Wendy Kaminer

Free-speech advocates who cheered the recent Supreme Court decision striking down portions of the Child Pornography Prevention Act (CPPA) should not have been surprised when Attorney General John Ashcroft and members of Congress quickly announced their intention to enact another, similar child-porn law for the courts to consider. Congress and the White House (under both […]

What’s the difference between a spy and a snoop? It’s not merely semantic. Snoops are objects of derision — nosy neighbors, Peeping Toms, or perverts. Spies are heroes, or antiheroes at least, as the resilience of James Bond fantasies attest. So when Attorney General John Ashcroft exhorts neighborhood groups to be on the lookout for […]

Thanks partly to its association with 1960s counterculture, marijuana use has long been considered vaguely un-American. Never mind that millions of Americans have indulged in it. The pot-smoking pinkos of yesterday are — according to the Bush administration — the aiders and abettors of terrorists today. A new series of antidrug ads aimed at teenagers, […]

“There are lots of different situations when the government has legitimate reasons to give out false information,” Solicitor General Theodore Olson told the U.S. Supreme Court in March. He was defending the government’s right to lie in Harbury v. Christopher, Jennifer Harbury’s lawsuit against former Secretary of State Warren Christopher and other high-ranking Clinton appointees. […]

If I drop dead tomorrow, all the work I’ve produced since 1978 will enjoy copyright protection for the next 70 years, until 2072, some 120 years after my birth. If I live another 30 years or so all the work I’ve produced since 1978 will be protected into the beginning of the twenty-second century. Much […]

Pastor Charles Cornwell of Center Point Baptist Church in Noble, Georgia, attributes the macabre dereliction of duty by local crematorium operator Ray Brent Marsh to sin: “Sin blinds us and sin makes us do dumb things.” Neglecting to cremate more than 300 corpses and leaving them to rot in your backyard surely is “a dumb […]

Assuming that the late former Enron vice Chairman Cliff Baxter died by his own hand and not the hands of others who feared he might testify against them, you might blame Baxter’s suicide on guilt, shame, or fear of financial ruin. Linda Lay, wife of former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay, blames the media: “Cliff was […]

Rebecca and David Corneau of Attleboro, Massachusetts, are Christian fundamentalists who belong to a small sect called The Body. Like Christian Scientists, they reject modern medical care in accordance with their religious beliefs. Unlike Christian Scientists, they are being deprived of all rights to raise a family. In the fall of 1999 — after their […]

Plagiarism charges against pop historian Stephen Ambrose are mounting; as I write this column, as many as six of his books have been found to include passages lifted from other writers without attribution. Scandals like this erupt periodically: Gail Sheehy ceded 10 percent of her royalties from the 1976 best-seller Passages to UCLA psychiatrist Roger […]

In San Francisco, two militant advocates for AIDS patients have been charged with stalking and threatening public-health officials, researchers, and reporters who have made or disseminated what they deem to be objectionable statements about AIDS prevention and the behavior of infected gay men. Naturally, with no apparent sense of irony, they assert a First Amendment […]