None dare call them hypocrites.

The conservative politicians who oppose Gov. Eric Holcombs statewide mandate that Hoosiers wear masks while in public have the purest histories and the cleanest hands one could imagine. They wouldnt dream of endangering their fellow citizens lives and creating dissension in a time of crisis out of personal pique.

No, no, no.

These guys have unblemished reputations of selfless, unimpeachable devotion to serving both the state and its citizens, uncorrupted by baser considerations or loyalties. They are above such crass motivations.

Take Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill, for example.

Hill issued an opinion at the request of several conservative state lawmakers that Holcombs order exceeded his authority. The attorney general devoted at least 15 or 20 seconds of research and analysis to this carefully reasoned argument.

One would expect such diligence and creativity from a man who argued with vehemence that he should remain as attorney general even though his license to practice law had been suspended and Indiana law requires that one be an attorney in good standing to hold the office.

The demands that Hill resign his office came from every corner. The chorus calling for him to leave included most Hoosier Republican officeholders.

But Hill recognized that to honor his duty to the law he must ignore, even break, the law. To do otherwise would be to violate his oaths both as an officer of the court and as the states highest-ranking defender of the law.

So, Curtis Hill stayed fought tooth and nail, in fact, to hold onto his office in the face of unending criticism and censure from the Indiana Supreme Court because his devotion to the law knows no bounds. He knew it would be wrong to deprive Indiana of such a paragon of principled commitment to the rule of law.

No, none dare call them hypocrites.

Then theres Indiana Rep. Jim Lucas, R-Seymour.

Lucas recently found himself on the receiving end of a spanking from his own partys leadership. He lost several key committee assignments because he had posted a racist meme on Facebook a picture of a laughing Black child in what appeared to be a diaper chortling, We gon get free money.

After his trip to the woodshed, Lucas said he was going to leave social media and try to strike a more respectful tone.

That lasted about 90 seconds.

The day after the governor announced the mask mandate, Lucas offered the following calm and reasoned post on Facebook:

Starting Monday, the governor wants to lock me in a cage for 180 days and fine me $1,000 if I dont wear a mask that has no published standards for effectiveness.

What if I dont comply, Governor Eric Holcomb?

The words sat atop a photo of a gun and a pocket copy of the U.S. Constitution.

Many people who saw the post called it a threat to the governor and thus a violation of the law. Lucas denied that.

He always does.

Thats because Lucas is like the kid in the band who just knows that everyone but him is marching out of step.

His devotion to the Constitution is depthless. Thats why he likes to berate and shout down citizens who want to exercise their First Amendment right to petition government for redress of grievances. Thats also why he tried to waive gun owners Fourth Amendment rights a few years back so he could make it possible for them to bring their guns to school.

Hes just following the wisdom of the Vietnam War general who said, In order to save the village, it was necessary to destroy the village.

Lucas knows that, to save the Constitution, sometimes one must destroy the Constitution.

No, none dare call them hypocrites.

Eric Holcombs motivations arent nearly so high-minded and complicated. Hes requiring Hoosiers to wear masks because, selfishly, he wants to see fewer of us getting sick and dying.

What a cad.

What a tyrant.

Hill, Lucas and the others who oppose the governors mandate have one other thing in common.

They all say theyre pro-life.

No, none dare call them hypocrites.

John Krull is director of Franklin Colleges Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

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John Krull: The innocents at home, anti-mask tales of purity - Terre Haute Tribune Star

Amicus brief filed by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and 32 media organizations

Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit

Date Filed: July 23, 2020

Background: In 2018, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Knight First Amendment Institute separately submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to five federal agencies related to the Saudi Arabian governments execution of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The two organizations sought records about the duty to warn a person about a known threat, under Intelligence Community Directive 191, and specifically about the duty to warn Khashoggi prior to his murder.

After all of the agencies failed to respond to the FOIA requests, the Knight Institute filed a lawsuit, which CPJ joined. During litigation, each of the agencies except the State Department responded to the request by invoking the Glomar doctrine, claiming that acknowledging the existence or non-existence of documents responsive to the requests would compromise national security. Subsequently, the Knight Institute voluntarily dismissed its claims, leaving CPJ as the sole plaintiff. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia upheld the Glomar responses, granting summary judgment for the government.

CPJ then appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Our Position: The D.C. Circuit should reverse the district courts decision that the intelligence agencies adequately justified their Glomar responses to the FOIA requests.

Quote: Given the unbridled growth of Glomar responses across federal agencies, the pernicious way in which overclassification of documents interacts with the Glomar doctrine, and the press freedoms implicated by the records at issue, district courts should be required to apply a heightened standard of proof in this case and others like it would bring the doctrine back in line with the language and purpose of the [Freedom of Information] Act.

Related: In 2019, a D.C. district court ruled that the FBI could not invoke the Glomar doctrine in response to a FOIA request about the agencys impersonation of documentary filmmakers. The Reporters Committee filed suit after the agency invoked the doctrine to avoid searching for records related to agents impersonation of a documentary film crew to investigate Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and his followers after a 2014 armed standoff between Bundy and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

In 2016, a New York appeals court allowed the New York City Police Department to invoke the Glomar doctrine in response to a FOIA request about the departments surveillance of two Muslim men. The Reporters Committee and 20 media organizations submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, arguing that the doctrine cannot be invoked by a state.

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RCFP supports fight for records related to Jamal Khashoggi killing - Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

August 26 is the 100th anniversary of women in the United States achieving the right to vote in federal elections.

That is the date the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, prohibiting denial of the right to vote on the basis of sex, and August 26 is celebrated yearly as Womens Equality Day. Before the 19th Amendment, women could vote only in some state elections, including New York beginning in 1918.

August 1920 is often described as when women were given the vote. Characterizing this as a gift could not be farther from the truth. Women fought for more than 70 years to gain this fundamental right. They gave speeches, signed petitions, organized, lobbied, marched in parades with tens of thousands of male and female supporters, picketed the White House, and went to jail.

Yes, at least 168 women were jailed in 1917-19 because they silently stood outside President Woodrow Wilsons White House holding banners. Some simply said: Mr. President, How Long Must Women Wait for Liberty? Others were more political. No one had picketed the White House before the women suffragists did so; now it is common to express First Amendment rights there.

The little I learned about President Wilson in my school years gave me the impression that he was an intellectual who had been Princetons president, an isolationist who did not want to bring the United States into World War I, and an idealist who founded the unsuccessful League of Nations after that war. More recently, I have learned that he forced black employees out of the federal civil service, and refused for years to support passage of a constitutional amendment expanding the right to vote to women. Instead, he sought to silence and remove the picketers who sought his endorsement.

The first Womans Rights Convention was in 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York. Among other declarations, it called for women to have the right to vote. At the time, this seemed extremely far-fetched to some. For years thereafter, many efforts were made to have the law recognize women as voters.

In the 1872 presidential election, Susan B. Anthony and 14 other women actually voted in Rochester, New York, being permitted to do so by the local officials. The women who voted and the election inspectors who allowed it were all arrested on federal warrants. They were prosecuted, tried and convicted. A $100 fine was imposed on the illegal voters, which they refused to pay. Three election inspectors were jailed, until President Ulysses S. Grant pardoned them after a month.

In 1875, the United States Supreme Court ruled in a Missouri case that women had no federal right to vote under the U.S. Constitution, even when their state granted it. As western territories became states, several included women as voters. The first was Wyoming in 1869, then Utah 1870, Colorado 1893, and Idaho 1896.

Along with efforts to have states extend the right to vote, a U.S. Constitutional Amendment was introduced. By 1885, the Grange, a farmers organization, supported womens suffrage; in 1886, the Womens Christian Temperance Union sent a petition to Congress with 200,000 signatures. Even so, Congress voted against such an amendment in 1887. Gradually, more and more states permitted women to vote, but there was still opposition. In 1915, suffrage bills were defeated in Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, and the US Congress again voted against the woman suffrage amendment.

Both men and women made efforts to change this on multiple fronts. Finally, in 1917, New York voters authorized women to vote. The White House picket lines started in January 1917, with the goal of convincing President Wilson to support the 19th Amendment. It took him two more years, but he finally did so. The presidential election of 1920 was the first one that women could vote in.

Although many assumed that women who could vote could also serve on juries, that did not necessarily follow. Women were not regularly allowed on juries nationwide until 1968. Some states still had optional jury service for women, instead of it being automatic, as it was with men, until the Supreme Court ruled against that practice in 1979.

______________

Resource

The Fight for Womens Suffrage . . . and What They Never Told Us! http://youtu.be/rmAWkijpdr4 a slideshow of old photographs and articles prepared by Penelope Clute

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The Law and You: Women's right to vote hard fought for - Plattsburgh Press Republican

In a decision of statewide importance during a time of heightened police scrutiny, a Leon County Circuit judge ruled Friday that the unnamed Tallahassee police officer who shot and killed Tony McDade and another unnamed officer involved in a separate deadly force case are not shielded by Marsys Law, and therefore can be named publicly.

Judge Charles Dodson wrote in the order that law enforcement officers acting in their official capacity are not protected by Marsys Law, a constitutional amendment passed by 61.61 percent of Florida voters in 2018.

Among other things, the amendment created a bill of rights for crime victims that give them the right to prevent disclosure of information that could be harmful to them and their families.

Dodsons ruling clarified that the law does not apply in McDades killing, a high-profile use-of-force case that became a flash point in the nationwide weeks of protest against brutality following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Law enforcement officers have a unique public duty to enforce the laws of our State, he wrote in a brief five-page order. The public has a vital right to evaluate the conduct of our law enforcement officers, who are empowered to arrest people and use deadly force.

The Miami Herald Media Company was an intervening party in the case.

The ruling marks a major moment for Marsys Law, as it could set the first legal precedent on the laws boundaries and its application in police use-of-force cases.

The Florida Police Benevolent Association, which sued the city last month to block it from releasing the officers names, filed notice of its intent to appeal Friday.

Attorneys for the police union argued that the officers were protected by Marsys Law because they were victims of aggravated assault.

McDade, a 38-year-old Black transgender man, was killed in late May after stabbing a next-door neighbor to death and fleeing to a nearby apartment building, according to the Tallahassee Democrat. Police officials have said one of the two responding officers used deadly force after McDade pointed a gun at him.

In the other deadly force case, the judges order said, a suspect wielding a knife was shot and killed by police.

A spokeswoman for Marsys Law for Florida declined to comment specifically on the ruling but wrote in a statement that police officers who have become victims of crime deserve the same constitutional rights as everyone else. But police officers who have committed crimes cannot hide behind Marsys Law.

Marsys Law grants constitutional rights to all victims of crime, in the same way that all persons accused of a crime in Florida have constitutional rights, spokeswoman Jennifer Fennell wrote. Victim status in Florida is granted to all victims of crime, without discrimination.

The ruling is considered a win for First Amendment advocates.

Mark Caramanica, an attorney for news outlets including the Miami Herald, called the ruling a win for public oversight and police accountability.

The court correctly found that Marsys Law is not a vehicle to hide police action from the public, he wrote in a statement.

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Judge: Names of Tallahassee officers who used deadly force not shielded by Marsys Law - Tampa Bay Times

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Pro-Trump women's group seeks to paint message on NYC streets, citing Black Lives Matter murals - TribLIVE

Published: 7/24/2020 4:47:58 PM

Jay Fleitmans Securing liberty for all (July 7) is plagued by bias and important omissions. If we are to distill his message to its essence, the gist of his column seems to be be proud of our country and look on the bright side.

This strikes me as particularly tone-deaf during our pandemic, economic recession, police violence and systemic racism, and climate emergency. Yes, there is a nod to the decimation of the indigenous native population and slavery, which he refers to as great blots in American history but no recognition that social injustice and racism is not just a relic of the past, but institutionalized into the fabric of our current society.

In reviewing our tumultuous past, he highlights anarchist bombings, labor unrest and communist subversion as notable threats to our democracy, but neglects to mention that the McCarthy era was a much greater threat to our democracy than any communist subversion.

For a person who claims to be a defender of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights including the First Amendment he does not explicitly reject Trump repeatedly attacking a free press and labeling the news media as the enemy of the people.

As a student of history, is he not aware that Hitler and Stalin used the same terms to muzzle dissenting opinions and criminalize criticism of their regimes? While he presumably celebrates the right to peaceably assemble, he portrays protesters as rioters and looters, even though the vast majority were peaceful when exercising their First Amendment rights.

I, for one, am quite relieved that Fleitman is not teaching U.S. history to our students in our public schools as he would present a sanitized version of our history. I believe that the greatest threat to our democracy and our national security is President Trump. In accepting and encouraging help form foreign powers to help him steal the election, Trump showed and continues to show disdain for our Constitution and our electoral process.

Those who do not stand up to would-be dictators who threaten our democracy are complicit in undermining democratic values and the rule of law and will be judged harshly by history.

David Arbeitman

Florence

Excerpt from:

David Arbeitman: Columnist provides sanitized version of history - GazetteNET

Stanley Martin, a lead organizer with Free the People Roc, an activist group thats recently been at the center of Rochesters Black Lives Matter movement, is suing Mayor Lovely Warren and the city of Rochester over the curfew enacted by the mayor on July 15. Shes joined in the suit by the Rochester chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court Friday, Martin and the Lawyers Guild ask the court to strike down the curfew, arguing that it violates the First Amendment right to free speech and the right to peaceably assemble. Additionally, the plaintiffs argue that because Warren implemented the order for the purpose of targeting people in Black and brown neighborhoods, it also violates the Equal Protection clause, reads the filing.

Warren ordered the curfew after a spate of violent incidents in the city. As they announced the curfew, city officials said that 20 people had been shot or stabbed over a two-week period. Warren noted that large parties preceded many of the incidents.

The mayor renewed the curfew Tuesday and has said shell continue to renew it every five days until the violence ceases.

The curfew prohibits gatherings of five or more people in public places -- including sidewalks and parks -- and 10 or more people gathered in private between the hours of 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. Anyone accused of violating the curfew can be charged with a misdemeanor.

We remain confident that the mayors order regarding public gatherings after 11 p.m. will withstand legal scrutiny, city spokesperson Justin Roj said Friday.

Free the People Roc, which has held weekly Black Lives Matter rallies in Rochester since May 30, held a protest against the curfew the day it was announced. It started at 11 p.m. in Martin Luther King Jr. Park and lasted until roughly 2 a.m., when police arrested 30 people and charged them with violating the curfew. According to the complaint, among those arrested were members of Free the People Roc and the Lawyers Guild, who were acting as legal observers.

Martin and the Lawyers Guild claim that those arrests violated their free speech rights. Theyre asking the court to order the city to refrain from interfering or otherwise policing lawful and peaceful assemblies and protests in the city of Rochester, to cease enforcement of the curfew, and for officers to refrain from covering their names and badge numbers when they are on duty, as well as to provide the name and badge number upon request.

The lawsuit alleges that when Katherine Adamides, a legal observer with the Lawyers Guild, tried to write down the names of 19 police officers lined up at the scene of the protest, 14 of them covered their names with tape, their hands, or their arms. Three of the officers, it claims, covered their badge numbers.

Jeremy Moule is CITY's news editor. He can be reached atjmoule@rochester-citynews.com.

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Warren, city of Rochester sued over curfew - WXXI News

[co-author: Elyse Echtman]

In its July 6 decision, the Supreme Court seemed to endorse the need for a broad ban on robocalls. The Court referred back to the context in which the TCPA was enacted in 1991, characterizing it as a time when more than 300,000 solicitors called more than 18 million Americans every day.[2] According to the Court, [t]he Act responded to a torrent of vociferous consumer complaints about intrusive robocalls.[3] The Courts July 6 decision shifts the universe of acceptable practices back to a pre-2015 framework, prior to the enactment of the government-debt-collection exception.

Later in the same week, on July 9, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in another case, taking issue with the TCPAs robocall provision, Facebook, Inc v. Duguid. In that case, the Supreme Court will address what qualifies as an automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS) an issue that has been brewing in the courts with materially different interpretations across several circuits.[4] The Facebook decision should have significant implications on the scope of the robocall restrictions.

Passed in 1991, 47 U.S.C. 227(b)(1)(A)(iii) of the TCPA prohibits a caller from using an ATDS to call a cell phone and prohibits calls using an artificial or prerecorded voice, unless the caller has obtained prior express consent. The TCPA defines an ATDS as equipment which has the capacity to store or produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator; and to dial such numbers.[5] This definition, and the FCCs expansive interpretation of it, has been the subject of intense litigation. The proper scope of the ATDS definition is a high-stakes question. This TCPA provision imposes strict liability with statutory damages of $500 per violationtrebled to $1,500 per violation if the violation is deemed willful or knowing.[6] A company found to have used a telephone system that qualifies as an ATDS to call cell phones without prior consent can find itself subject to millions (or even billions) of dollars in damages.

In 2015, the FCC issued a Declaratory Ruling setting forth its interpretation of the ATDS definition. According to the FCC, an ATDS includes dialing equipment [that] has the capacity to store or produce, and dial random or sequential numbers [without human intervention] even if it is not presently used for that purpose, including when the caller is calling a set list of consumers.[7] The Declaratory Ruling explicitly stated that the capacity of an autodialer is not limited to its current configuration but also includes its potential functionalities.[8] This interpretation drastically broadened the scope of equipment implicated by the Act to potentially include almost all technology that is capable of being upgraded with software to permit automated dialing.

In 2018, the D.C. Circuit in ACA International v. Federal Communications Commission struck down the FCCs 2015 interpretation of an ATDS, holding that it offered no meaningful guidance to affected parties on whether their equipment was covered by the TCPA restrictions.[9] The Court noted that the FCCs interpretation was so expansive that it could lead to unreasonable outcomes such as conventional smartphones being considered covered equipment.[10] The opinion was most critical of the potential future capacity aspect of the FCCs interpretation, explaining that [i]t cannot be the case that every uninvited communication from a smartphone infringes federal law, and that nearly every American is a TCPA-violator-in-waiting, if not a violator-in-fact.[11] With the D.C. Circuits invalidation of the FCCs 2015 interpretation, the courts have been left to interpret the provision based on the plain language of the statute.

Courts have disagreed on the critical issue of the functions a device must have the capacity to perform in order to qualify as an ATDS. In its 2018 decision in Marks v. Crunch, the Ninth Circuit succinctly stated that [t]he question is whether, in order to be an ATDS, a device must dial numbers generated by a random or sequential number generator or if a device can be an ATDS if it merely dials numbers from a stored list. [12] The Ninth Circuit answered that question with an expansive interpretation, holding that the statutory definition of ATDS includes a device that stores telephone numbers to be called, whether or not those numbers have been generated by a random or sequential number generator.[13] The Ninth Circuits interpretation potentially means that any telephone system with the capacity to automatically dial a stored list of telephone numbers without human intervention qualifies as an ATDS. The Second Circuit recently adopted an interpretation similar to that of the Ninth Circuit in Marks.[14]

The Third, Seventh and Eleventh Circuits adopted starkly different interpretations of the ATDS definition based on a plain reading of the statutory language. In Gadelhak v. AT&T, for example, the Seventh Circuit held that the capacity to generate random or sequential numbers is necessary to the statutory definition, expressly rejecting the Ninth Circuits reading of the statute in Marks.[15] The Third and Eleventh Circuits adopted a similar approach in Dominguez v. Yahoo and Glasser v. Hilton, respectively.[16]

The Supreme Courts decision in Facebook v. Duguid will likely once and for all resolve this circuit split and provide litigants with a uniform interpretation of what constitutes an ATDS under the Act. The adoption of a narrow interpretation will likely result in a dramatic decrease in TCPA litigation where fewer dialing systems would qualify as an ATDSmost modern telephone systems do not generate random or sequential telephone numbers for dialing. However, a broad interpretation may result in an influx of litigation, particularly in circuits such as the Third, Seventh and Eleventh, where recent rulings had limited such cases and led serial litigators to file suit elsewhere.

[1] Barr v. Am. Assn of Political Consultants, Inc., No. 19-631, 2020 WL 3633780 (U.S. July 6, 2020).

[2] Id. at *3.

[3] Id.

[4] The Supreme Court granted certiorari on question 2 of the petitioners brief, which reads: Whether the definition of ATDS in the TCPA encompasses any device that can store and automatically dial telephone numbers, even if the device does not us[e] a random or sequential number generator. Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, no. 19-511.

[5] 47 U.S.C. 227(a)(1)(A)-(B).

[6] 47 U.S.C. 227(3).

[7] In the Matter of Rules & Regulations Implementing the Tel. Consumer Prot. Act of 1991, 30 F.C.C. Rcd. 7961 (2015).

[8] Id.

[9] ACA Intl v. Fed. Commcns Commn, 885 F.3d 687, 701 (D.C. Cir. 2018).

[10] Id. at 692.

[11] Id. at 698.

[12] Marks v. Crunch San Diego, LLC, 904 F.3d 1041, 1050 (9th Cir. 2018), cert. dismissed, 139 S. Ct. 1289, 203 L. Ed. 2d 300 (2019).

[13] Id. at 1043.

[14] See Duran v. La Boom Disco, Inc., 955 F.3d 279, 280 (2d Cir. 2020).

[15] Gadelhak v. AT&T Servs., Inc., 950 F.3d 458,469 (7th Cir. 2020).

[16] Dominguez on Behalf of Himself v. Yahoo, Inc., 894 F.3d 116, 117 (3d Cir. 2018); Glasser v. Hilton Grand Vacations Co., LLC, 948 F.3d 1301, 1304 (11th Cir. 2020).

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The Supreme Court Is Positioning to Take On TCPA - JD Supra

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)In an event that he described as historic, Donald J. Trump announced that he will throw out the First Amendment at Yankee Stadium next month.

Its going to be an amazing and fantastic thing Ill be doing, Trump said. Ive asked a lot of history experts, and they all say that no President has thrown out an amendment before.

Obama was President for eight years and never threw out an amendment, he said. What a loser.

Trump said that he had considered throwing out the First Amendment many, many times before but had ultimately decided to preserve freedom of the press for his friends at Fox News.

But, thanks to that beauty Chris Wallace, now I know that Fox is just as nasty and fake as the rest, he said. The only real journalist left is that nice lady at OAN.

When asked how he is preparing for his Yankee Stadium appearance, Trump said that he is consulting with other world leaders who are experienced in throwing out laws.

I had a terrific conversation with Vladimir Putin, Trump said. They dont have a First Amendment in Russia, but he said that, if they did, he would definitely throw it out. So that made me feel good.

Trump grew misty-eyed as he contemplated his upcoming visit to Yankee Stadium.

I cant believe Ill be throwing out the First Amendment, he said. Every little boy dreams of this.

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Trump to Throw Out First Amendment at Yankee Stadium - The New Yorker

I n recent weeks, we have received letters addressing the removal of the Christopher Columbus statue, wearing masks and the Black Lives Matter movement. Some of that reader correspondence has expressed what could be perceived as unpopular views. By unpopular, we mean opinions that are not widely held and may be considered prejudiced or misinformed.

As publisher of Newport This Week, I view the Letters to the Editor page as a neutral place for people to express their opinions on local issues. Although it is not expressly stated in our letters policy statement, letters are opinion of the writers and do not necessarily reflect those of the paper. I feel an obligation to run all letters. Our policy states, We will print letters sent to us that adhere to guidelines for taste, accuracy, fairness and public interest. With this broad, sweeping statement, we hope our intentions are clear.

And of course its important to recognize that even ugly speech that we may despise is broadly protected under the First Amendment, which states that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

While some would say that I am part of the Fourth Estate, I mostly consider myself one person who is part of the community, working hard to help everyone stay informed of what is happening locally. In my opinion, the Letters to the Editor page is a place for an exchange of thoughts.

Letters allow readers to weigh in on coverage or sound off on issues. They also give publications a way to print opinions that differ from the rest of the newspapers content. More than one person has observed that a good way to respond to offensive ideas or speech is through more speech. In that vein, we invite you to exercise your own freedom of speech by contributing to our letters pages.

Noise and comments posted to our Facebook page about letters we run are similar to the social media experience of the nations most well-regarded newspapers. According to a recent Washington Post article, Debates have been raging this summer about how forums devoted to an exchange of ideas should deal with incendiary topics and toxic words. But its an issue that local newspapers have been grappling with for decades.

Between the coronavirus pandemic and protests sparked by the deaths of unarmed Black people at the hands of police, letters across the nation have been fiery lately, triggering controversy for several newspapers. Nonetheless, we will continue to allow our readers to express opinions that meet our guidelines, even if, in some cases, they are not widely held views and/or could be met with disdain.

Free LOCAL News matters. Please consider making a monetary contribution to help Newport This Week stay viable in the tough times ahead created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Any amount helps!

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A Newspaper's Dilemma on the First Amendment Debate - Newport This Week