The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is one of America’s most sacred freedoms and our public universities often among its staunchest defenders.  But at the University of Wisconsin-Stout (UWS), it seems this sacred freedom is in the eye of the beholder.

UWS theater professor Dr. James Miller is relatively new to the short-lived, now cult hit TV series “Firefly.”  Some of his students are loyal fans and asked Dr. Miller to check it out for himself. He liked it enough to hang a Firefly poster on his office door. Given its remote location in the theater wing, where mostly only theater students would see it, who would have expected the poster to cause such a firestorm?

Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) reports:

On September 12, 2011, Professor Miller posted on his office door an image of Nathan Fillion in Joss Whedon’s sci-fi series Firefly and a line from an episode: “You don’t know me, son, so let me explain this to you once: If I ever kill you, you’ll be awake. You’ll be facing me. And you’ll be armed.” On September 16, UWS Chief of Police Lisa A. Walter notified Miller that she had removed the poster because it “refer[s] to killing.” After Miller replied, “respect my first amendment rights,” Walter wrote that “the poster can be interpreted as a threat.” Walter also threatened Miller with criminal charges: “If you choose to repost the article or something similar to it, it will be removed and you could face charges of disorderly conduct.”

In response to Walter’s censorship, Miller placed a new poster on his office door on the 16th. The poster read “Warning: Fascism” and mocked, “Fascism can cause blunt head trauma and/or violent death. Keep fascism away from children and pets.”

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UPDATE: The headline of this post has been corrected since publication.

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The Tea Party community and its ethos of decentralized leadership and individual freedom is under an orchestrated attack from left-wing apparatchiks, elected Democrats, and their cheerleaders in the liberal media.  Having suffered through bomb scares, hostile abuse, death threats, and racial slurs, we are now called every epithet in Webster’s, from “phony,” to “astroturf,” “redneck,” “racist,” “domestic terrorist,” “mentally retarded,” “seditionist,” and “potential killer.”All this because we choose to petition our government in peaceful protest for a redress of policy grievances?  For practicing our First Amendment rights, they smear our moral character.  It’s as if they are afraid to debate their big government ideas on the merits.

Its time to draw a line in the sand. Its time to call out the bad actors, the crashers, and the haters.  We judge people as fellow individuals, based on the content of their character, and based on their individual actions. We will self-police our community and let openness, sunlight, and transparency shine the spotlight on individuals behaving badly. (more…)

UPDATE: The bounty is now $100,000 for any audio/video footage of the N-word being hurled at Congressmen John Lewis and Andre Carson.

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After 14 months of committing 100% to health care reform, the day after the signing of the Health Care bill was to mark the Democratic Party’s new primary concern: destroy the uprising, annihilate by all means necessary, the Tea Party movement.

The first sign that a plan was in place was the ham-fisted, high-camp posturing of the most controversial members of the Democratic caucus walking through the peaceful but animated “Tea Party” demonstrators on Capitol Hill. There is no reason for these elected officials to walk above ground through the media circus amid their ideological foes. The natural route is the tunnels between the House office buildings and the Capitol. By crafting a highly symbolic walk of the Congressional Black Caucus through the majority white crowd, the Democratic Party was looking to provoke a negative reaction. They didn’t get it. So they made it up.

The proof that the N-word wasn’t said once, let alone 15 times, as Rep. Andre Carson claimed, is that soon thereafter — even though the press dutifully reported it as truth — Nancy Pelosi followed the alleged hate fest, which allegedly included someone spitting, by walking through the crowd with a gavel in hand and a shit-eating grin on her face. Had the incidents reported by the Congressional Black Caucus actually occurred the Capitol Police would have been negligent to allow the least popular person to that crowd – the Speaker – to put herself in harm’s way.

That crowd was a sea of new-media equipment. Not only were tens of thousands people armed with handicams, BlackBerrys and iPods, so also was the mainstream media there, covering every inch of the event. Why did not one mainstream media outlet raise the specter that perhaps a video would exist to prove the events occurred? I am still dealing with the same press telling me we didn’t prove that ACORN was aiding and abetting criminal activity because we “did not provide enough audio and video evidence.” (Insert laugh track.) Is there not a blatant double standard at play here? Nancy Pelosi tipped her hand that race was a central part of her strategy. She invoked the Civil Rights Act and compared it with the universally reviled health care bill. Her caucus is doubling down on the civil-rights rhetoric. There are no coincidences.

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Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will take the highly unusual step of convening a special session to rehear arguments in the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.  This case has enormous implications for all Americans, but those of us who are filmmakers who depend on the First Amendment should pay particularly close attention. 

On the last day of the June session, the Supreme Court unexpectedly decided to order a rehearing of our case in order to reexamine two cases that are the pillars of some of the more restrictive provisions of campaign finance law, and that, I believe, are unconstitutional infringements on the First Amendment.  (more…)

Our political leaders need a quick block of instruction in the concept of the chain of command. It goes like this, in descending order of rank:

#1: Us Citizens.

#2: You elected officials.

I really prefer writing long pieces on why Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin and Johnny Rotten rule. It’s more fun to talk about how everything in popular culture that everyone else likes actually sucks, and I’m even going to provide some inspirational music selections below. But duty calls. Right now, a bunch of people whose salaries you and I pay and who work for us are telling us to shut up and do as we’re told.

That’s just not gonna happen. (more…)

You know, liberals should be celebrating. Their man, The Won, is in the White House. They have control of both the House and the Senate, and legislation such as cap and trade and nationalized health care may well become reality – European socialism without having to leave the comfort of home. The Brave New World is on the way. Rejoice in mediocrity for all!

So why are they so grumpy? I suppose it’s because the idea that anyone might stray from the reservation is anathema to them, and this little thing in our Constitution called the First Amendment kind of gets in the way of collective happiness and singing Kumbaya around the campfire.

John “Cougar” Mellencamp is the latest to notice that not everyone is part of the collective, and he’s mighty peeved, making this observation about free speech in general and bloggers in particular: (more…)

In the 1930’s, when world audiences were asked to name the capital of the U.S.A., one answer was high on the list: “Hollywood.” That was the location listed at the end of every amazing movie: “Made In Hollywood.” How could such magic not come from America’s capital?

Such is the power of a single word.

That power has not diminished but only increased with an ADD, multi-channel, hyperactive media-centric world. The silver screen has long given us immortal dialogue which now blends so deeply into the culture that people may not know their origin, but we know the meaning.  A wise man I know said, “Image creates perception, perception creates reality.”  It couldn’t be more true in the film business.

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In a media-centric world, from motion pictures to internet to phones, we are pounded with images, forming our perceptions and then creating our reality. How fast did the Internet meme “Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys” become a daily reference at the coffee klatch, in your email, or on phone calls?  Not long.  We forget how powerful words can be when written in a clever and pithy way.  The masters of dialogue like Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, and the Epstein brothers, knew irreverent and immortal lines.  And as producers, writers or just Americans who appreciate a good, nimble turn of a phrase, we should excel at creating phrases that demonstrate the values we hold dear.  Don’t understand?  “What we have here is a failure to communicate!” (more…)

I am not a religious man.  I’m neither proud of that nor ashamed. I merely state that fact to establish where I’m coming from.  I have friends who are believers and friends who are not.  Where religion is concerned, I believe in live and let live.  I only wish that the ACLU shared that attitude.  I don’t like to describe myself as an agnostic or an atheist because I don’t care to align myself with the people whose own religion consists of a profound antipathy to everybody else’s. 

I decided a long time ago that religion would play no part in my life, but I felt no compulsion to convert others.  Oddly enough, I never resented the folks who would ring my doorbell and try to proselytize me.  Although I don’t like dealing with uninvited guests, I always thought it was nice of them to be that concerned about the eternal soul of a perfect stranger. Having said all that, I wish to announce that I despise the ACLU for its relentless attacks on Christianity and Judaism.  It’s bad enough that they will wage battle on behalf of any busybody looking to banish Christmas and Hanukkah symbols from public places, including one’s own front yard.

However, these very same lawyers will eagerly go to the mat to safeguard a Muslim’s right to wear a disguise on her driver’s license, a Navajo’s right to ingest peyote, and a cultist’s right to ritualistically slaughter small animals.  (more…)

Part 1 of what I half-jokingly called my “Manifesto.”

In a fiscal conservative’s utopian dreamworld, there would be no federal funding for the arts (or so many other government agencies or programs for that matter).  This has been our position since the inception of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in the early 1970’s.  We’ve been saying that if elected, we would abolish these misguided programs and departments and bring our government back to the bare-bones constitutionally described role that it has and leave everything else to the states.

We’ve held the influential bully pulpit of the presidency for twenty of the past twenty-eight years, and what has happened to the NEA?  It has grown.  While we have stood on principle,  we have also stood on the sidelines.  The founding fathers would be outraged that the federal government is funding art with taxpayer money, but because we are on the sidelines standing on our principles, all of that money is going to the people creating art with messages that undermine our very existence. (more…)