Month: June 2014

On the website of Connecticut’s Regional
School District 14 is a commendable, but somewhat out-of-context,

commitment to relative Internet freedom for public school
students, dated June 20.

Regional School District 14 takes the position that while it is
obviously critical to block specific categories of websites as
required by law (e.g., pornography, etc.), the blocking of
otherwise appropriate websites, regardless of political or
religious viewpoints, is WRONG.

The statement goes on to note that “On Region 14’s computers,
some websites were blocked, while others were not,” and it was all
a big technical error.

A letter dated the previous day gives us a little of the

awkward background in this story.

In recent weeks, a student conducting research on the district’s
network came upon a pattern of information access through the
district’s content filtering service…

the district has pressed Dell SonicWall for more information
about how websites are assigned to categories and why there are
apparent inconsistencies, as discovered by the student, in
classifications particularly along conservative and liberal lines.
Many of the liberal sites accessible to the student fell into the
“not rated” category, which was unblocked while many of the
conservative sites were in the “political/advocacy group” which is
accessible to teachers but not to students. The district is trying
to determine the reason for the inconsistency and if the bias is
pervasive enough to justify switching to another content filtering
provider.

Uh huh. As it turns out, high school student Andrew Lampart was
assigned to do a report on gun control, and quickly discovered that
the school Internet connection allowed him access to only one side
of the debate. Then he found that the school permitted access to
only one side of many debates—permitting access to gun
control groups and liberal organizations, but not their
counterparts. Whoops.

On Facebook, he wrote:

Earlier in the semester, our law class was promised to hold a
debate closer to the end of the year on the issue of gun control.
To prepare, I decided to do some research and gather resources
during study hall. However, I immediately found it difficult to
find resources that were opposed to stricter gun-control as most of
these websites were blocked by the firewall. Most of these websites
were blocked under the category of “Political/Advocacy Groups.” Out
of curiousity, I decided to perform a brief investigation and
search to see what other websites were blocked under this listing.
What I discovered was appalling.

As you can see from the list that I have provided you, the
firewall at the high school offers a very biased viewpoint towards
not only the issue of gun-control, but also abortion, religion, and
political parties. Even in this crucial election year for not only
the state of Connecticut, but the entire nation, the firewall has
selectively blocked candidate websites.

Bias in public schol classrooms is nothing new, but this was
especially blatant. And Lampart wasn’t prepared to let it rest. His
Facebook complaint quickly caught
media attention. And that explains Connecticut’s Regional
School District 14’s new, publicly proclaimed devotion to Internet
freedom.

Lampart’s list of blocked and unblocked sites is below.

–Blocked–
-National Right To Life
-ctmirror.org
-debate.org
-Second Amendment Foundation
-National Rifle Association
-Paul Ryan for Congress
-liberallogic101.com
-The Black Sphere
–rightwingnewscom
-ctfamily.org
rightwingwatch.org
redstate.com
townhall.com
sarahpac.com
teaparty.org
National Right To Life Foundation
Protectmarriage.com
vatican.va
christianity.com
nationalgunrights.org
ctgop.org
liberallogic101.com

-Unblocked-
ctdems.org
newtownactionalliance.org
momsdemandaxtion.org
islam-guide.com
lgbtqnation.com
plannedparenthod.org
prochoiceamerica.org
americanprogress.org
conservativelogic101.com
wsws.org
hillaryclintonoffice.com
danmalloy2014.com
nationalgrassrootscoalition.org
banhandgunsnow.org

In the wake of
this morning’s Supreme Court’s decision that the
Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate does not apply to
closely held corporations like Hobby Lobby, which challenged the
requirement, you’ll probably hear a fair amount of commentary and
complaining about the religious rights of corporations. But that’s
not the best way to think about the decision. The language of the
ruling,
written by Justice Samuel Alito, emphasizes repeatedly that it’s
not really about corporations—it’s about the individual people who
own and operate those corporations.

The gist of the decision, as Reason’s Damon Root
explained earlier, is that Obamacare’s contraception mandate,
which applies to most employers with more than 50 people, violates
the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), a law which
provides that “government shall not substantially burden a person’s
exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of
general applicability.” Any exceptions should further a “compelling
governmental interest” and be the “least restrictive means” of
doing so.

The key to Alito’s ruling arguably comes down to just two words:
“a person’s.”

The big question isn’t whether the contraception mandate
violates the religious freedoms of some faceless corporate entity
entirely separate from the individuals who own that company—it’s
whether the requirement would violate the free exercise of
religious for the particular people who founded and now
run the company.

As Alito writes in his opinion, “A corporation is simply a form
of organization used by human beings to achieve desired ends….When
rights, whether constitutional or statutory, are extended to
corporations, the purpose is to protect the rights of these
people.”

In seeking to defend the requirement, the federal government had
argued that Hobby Lobby, as a for-profit corporation, was not
eligible to challenge the rule under the RFRA because corporations
are “separate and apart from” their individual owners and
operators. They were distinct, and not “people,” and therefore
ineligible for the protections of a law designed to shelter “a
person’s exercise of religion.” Alito says, more or less, that
this is nonsense: “Corporations, ‘separate and apart from’ the
human beings who own, run, and are employed by them, cannot do
anything at all.”

It’s pretty clear that complying with the contraception
requirement would have violated the religious beliefs of the
individuals in the small family that owns Hobby Lobby, a closely
held corporation that expressly says in a statement of purpose that
it is committed to “operating the company in a manner consistent
with Biblical principles.” (As Alito also notes, no one questioned
the sincerity of their beliefs.) It’s the free exercise of those
individual that the RFRA is designed to protect, and it’s their
individual religious freedoms that most concern Alito. The focus on
these individuals, with their clearly defined religious beliefs,
also suggests why the ruling might not apply to large public
corporations where it is arguably much harder to pin down any
individual interests.

Alito’s argument isn’t exactly the same as the one proposed by
the Cato Institute in its
amicus brief on the case, but it draws from a similar line of
thinking. “The real issue in these cases,” according to Cato’s
brief, “is whether individuals who wish to conduct their
business lives in accordance with their religious beliefs forfeit
the right to do so when they organize their business in the form of
a corporation—in particular, a closely held corporation.”
Individuals who choose to organize their business affairs this way
“do not check their religious values at the office door,” the brief
argued. Alito’s opinion seems to share the sentiment when it
declares that “protecting the free-exercise rights of corporations
like Hobby Lobby…protects the religious liberty of the humans who
own and control those companies.”

Here’s a breathless
headline from Breitbart: Google to Block Firearm,
Ammunition, Gun Accessory Ads. Regarding a recently proposed
company policy change, the site suggested on Friday that “beginning
in September” the Internet giant will make these changes. Sort of.
The report overlooks some important details, and perhaps the
silliest aspect of the new policy: It would target toy guns.

First, as pro-gun blog The Truth About Guns
points out, “they’re proposed plans.” That’s
it. Nothing set in stone yet. And, “the policy only affects Google
AdWords.” Although the advertising service is large – it draws in
billions of dollars and is the company’s main source of revenue –
it simply amounts to the sponsored links at the top of the page.
You will still be able to search “firearms” and find links to sites
for businesses that are advertising and selling these beautiful,
Second Amendment-fulfilling tools.

Furthermore, Google AdWords
already blocks ads for guns, gun parts and hardware, and
ammunition. They’ve done so for a few years. So, the
Breitbart report tells us nothing new.

The great silliness that was overlooked is that Google’s
proposed change would broaden its ban to include
any

functional devices that appear to discharge a
projectile at high velocity, whether for sport, self-defense, or
combat (Note that we err on the side of caution and apply this
policy to sporting or recreational guns that can cause serious harm
if misused, or that appear to be real guns.)

Examples: Handguns, rifles, shotguns, hunting
guns, functioning antique guns, airsoft guns, paintball
guns, bb guns. (emphasis added in bold)

That’s right. In an effort to “help keep people safe both online
and offline,” the world’s largest search engine wants to shield
your eyes from seeing online billboards for things “that cause
damage, harm, or injury” or even just look like they might
pop out a plastic pellet. The number of serious injuries that faux
guns inflict seems to be so low
that they’re more a testament to human stupidity than product
unsafety. The only airsoft-related death in recent memory happened
last year, when cops filled a 13-year-old California boy with
seven
real bullets because they mistook his airsoft weapon for a real
one.

Of course, Google is a private company and it can institute
whatever absurd policies it wants to alienate millions of American
gun enthusiasts and protect everyone else from seeing fake firearms
for sale. However, users can hit (or, dare I say, discharge a
digital projectile at) Google’s moneymaker by installing AdBlocker
to their browser so they don’t have to see any AdWord
advertisements. 

In
the pages of The New York Times, columnist Ross Douthat
bemoans that activists on all sides of the debate over the
so-called
“epidemic of rape” on college campuses have failed to put forth
sensible solutions. Stricter adjudication under campus courts is
unlikely to result in justice for victims or the accused, he
writes.

Douthat does, however, offer an under-explored proposition for
lessening instances of campus rape: Lower the drinking age from 21
to 18. This would discourage the sort of black out drinking most
likely to lead to sexual assault, he
writes:

The key problem in college sexual culture right now isn’t
drinking per se; it’s blackout drinking, which follows from binge
drinking, which is more likely to happen when a drinking culture is
driven underground.

Undoing the federal government’s Reagan-era imposition of a
higher drinking age is probably too counterintuitive for lawmakers
to contemplate. And obviously it wouldn’t eliminate the lure of the
keg stand or tame the recklessness of youth. But it would create an
opportunity for a healthier approach to alcohol consumption — more
social and relaxed, less frantic and performative — to take root in
collegiate culture once again.

Many campus rapes happen because one person takes advantage of
another’s inebriated state. Subsequent accusations involve fuzzy
memories and blurry definitions of consent. The current drinking
age facilitates this by encouraging college students to drink a lot
in a short period of time, since drinking is illegal for them
at all times, regardless. (And thanks to the drinking age,
intoxicated students who become victims of a crime or serious
accident are less likely to seek help from the proper authorities,
since they have broken the law themselves.)

Lest anyone think Douthat is on some sort of roll, he also
proposes a solution that would be pretty much anathema to
libertarians:

Finally, colleges could embrace a more limited version of the
old “parietal” system, in which they separated the sexes and
supervised social life. This could involve, for instance,
establishing more single-sex dorms and writing late-night rules
that apply identically to men and women. Bringing a visitor to your
room after 10 p.m. or midnight might require signing in with an
adult adviser, who would have the right to intervene when
inebriation seemed to call consent and safety into question.

I’ve written that the state of California is
inviting itself into the bedrooms of college students under its
latest anti-rape legislation. This proposal is even more direct
than that.

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