SHOULD CHANGING CULTURAL STANDARDS ALSO CHANGE THE WAY THAT WE EXAMINE OBSCENITY AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT?

By Annamarya Scaccia, 2011 Jennings Fellow

In early April, 42 senators from both Republican & Democratic parties sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder calling for amped-up efforts in the federal prosecution of hardcore adult pornography. This comes on the heels of the dissolution of the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force—a second Bush-era group formed to appease conservative cries over sexually-explicit obscenity (in other words: hardcore pornography)—into the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section.

"The need for consistent and vigorous enforcement is even greater today because both obscene pornography and evidence of its harms have multiplied since then," they wrote. "Simply put, we know more than ever illegal adult obscenity contributes to violence against women, addiction, harm to children, and sex trafficking. This material harms individuals, families, and communities and the problems are only getting worse."

NEW GALLUP POLL SHOWS A MAJORITY OF AMERICANS NOW FAVOR LEGALIZING GAY MARRIAGE

For the first time since it began tracking the issue, the Gallup Poll has found that a majority (53%) of Americans now support same sex marriage. The poll shows a dramatic shift from fifteen years ago, when two-thirds were in opposition. The change, which demonstrated a nine percent gain in support over last year, was, Gallup said, largely attributable to shifts among Democratic and Independent voters. Republican support remained the same as last year.

"We are presented here with the question of what happens when the political branches fail to act in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution. The Constitution affirms that the People have rights that are enforceable against the government. One such right is to be free from unjustified governmental deprivation of property "including the health care and benefits that our laws guarantee veterans upon completion of their service. Absent constitutionally sufficient procedural protections, the promise we make to veterans becomes worthless. When the government harms its veterans by the deprivations at issue here, they are entitled to turn to the courts for relief. Indeed, our Constitution established an independent Judiciary precisely for situations like this, in which a vulnerable group, that is being denied its rights by an unresponsive government, has nowhere else to turn. No more critical example exists than when the government fails to afford its injured or wounded veterans their constitutional rights. Wars, including wars of choice, have many costs. Affording our veterans their constitutional rights is a primary one.”

Judge Stephen Reinhardt, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, writing the majority opinion in Veterans for Common Sense v Shinseki, a case brought to challenge the quality of care being afforded veterans, specifically in the area of mental health. The opinion cited grim statistics showing that eighteen veterans commit suicide each day and one thousand attempt suicide each month due largely to untreated or undertreated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

PJP FELLOW RELEASED FROM CUSTODY

The Daily Beast is reporting this morning that Dorothy Parvaz, the Al Jazeera English reporter and 2009 PJP Fellow who was seized by Syrian authorities 19 days ago, has been released by Iran, where she had been sent by the Syrians after they claimed she was traveling on an expired Iranian passport. Parvaz, who used to report for the Seattle Post Intelligencer and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, is an American citizen, who was born in Iran. In addition to an American passport and an Iranian passport, she also carries a Canadian passport, having grown up, partly, in Canada.

"The Court receives higher confidence ratings in public opinion polls than the president or Congress, and it faces no challenges to its independence. A public that knew more than it does about the Supreme Court might wonder why this group of people is empowered to make decisions that (when they are based, however tenuously, on the Constitution) other branches of government cannot veto. That was the constitutional plan, but it was controversial from the first—and not surprisingly: Congress and the president can plausibly pretend that their actions are in the interest of the nation as a whole, but a judicial decision always has a loser. For this reason, the Supreme Court decisions in cases that engage the public’s attention will often stir a polemical response."

Seventh Circuit Federal Appeals Judge Richard Posner, writing in The New Republic this week in a review of Justices and Journalists: The U.S. Supreme Court and the Media By Richard Davis. You can read the review here.

GRASPING FOR STRAWS: WHY THE RIGHT'S CLAIM THAT “TORTURE GOT US BIN LADEN” IS DISINGENUOUS AND UNDERMINES OUR SECURITY

by Joe Pace

There is something surreal about the way some conservatives have seized on the death of Osama bin Laden as evidence that “torture works.” The claim rests on the assumption (for which evidence is ambiguous, at best) that, sometime circa 2004, detainees were water-boarded – tortured -- into giving up the nickname of Osama bin Laden’s most trusted courier. Then the nickname, plus innumerable other leads were placed into the intelligence cycle, which churned for some seven years before Osama bin Laden was found and felled.

OF PHOTOJOURNALISM, BIN LADEN, AND THE "RIGHT TO SEE”

A few days ago, the journalist Sebastian Junger visited West Point, where I am on the history faculty. He was there to show Restrepo, his documentary film about a U.S. Army combat team deployed on a dangerous assignment in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan, and then do an on-stage interview with me in front of an audience of cadets and members of the general public. When it was planned many months ago, Junger was to have been joined by Tim Hetherington, a photojournalist who was Junger’s equal partner in the making of this film (they were co-directors), but two weeks before their appointed visit to West Point this month, Hetherington was killed by a mortar while covering the Libyan civil war near the city of Misrata. He was one of two cameramen who died in the attack. The other was Chris Hondros of Getty Images. Junger came to West Point anyway, and among the reasons he cited for not cancelling was the feeling that an audience composed of soldiers and would-be soldiers was precisely the kind of place where he should be as he coped with his grief.

PJP PARTICIPANT JEFF GREENFIELD IMAGINES: WHAT IF WE HAD CAPTURED -- NOT KILLED -- OSAMA BIN LADEN AND THEN TRIED HIM IN THE FEDERAL COURTS?

In a fanciful, but compelling, column for the Washington Post, PJP Participant Jeff Greenfield, a former network news correspondent for CBS and ABC, fantasies over what could have transpired if the Navy SEALS had captured the al Qaeda leader. His discussion touches on a lot of tantalizing topics. For instance, if bin Laden had surrendered to the SEALS, wouldn't the rules of engagement have forced them to take him live? If he was then brought to the US for trial in a federal court, would his prosecution be hampered by the inadmissibility of evidence achieved through so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques"? What if his capture and trial led to a rash of terrorist acts, including the taking of hostages, held on the demand that he be freed? In short, Greenfield seems almost to suggest that the SEALS and the Obama Administration were lucky that bin Laden resisted -- assuming that this detail is true -- and was then killed for the capture and trial could have triggered a disastrous series of events that might have strengthened, not diminished, bin Laden's appeal as a heroic figure among radical Muslims.

SYRIAN GOVERNMENT ADMITS HOLDING PJP FELLOW DOROTHY PARVAZ

2009 PJP Fellow Dorothoy Parvaz, who has been missing since she arrived in Damascus, Syria, on April 29 is being held by the Syrian government. Parvaz, who works for Al Jazeera English was there to report on the government protests. An update about her situation can be read here and here. For immediate updates on the situation, visit the "Free Dorothy Parvaz" Facebook page.

PJP Board Member David Westin, Former President of ABC News, Speaks to Stanford Law About the Future of the News Media

David Westin, who is a member of the PJP Board of Advisors and was president of ABC News through 2010, speaks here at the Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford Law School. Addressing the subject, “Saving the Media from Itself” Westin analyzes the state of the news business as it shifts from traditional media like newspapers and large commercial network news divisions to cable, Internet, and mobile.

THE MAN WHO DESIGNED AND SUPERVISED THE BIN LADEN RAID

The operation that killed Osama Bin Laden was carried out by an elite unit of the Navy SEALs and it is highly unlikely that we will ever learn the names of those who entered the compound, much less the SEAL who pulled the trigger twice to shoot Bin Laden dead. But we do know quite a bit about the man who designed and supervised the operation, Vice Admiral William H. McRaven.

While the CIA was responsible for tracking Bin Laden to the Abbottabad, Pakistan neighborhood where he had been hiding for years, once President Obama decided to launch the raid, Leon Panetta, the CIA Chief, turned the operation over to McRaven, a formed SEAL himself, who was positioned at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan for the raid.

PJP FELLOW MISSING IN SYRIA; FEARED TO BE IN GOVERNMENT CUSTODY

Dorothy Parvaz, a 2009 PJP Fellow, has been reported missing in Syria. Parvaz, who was formerly with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, was working for Al Jazeera English and an appeal for her release can be seen on its website. Parvaz has Iranian, American and Canadian citizenship. A story in the New York Times can be viewed here.

UPDATE: The Oregonian reports Syrian government has confirmed it has journalist Dorothy Parvaz. Read the most up-to-date news on Parvaz here.

Five Questions to Ask About the Killing of Bin Laden

1. Why not capture him?

In fact, the administration says the plan was to capture Bin Laden if he did not offer any resistance, though officials considered it unlikely that he would give himself up. Still, the question is tantalizing: if he had not offered resistance and the Seals had taken him alive and brought him into custody, what would be the plan going forward? Like Kahlid Sheik Mohammed, who is the acknowledged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, he would have to be incarcerated somewhere – Guantanamo? The very place that Obama promised to close? – and, again, like Kahlid Sheik Mohammed, put on trial. Only last month, the Obama administration made the decision to cease plans to try Mohammed in civil courts and proceed instead with a trial before a military commission as outlined in the Military Commissions Act of 2006. One of the reasons was that it was impossible to find a suitable venue. New York City, where the attacks were carried out, did not want the trial since it would no doubt have been a challenge to provide security. If there were security challenges for a trial of Mohammed, imagine the security challenges to a trial for Bin Laden.