars Technica's parent company), The Associated Press, Cox Media Group, Gannett, Gray Television, Hearst, McClatchy, the National Press Photographers Association, the National Press Club, The New York Times, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Radio-Television Digital News Association, Scripps Media, Sinclair Broadcast Group, the Tribune Company, and The Washington Post.

In response, the FAA said the administrative law judge's earlier decision puts in jeopardy "the safe operation of the national airspace system and the safety of people and property on the ground."

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News outlets say US drone ban breaches First Amendment

first amendment rights
This video is about first amendment rights.

By: Dawn Lynn

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first amendment rights - Video

First Amendment Monument Music Video by Daniel Brouse
This song was written on the 1st Amendment Monument, Independence Mall, Philadelphia, PA. For free MP3 downloads, lyrics and chords visit http://idea.membran...

By: Daniel Brouse

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First Amendment Monument Music Video by Daniel Brouse - Video

A Constitutional loophole allows the state, influenced by religious groups and business interests, to go on a censorship spree

In 1988, India became the first country to ban The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, following pressure from leaders of the Muslim community. Today, India continues its banning spree, reflecting the deep and growing unease with the freedom to express, an unease which goes back to the time when the Constitution was 17 months old. Since then, twenty-five books have been officially banned, including Joseph Lellywelds Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India, James Laines Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India, and Aubrey Menens The Ramayana.

One might have thought that those who fought hard for Indias freedom would have also fought for the right to free speech in the framing of the Constitution. Yet, unlike Americas First Amendment, which imposed restrictions on the state from curbing free speech, such restrictions were not put in place in the First Amendment to the Constitution of India.

Indias First Amendment, vigorously contested in Parliament by both the Left and Right parties, allowed the state to make laws in the interests of security, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency or morality or in relation to contempt of court, and defamation or incitement to an offence.

Since the 1950s, there has been a shift in who calls for bans. Unlike the state which exercised its right to ban books publishers, religious groups, caste groups, and corporates have claimed offence and sought bans on not only books, but also films, plays, and music. In many ways, the First Amendment, has also legitimised the peoples right to take offence and seek bans.

Over the past three months, five books have disappeared from Indian bookstores books on corporates, religion, and caste.

The pulping of all copies of The Hindus: An Alternative History by Wendy Doniger, put the focus back on who seeks a ban. Reliance, the largest business house in India, brought a legal suit against the authors of Gas Wars: Crony Capitalism and the Ambanis, and has asked them to withdraw the book or face criminal and civil charges for defamation.

In 1991, as India embarked on economic reforms, two things were happening almost simultaneously.

As William Mazarella says in Censorium: Many explained the censorship struggles of this period as symptoms of a clash between two formations: on one side, the process of globalisation and economic liberalisation that brought a deluge of mass communication and, on the other side, the rise to mainstream power of an aggressively conservative form of Hindu nationalism the intensification of censorship was one outcome.

However, Hindu nationalism was just one aspect of this intolerance. A whole new cast of characters has appeared on the scene, taking offence to everything. The state has played a willing accomplice in the ban game, and courts decisions have often not helped.

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Indias unease with free speech