Illinois’ toughest in the nation eavesdropping law is partly unenforceable now that a Chicago prosecutor failed to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to revive the law. Citizens now can make an audio tape of Chicago police making a stop without fear of prosecution. The taping of police stops is part of an ACLU of Illinois program scrutinizing police conduct.
Terry Ganey is one of the most respected investigative reporters and political correspondents of the past 40 years in Missouri. With the November issue, he takes over as St. Louis editor of Gateway Journalism Review. Ganey, a former colleague at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, is taking over from Roy Malone, another valued Post-Dispatch colleague. Malone will continue to contribute but is taking a break from the many years he and Charles Klotzer kept this publication alive.
As predicted, the much-maligned Citizens United Supreme Court decision helped unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in unlimited campaign spending in the 2012 election, much of it in support of former Michigan Gov. Mitt Romney and Republican Senate candidates. But contrary to expectations, the money almost entirely failed to elect candidates it supported.
The First Amendment is less important today as control of speech passes to private “benevolent dictatorships” such as Google, Facebook and Twitter.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote a century ago that free speech didn’t protect a person “falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.” Now some news commentators are dusting off that memorable aphorism to suggest that the offensive film, “Innocence of the Muslims,” is not protected by the First Amendment.