Graduation prayer, fighting over a lost cause
By CHARLES C. HAYNES - Thursday, May 16, 2013
On May 6, the school board in Lake City, Arkansas, voted to cancel sixth-grade graduation at two elementary schools. The action came soon after the district received a complaint letter from the Freedom From Religion Foundation objecting to prayers at previous graduations. Rather than drop the prayers, the district opted to drop the entire ceremony.
Watergate Era: 'A' Peak in Journalism
By GENE POLICINSKI - Thursday, May 9, 2013
Forty years ago this week, The Washington Post – and its self-described “young and hard-digging reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein” – took home a Pulitzer Prize for public service for coverage of the Watergate scandal.
When students protest abortion, can schools draw the line?
By CHARLES C. HAYNES - Thursday, May 2, 2013
Pro-life protesters in schools are a recent development, but students protesting for what they believe during the school day are a familiar part of our history.
Tragedies, technology reshaping free press, speech
By GENE POLICINSKI - Thursday, April 25, 2013
The response and investigation into the Boston bombings was Virginia Tech-plus: More information, more images, in more ways. What is noteworthy from the Boston bombing is how some of that information was used.
No flowers for gay wedding: Discrimination or religious freedom?
By CHARLES C. HAYNES - Thursday, April 18, 2013
A small but growing number of conflicts has broken out in states where bakers and photographers have balked at providing services to same-sex weddings.
How not to protect religious liberty
By GENE POLICINSKI - Thursday, April 11, 2013
Freedom of religion—as with the other four freedoms in the First Amendment—is not defined, supported or validated by majority vote. Just the opposite: First Amendment freedoms protect our individual rights from being overridden by the “majority” of citizens working through the hand of government.
Can public business be ‘private’ conversation?
By GENE POLICINSKI - Thursday, March 28, 2013
It would seem that there’s nothing really “private” about a conversation about public policies, or about spending public funds, or making hiring decisions for public employment. States are about evenly divided on whether the latter kind of conversations is covered by freedom-of-information or public records laws.
Why fifth-graders have rights, too
By CHARLES C. HAYNES - Thursday, March 21, 2013
A three-judge panel of the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of a fifth-grader who was barred by school officials from handing out invitations to a Christmas party at her church.
Mixed forecast for Sunshine Week
By GENE POLICINSKI - Thursday, March 14, 2013
Even though President Obama’s first act in office was to declare a new effort to make government more transparent, some things have not changed.
Battling over yoga in public schools
By CHARLES C. HAYNES - Thursday, March 7, 2013
Facing a lawsuit, school officials in Encinitas, Calif., insist that yoga classes are for physical fitness—and have nothing to do with religion or religious indoctrination.
Who owns the news?
By GENE POLICINSKI - Friday, March 1, 2013
Who owns the news? The glib answer is “no one.” But of course, the full answer is more complicated than that.
When do student prayers cross the First Amendment line?
By CHARLES C. HAYNES - Thursday, Feb. 21, 2013
Pity school administrators charged with figuring out if and when to draw the line on student prayers. Current controversies in two regions of the county illustrate how complicated this line-drawing has become:
Should media be disclosing locations of drone bases?
By GENE POLICINSKI - Thursday, Feb. 14, 2013
Some press critics and those opposed to lethal drone strikes have criticized the decisions not to publish the base information as soon as it was known and confirmed. But others have responded with a blunt axiom that has guided such decisions for many journalists through the years: Do you want to risk causing the death of even one American by printing what you know?
In Texas schools, failing grade for Bible courses
By CHARLES C. HAYNES - Thursday, Feb. 7, 2013
A study examines elective Bible courses offered in 57 Texas school districts and three charter schools and concludes that “evidence of sectarian bias, predominantly favoring perspectives of conservative Protestantism, is widespread.”
Civil rights movement rode assembly, petition to greater freedom
By GENE POLICINSKI - Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013
During Black History Month, the quiet kids on the corner of the constitutional block—the rights to assemble and petition—deserve at least as much attention as their better-known brethren.
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