It’s not just intimidation, it’s disruption and in some cases outright prevention of peaceful protesters being able to get their message out.

In a week when we need freedom of speech more than ever, free speech died in Pittsburgh this week.

The deployment of police seems to be more geared toward suppressing lawful demonstrations than actually preventing crime.

• View Comments

An Australian town pulled all bottled water from its shelves Saturday and replaced it with refillable bottles in what is believed to be a world-first ban.

Hundreds of people marched through the picturesque rural town of Bundanoon to mark the first day of its bottled water ban by unveiling a series of new public drinking fountains, said campaign spokesman John Dee.

Shopkeepers ceremoniously removed the last bottles of water from their shelves and replaced them with reusable bottles that can be filled from fountains inside the town’s shops or at water stations in the street.

Raw Story

• View Comments

An Afghan immigrant was on the verge of unleashing a terrorist attack on New York City on the Sept. 11 anniversary but was scared off after drawing suspicion from police, prosecutors said Friday as they provided new details about how far along the plot was.

Najibullah Zazi, 24, was stopped by police on Sept. 10 as he entered the city, and he dropped his plans for an attack once he realized that law enforcement was onto him.

Zazi was sent to New York on Friday by federal marshals to face charges of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction in a plot law enforcement has said was focused on blowing up commuter trains.

Read more

• View Comments

This doesn’t happen often enough.

Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) received a handwritten note Thursday from Joint Committee on Taxation Chief of Staff Tom Barthold confirming the penalty for failing to pay the up to $1,900 fee for not buying health insurance.

Violators could be charged with a misdemeanor and could face up to a year in jail or a $25,000 penalty, Barthold wrote on JCT letterhead. He signed it “Sincerely, Thomas A. Barthold.”

The note was a follow-up to Ensign’s questioning at the markup.

• View Comments

Last Monday, in his first big speech as President Barack Obama’s new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman, Julius Genachowski began by singing the Web’s praises, and portraying it as vital to the workings of society. “Today,” he said, “we can’t imagine what our lives would be like without the Internet—any more than we can imagine life without running water or the light bulb.” On this point, nearly everyone can agree.

Unfortunately, Genachowski drew exactly the wrong lessons from his initial insight: Rather than see the Internet’s growth and integration into everyday life as evidence that government intervention isn’t necessary, the Web’s chief regulator took the opposite view—that the Net’s size and scope make government meddling a necessity.

Reason Online

• View Comments