Ammendment I in the news

Bill of Rights, Ammendment I:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free excercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peacebly top assemble, and to petition the government for s redress or grivence.

ENTRY 1
Video Games and Free Speech
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/opinion/06thu3.html?scp=2&sq=freedom%20of%20speech&st=cse

California went too far in 2005 when it made it illegal to sell violent video games to minors. Retailers challenged the law, and a federal appeals court rightly ruled that it violates the First Amendment. Last week, the Supreme Court said that it would review that decision. We hope it agrees that the law is unconstitutional.

California’s law imposes fines of up to $1,000 on retailers that sell violent video games to anyone under 18. To qualify, a game must, as a whole, lack serious literary artistic, political or scientific value for minors.

But video games are a form of free expression. Many have elaborate plots and characters, often drawn from fiction or history. The California law is a content-based restriction, something that is presumed invalid under the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has made it clear that minors have First Amendment rights.

California has tried to lower the constitutional standard for upholding the law by comparing it to “variable obscenity,” a First Amendment principle that allows banning the sale of some sexually explicit materials to minors that cannot be banned for adults. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, like other federal courts, rightly refused to extend that doctrine to violent games.

Under traditional First Amendment analysis, content-based speech restrictions can survive only if they are narrowly tailored to promote a compelling government interest. California says its interest is in preventing psychological or neurological damage to young people. The appeals court concluded that the evidence connecting violent video games to this sort of damage is too weak to make restricting the games a compelling government interest.

Opinion: The article show how the rights for video games that have a violence basis are protected under the first ammendment. california wants to have video games that have violence and sexual content to be banned from being sold to minors. the case was in the favor of the video games because video games are a form of free speech and to have the law passed would become an infringement on the first ammendment on not only the game makers but the minors as well. To me video games shoulb be held under the first amendment cause they are a source of free expression and should be protected at all times.

ENTRY 2
U.C. Berkeley Drops Charges Against Some Studentshttp://bayarea.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/u-c-berkeley-drops-charges-against-some-students/?scp=1&sq=strikers%20arrested&st=cse

After months of pursuing charges against students involved in the large-scale campus demonstrations last fall, the University of California, Berkeley has dropped charges against dozens of them. At the same time, it is undertaking an extensive review of its procedure for investigating and charging students.


Rachel Gross

Hunger strikers at U.C. Berkeley protesting campus judicial process More than 30 students who were arrested on Dec. 11 will no longer face charges as a result of the “genuine confusion” regarding dispersal orders during the demonstrations, according to a campus-wide e-mail message sent by Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Harry Le Grande on Monday.

The statement also said that the university’s “Code of Student Conduct” has been modified to require that students receive tailored letters reflecting their specific charges and violations. E-mails sent between students and the Office of Student Conduct will also no longer be shared with campus police, so as to protect students’ confidentiality.


These are the first revisions to the code since 2003, according to Vice Chancellor Le Grande.

On a campus known for upholding students’ right to protest, the administration has faced pressure from the campus community and outside sources who charge that it violated students’ rights and the demands of due process over the past few months.

Besides inciting even more student protests, the outrage over the application of the judicial code prompted 150 faculty members and staff last week to sign a petition in protest last week. The Berkeley City Council is also supporting an investigation into the “punitive interpretation” of the code.

The administration has also received a letter from the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California last month asking U.C. Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau to drop charges against students, The Daily Californian reported.

Opinion: This shows a article on a group of students who were arrested for petitioning their schools code of counduct at berkley. the childresn were arrested on dec 11, the charges were brought about from the school saying that the pettion was disturbing the peace. in the case the charges against the students were dropped due to the the first ammendment giving them the right as ammerican citizens to petition and speak out. to arrest and throw these kids in jail is a infringement upon the rights they have under the first amendment.

ENTRY 3
Religious Freedom vs. Sanitation Rules
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/us/14amish.html?_r=1

For the last two and a half years, Mr. Crislip, a planning supervisor for the state’s Environmental Protection Department, and local sewage authorities have had more than 30 meetings in a futile effort to persuade members of the sect here in Cambria County, about 80 miles east of Pittsburgh, to upgrade outhouses next to a schoolhouse so they comply with state sanitation codes.

The schoolhouse is on land belonging to Andy Swartzentruber, 53, one of five elders who guide the 20-family Amish community spread out on farms near Nicktown.

Mr. Swartzentruber was scheduled to be released from county prison on Sunday after serving 90 days for failing to correct the violations at the outhouses. Other members of the Amish community could also end up behind bars if the impasse is not resolved.

The fight has grown to include outhouses on the properties of two other sect members, Mr. Swartzentruber’s son Joely and John Miller, the son of another elder, Andy Miller, 58.

For Andy Miller, the issue is as clear as the state laws are to Mr. Crislip. “They’re enforcing stuff that’s against our religion,” Mr. Miller said.

Dressing in plain, dark clothing — with the men in straw hats, the women in bonnets — and shunning modern conveniences like cars, telephones and running water in their homes, the Swartzentruber Amish appear in many ways to resemble the larger, better known Old Order Amish. The Swartzentruber Amish split from the Old Order, fearing that it was becoming too modern. They split in 1913 in Holmes County, Ohio, said Donald B. Kraybill, a professor at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania and an expert on Amish culture.

Opinion:this article shows how the first amendment keeps law enforcement from making a citizen do as they want. a man has a out house near a school. and since he does not clean it the school does not meet the sanitation requirements for the area. the people and law enforcement want the man to conform but to conform would be against his religion. under the first amendment the people cannot pursue or do anything because of his freedom to express his beliefs