On Wednesday, July 23, 2008, in Turner v. City Council of Fredericksburg, (4th Cir., July 23, 2008), the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of appeals upheld the policy of Fredericksburg, Virginia’s city council requiring prayers which open its sessions to be non-denominational. In an opinion by former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, sitting by designation on…
Tag: Free Speech
Historical Profile: John Wycliffe – Morning Star of the Reformation (Excerpt from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs)
One of my favorite reformers has to be John Wycliffe, who translated the language of the Latin Vulgate into language that everybody could understand. This weekend, as part of our weekend inspirational series, we are pleased to present this excerpt from the classic, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, not because of any connection with a particular…
Pastors Challenge the IRS: Using the Pulpit to Promote Candidates
During this hotly contested election year, some church pastors are deliberately promoting candidates, knowing that the Internal Revenue Service could remove their tax-exempt status as the result. In Minnesota, Pastor Gus Booth, of the Warroad Community Church, not only promoted a candidate, but wrote to the Internal Revenue Service, told them what he was doing,…
Wisconsin: Freedom from Religion Foundation Asks State to Halt Assembly Prayers
Last July, Wisconsin State Representative Terry Moulton led his colleagues in prayer: “In your name, and by the power of your spirit, I come against the Evil One. And I ask that he be cast from this place, this day.” Not necessarily the most ecumenical of prayers, and now the Freedom from Religion Foundation has…
Thought & Crime (Liberty Magazine – March/April 2008) – An Update
Update on “Thought and Crime” published in the March/April 2008 issue of Liberty magazine. You may recall that Pastor Stephen Boissoin had gotten himself in hot water with the Alberta Human Rights Commission when he wrote a letter to the editor of the Red Deer Advocate that was critical of the “homosexual agenda.” The community…
Balancing Government Secrecy and Accountability – What Should the Next President Do?
In attempting to increase national security, has the Bush administration gone too far in sacrificing accountability for secrecy? What does this mean for the next president? The American Constitution Society (ACS) has recently published a new issue brief by Geoff Stone, entitled, On Secrecy and Transparency: Thoughts for Congress and a New Administration, in which…
NEWS BRIEFS: Global Privacy, Free Speech Issues
Study secretly tracks cell phone users outside US (AP) Researchers secretly tracked the locations of 100,000 people outside the United States through their cell phone use and concluded that most people rarely stray more than a few miles from home. The first-of-its-kind study by Northeastern University raises privacy and ethical questions for its monitoring methods,…