Archive for the 'first amendment' Category

This Week’s Cartoon: “The Free speech Dimension”

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011 by Jen Sorensen

My cartoonist colleague Susie Cagle was arrested while reporting on #OccupyOakland last week. I can assure you, she’s not the sort of person to give cops a hard time. She was standing in a doorway with a bunch of observers from the National Lawyers Guild, trying to avoid a skirmish, when the police came up and arrested all of them. So I got to thinking… if protesters aren’t allowed to peacefully assemble on private property, and they risk arrest or physical injury from overzealous police on public property, where are they supposed to go, exactly? An entirely separate plane of existence is all they seem to be left with.

The 1% have lobbyists, superPACs, and Fox News, of course, so they don’t have to bother with the messiness of occupying meatspace to make their case.

Posted in activism, first amendment, Free Speech, Occupy Wall Street, OWS, protest, Slowpoke, Weekly Cartoon | Comment

A Political Cartoonist’s Worst Nightmare

Thursday, August 25th, 2011 by Jen Sorensen

The political cartooning community was shaken today by news of Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat’s beating by pro-Assad thugs. They broke his hands to stop him from drawing cartoons critical of the President.

This horrifying incident reminds me of an exchange I had earlier this summer when meeting with political cartoonists from the Middle East and North Africa through a State Department program. Naturally, a prominent topic of discussion was the freedom of speech we American cartoonists enjoy. I was on crutches thanks to a skiing accident (I’m mobile now, thank you), and I made a dumb joke, obviously tongue-in-cheek, about how the Obama administration didn’t like one of the cartoons I drew. “Ah, so you are like an Arab cartoonist!” one of the visitors joked back. The whole room laughed, maybe a little too hard. Gotta admire the bravery of the Ali Ferzats of the world.

Posted in cartooning, first amendment, middle east, Political Grumblings, Slowpoke | Comment

Violent Video Games

Friday, July 1st, 2011 by Ted Rall

Violent Video Games

The US Supreme Court has ruled that children can buy violent video games since they are protected by the First Amendment.


Posted in afghanistan, cartoons, Drone Planes, first amendment, Militarism, minds, Missiles, pakistan, Predator, robotics, Soldiers, supreme court, Video Games, Violence, war on terror | Comment

This Week’s Cartoon: “Zero-Sum Speech”

Thursday, April 21st, 2011 by Jen Sorensen

I’m out of town at the moment, so I will have to let this passage from the NYT article summarize the relevant issue for me:

To William Maurer, the lawyer opposing the Arizona mechanism, whenever “a privately financed candidate speaks above a certain amount, the government creates real penalties for them to have engaged in unfettered political expression.” That “speaks” was not a slip, but a reinforcement of the money-equals-speech notion.

The fundamental problem, he said, is “the government turning my speech into the vehicle by which my entire political message is undercut,” because the public funds triggered are a penalty that reduces the impact of the privately financed candidate’s spending and speech. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. made clear in the argument that he, too, sees triggered matching public funds as a limit on the privately financed candidate’s speech.

I am simply incapable of wrapping my mind around this interpretation of the First Amendment. To see the world this way, you literally have to have your brain screwed in backwards.

Posted in campaign finance, first amendment, Free Speech, Slowpoke, supreme court, Weekly Cartoon | Comment