Editorials

Editor’s note: This column was written to educate during Public Notice Week in Tennessee. Many government agencies want to keep from having to publish important public notices in newspapers. The following makes the case of what citizens stand to lose if that were to happen.
 

By JIM ZACHARY
Tennessee Transparancy Project
Any battle to remove required government public notices from newspapers is an assault on government transparency.

Compromising government transparency is a full-out assault on the citizens of Tennessee.

By DAVID L. HUDSON Jr.
First Amendment Center
Fifty years ago — on Jan. 14, 1963 — the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a Virginia law that was being used to quash the work of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The court ruled in NAACP v. Button that the First Amendment protected the group’s efforts to solicit plaintiffs to challenge segregation policies.

The state of Virginia had passed a law expanding the definition of the improper solicitation of legal or professional business.

By GENE POLICINSKI
First Amendment Center
As things now stand, Americans will not be able to see TV coverage of upcoming 9/11-related trials from Guantanamo Bay.

The situation is regrettable — but easily remedied.

A military judge this week said he had no authority to override an earlier decision by the Department of Defense that denied requests by the defense attorneys for the accused and by and news-related groups to televise the trials.

By GENE POLICINSKI
First Amendment Center
Assembly and petition are the “quiet freedoms” among the five rights set out in the First Amendment.
Speech, press and religion are more often – or at least, more obviously – in the headlines. But during Black History Month, in February, the quiet kids on this corner of the constitutional block deserve at least as much attention as their better-known brethren.