“There is no question in my mind that Sheriff Darr should resign,” said Luis Toro, director of Ethics Watch in a release Monday. “Any person who uses their office to retaliate for political expression… no longer deserves the office nor the trust of the people who put him in office. This is corruption at its most obvious, and Sheriff Darr should resign his office immediately.”

The details uncovered in the trial are damning.

Darr managed to defeat Deputy Mark Nicastle in November but, in the years between the time Nicastle announced his intention to run for sheriff and Election Day last November, Darr launched two internal investigations against Nicastle and demoted him from lieutenant to sergeant.

The nine-member jury voted unanimously that Darr violated Nicastle’s First Amendment rights and awarded Nicastle $24,600 in back pay and $99,000 in damages for pain and suffering.

Toro said Darr’s resignation would be the best way to restore public trust in Adams County government.
 
Darr did not return messages for comment.

“I’ll put you through to his office,” said an Adams County deputy, “but I doubt anyone there will talk to you about this.”

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“I cleaned up that mess in Colorado,” Lucero says over the words Churchill Fired! “and now I want to lead the fight to clean up Washington D.C.” But uh-oh for Tom Lucero because the Ward Churchill “mess” isn’t really all cleaned up yet.

A Denver jury found in April that Churchill had been railroaded. They said he was fired for speaking his mind not for any alleged academic transgressions. But no one in the courtroom seemed to much like Churchill, so they gave him $1 in damages and Judge Larry Naves refused to order CU to give Churchill back his job. As Westword’s Michael Roberts put it Monday, that’s the kind of ruling begs for an appeal!

High-powered attorney David Lane has taken the case.

“We won the jury trial but then the judge tossed it and gave it to CU — and he gave the university’s regents immunity,” Lane told Westword. “We’re arguing that the judge shouldn’t have done that. It’s very important that the regents be held accountable when they violated an amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”

By “regents,” Lane means Lucero!

So Churchill may be reinstated and self-proclaimed defender of Constitutional liberties Lucero may be held in violation of the right to free speech. That sounds like a continuing mess in Colorado, one that wasn’t cleaned up very well, one that smacks of politics as usual and one that may work to keep Lucero far away from Washington D.C.

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Sen. Dave Schultheis

Schultheis’s bill, SB 089 , in its original version would have allowed teachers to choose not to teach subjects such as evolution and sex education that might conflict with their religious beliefs. It also would have allowed them to distribute religious material and display religious symbols in class, among other things.

With passionate opposition witnesses lined up to testify, however, Schultheis amended the bill to merely require that questions concerning religious rights in the schools be presented to the Colorado Attorney General for consideration. The AG’s answers to the questions would then be distributed to the schools where they would be publicly displayed.

“I am not convinced that what we have in front of us today is necessary or in any way improves upon what we have today,” said Sen. Pat Steadman, D-Denver. He agreed with others that laws already safeguard the right to take such questions to the authorities.

But Schultheis made it clear that he meant to address a larger struggle with the bill.

“The purpose of this bill is to distribute awareness among the public school system of the religious liberties that are guaranteed to all citizens and, yes, even students, faculty and staff of public schools in accordance with the First Amendment of the Constitution,” Schultheis said at the opening of the hearing.

He said the battle over religious freedom in the United States was being fought in the schools.

“Public schools have become battle grounds in this fight to preserve religious liberty, fought in large part by threats of law suits by organizations such as the [American Civil Liberties Union]. Many public school officials, rather than offering a challenge to these suits because of the cost to do so, simply acquiesce to the ACLU’s demands.”

Most of the testimony heard by the Senate Judiciary Committee reflected the same kind of opposition that greeted a version of the bill backed by Schultheis in 2007. That earlier version also died in committee.

State Sen. Evie Hudak, D-Westminster, said her perspective on the bill was shaped by her Jewish faith and by history.

“I appreciate that [public] schools do not teach Christmas,” she said. She said the month of December breeds feeling of marginalization for non-Christians. “I feel like I am a second-class citizen or like I am not American.”

“It sounds like you believe that our school should be teaching the birth of Christ in December and you need to be aware that many children do not celebrate that holiday,” Hudak said.

Schultheis said that his amended bill would only ask a neutral party to weigh in on controversial questions and that it was a provision that could be exercised by adherents to all religions.

“I could not disagree with Sen. Schultheis more,” said Steve Foster, senior rabbi at Denver’s Temple Emanuel. “I’m glad that the ACLU is on top of this because it guarantees your right to practice your religion as you choose but it doesn’t give you the right to practice your religion to try to get me to change mine in order to make you whole.”

Foster said that the original bill could lend support for what he called the “tyranny of majoritarianism” and weaken the U.S. commitment to secular society.

State Sen. Scott Renfroe, R-Greeley, responded to Foster’s critique by saying that he didn’t believe America was a secular society.

“You said we were a secular nation and I would disagree with you, sir.”

Renfroe said he didn’t want to see any religion prohibited. “It is true that all religions are under attack in our public schools– except for the religion of global warming.”

Sen. Keith King, R-Colorado Springs, asked each speaker how they would feel if the bill was stripped down to only the section that required the AG be asked to develop answers on related religious questions that arise in the schools. Detractors said school districts can consult the AG at will.

I am looking for straight neutrality in the decision making, Schultheis said.

In the end the committee the bill as simply redundant.

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Iowa state capitol (TRiver; Flicker)

In an e-mail to supporters allegedly on behalf of Republican state Sen. Nancy Boettger of Harlan, Iowa Family Policy Center’s action arm announced that Senate Room 24 in the Iowa Capitol was reserved at 10 a.m. Monday, and at that same time for the remainder of the legislative session, for a showing of “The Truth Project.”

“The Truth Project” is a set of 12 DVD lessons, each one-hour in length, presented by Dr. Del Tackett and marketed by Focus on the Family. According to the project’s Web site, the series was a response to a study that indicated only about 9 percent of professing Christians have a “Biblical worldview.” The series, which is divided by topic, aims to retrain Christians on how to develop such a worldview and further inject the belief into the public sphere. Although the series has won acclaim in religious circles, it has also drawn a wealth of criticism, both for its focus on debunked scientific theories and for alleged misrepresentations of Christian doctrine.

The e-mail notice sent by the Iowa Family Policy Center noted in its subject line that it was sent “on behalf of Nancy Boettger,” and in the text that the Harlan Republican had “authorized” the group to announce the upcoming events in the Statehouse “with her hearty recommendation.”

Members of the Iowa legislature, according to a spokeswoman in the Iowa Senate Secretary’s office, can reserve rooms in the Capitol pretty much at any time and for any purpose. One of the benefits of being a legislator is the ability to bump other groups who have reserved space when a need arises. The spokeswoman, who was not the person who actually granted the request by Boettger, indicated that she was aware of Monday’s reservation but that she was not positive if the request for the 10 a.m. slot on every Monday for the remainder of the legislative session was something that was approved. At press time, The Iowa Independent had not yet received confirmation on whether the full series of reservations had been approved by the office.

It also unclear if an Iowa Senator can use their privilege to reserve space for several weeks on behalf of a non-governmental, third-party organization such as the Iowa Family Policy Center, which indicated in its e-mail to supporters that they should call the organization’s office to make reservations for the 10 a.m. meeting.

The use of taxpayer resources for a series so deeply rooted in a specific religious doctrine is an area where some of Iowa’s religious and non-religious organizations have found a common concern.

Connie Ryan Terrell has served as the executive director of the Interfaith Alliance of Iowa since 2002. Despite her organization’s aim to promote the role of religion in public life, she also has reservations about this particular series being promoted and marketed through the Capitol.

“Certainly senators have a right to reserve rooms, and they do that a lot on behalf of other organizations,” she said. “But, to utilize a public building — especially in the middle of the legislative session when there are so many other important issues going on — it seems to me that this is a misuse of public property to promote one particular viewpoint and one particular group’s agenda — especially given that this is scheduled for so many times during the legislation session.”

Rob Boston, senior policy analyst for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, isn’t necessarily concerned that a state lawmaker is utilizing public space for this or any purpose, but does have concerns about the overall content of the religious educational series.

“On one hand, if rooms in the Iowa capitol are routinely used by outside groups for public events, then allowing the state affiliate of Focus on the Family to have access to one is not so unusual,” he said. “Having said that, I think Iowans ought to be concerned with the content of this presentation.”

Focus on the Family is a “theocratic outfit that seeks to use the government to impose its narrow version of fundamentalist Christianity on all of us,” Boston said, and “The Truth Project” asserts to have the only proper “Biblical worldview” and “arrogantly claims that most Christians in America aren’t really true believers — simply because many people disagree with [Focus on the Family] on political issues.”

“Focus on the Family and its state affiliates seek to destroy the wall of separation between church and state and elevate their version of the Christian faith — a version heavily weighed down with right-wing politics — above all others,” Boston said. “This attempt to destroy religious freedom should be of concern to Iowans of all religious and philosophical backgrounds.”

Boston is not alone in his concerns.

“I believe that utilizing government resources for this type of media presentation sends the message that the government of the State of Iowa prefers its citizens to be Christian,” said Michael Ireland, executive director of Iowa Secularists. “Establishing a preferred religion is clearly an inappropriate role for government.”

Terrell called the showing of “The Truth Project” at the capitol a “treacherous road to go down.”

“They have a right to put their view out there, but it is not inclusive of everyone,” she said. “And I think this mix of church and state, so-to-speak, is a treacherous road to go down. When they start putting their information out in the place where we make public decisions, that is perhaps a line that should not be crossed.”

Scott Fedler, treasurer of Iowa Secularists, said Focus on the Family and the Iowa Family Policy Center are free to distribute copies of their program to every legislator for them to view on their own time, but for them to be allowed to “set up a recurring appointment to show this movie, utilizing government resources and facilities, during legislative work hours, seems to be an endorsement by government and should not be continued.”

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These events beg a question some analysts have been asking since the dawn of the so-called new economy, when the internet and digital communications became integrated with the for-profit privately held universe. The question goes something like: How well does our desire for free expression mix with the demands and constraints of business?*

Twitter announced Monday it might have to shut down Iran’s postmodern revolution to make technical upgrades, because, you know, Twitter is a business after all and its managers and tech people had already decided that now was the time.

Concerned user/customers tweeted Twitter to say that now was not the time for upgrades, and Twitter agreed.

‘Our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight,’ [Twitter] founder Biz Stone said yesterday in a message to users. ‘However, our network partners at NTT America recognise the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran.’

So the revolution will be Twittered without interruption — by consent of management.

Social media’s power of political persuasion may be coming of age but so are questions about the ethics of tweeting, friending and so on.

In the U.S. election last year, when Facebook groups centered around libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton complained that their pages were being censored, Facebook administrators said that the groups were actually only experiencing technical glitches. Was Facebook, whose management was in the tank for Obama, telling the truth? Maybe. Who knows?

Reporting the story for the Huffington Post, Sara Hebert wrote that many Facebook users were becoming politically active for the first time in their lives and doing so in the post 9-11 world shaped by the secretive and abusive Bush-Cheney Administration.

The fear that Facebook may be biased — another source of hidden control, either as a result of staff interference or software design or alleged or ignored technical difficulties — seems a natural concern and one that should be addressed as a function of the medium.

Hebert advocated a “transparency division,” in effect, for all digital communications services, which would work to bolster confidence. It just makes good business sense, she argued.

In a digital world, the ability for privately owned services that are increasingly the contemporary equivalent of the public communications utilities of the now-distant past — early radio and TV and telephones — should expect wariness and suspicion on the part of users who depend on these technologies to communicate their most private and most political thoughts. To brush off issues of censorship as mere “technical glitches” is dispiriting for being remote and murky — the fertile swampland where fears of censorship grow.

But is depending on management to increase transparency really the best option, the best way to guard our “most private and most political thoughts”?

In a recent post to the IDC listserv — a space where analysts and theorists of all stripes explore our digital reality — IT theorist Nick Knouf considered Twitter.

He presents the conditions of use Twitter imposes on its users:

1. We reserve the right to modify or terminate the Twitter.com service for any reason, without notice at any time.

2. We reserve the right to alter these Terms of Use at any time. If the alterations constitute a material change to the Terms of Use, we will notify you via internet mail according to the preference expressed on your account. What constitutes a “material change” will be determined at our sole discretion, in good faith and using common sense and reasonable judgement.

3. We reserve the right, in accordance with any applicable laws, to refuse service to anyone for any reason at any time.

4. We may, but have no obligation to, remove Content and accounts containing Content that we determine in our sole discretion are unlawful, offensive, threatening, libelous, defamatory, obscene or otherwise objectionable or violates any party’s intellectual property or these Terms of Use.

5. The Twitter service makes it possible to post images and text hosted on Twitter to outside websites. This use is accepted (and even encouraged!). However, pages on other websites which display data hosted on Twitter.com must provide a link back to Twitter.

6. We reserve the right to reclaim usernames on behalf of businesses or individuals that hold legal claim or trademark on those usernames.

Is all of that really OK with all of us? Knouf asks. He suggests another kind of “Twitter Revolution” for Americans to undertake and celebrate:

I fail to understand why people continue to valorize a commercial service for these things while perfectly equivalent (in terms of technical functionality) services exist like http://identi.ca/ running Laconica (http://laconi.ca/trac/). So why not make a statement and encourage a move to an alternative service, thus refusing to materially support a provider that claims the right to remove anything it finds “otherwise objectionable” …? There are differences– real ones at that — between services that claim a faux-openness and those that are based on another type of openness that at least allows modification, forking, and … [user] control.

—
* I wrote a sloppy version of the question and so updated it. It originally appeared as: “Who will guarantee free expression now that we depend on businesses to transmit those expressions?” As Ernest pointed out in comments, with few exceptions, we have long depended on businesses to transmit our expressions.

The dispute over the hand-scrawled T-shirt boasting “Obama a terrorist’s best friend” did not mention the playground altercations in early news reports though outlets were quick to trumpet the boy’s father, Dann Dalton, threatening to sue and referring to the school district as “full of liberal loons.”

APS “[does] not suspend students for exercising their first amendment rights,” and in fact “students wear hundreds of shirt designs, including political shirts, without interruption to the school day,” spokesperson Paula Hans said in the release.

Students at this school and throughout the district, have been wearing endorsement shirts for both presidential candidates. Because these shirts have not caused disruptions, students have not been asked to remove them.

Hans cites the APS dress code, which is reproduced in a student handbook for the district:

“Any type of attire which attracts undue attention to the wearer, and thus causes a disturbance to the educational process is in bad taste and not acceptable. While preserving the individuality of our students is important, we also see the importance of preserving the educational process.”

School policy when clothing causes a disruption is to give students a choice to “turn the shirt inside out or change into another shirt” before considering discipline, the statement said. “Because the shirt did cause a disruption, we offered the student these options.” Hans declined comment to the Colorado Independent on any details of Daxx Dalton’s suspension, citing student privacy laws and policies.

The Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog posted a response to the fracas from a New York civil liberties attorney Tuesday afternoon:

E. Christopher Murray, a partner at New York law firm Reisman, Peirez and Reisman and the president of the New York chapter of the Civil Liberties Union sent the Law Blog the following in an e-mail: “The wearing of this t-shirt can only be prohibited if it could cause a risk of material disruption at the school,” wrote Murray. “It is hard to see how this t-shirt could be viewed this way. Students have a constitutional right to express their opinions about politics, and this t-shirt was not vulgar or anything other than a political statement. While the courts have recently cut back on student’s rights of expression, this case clearly seems to be an illegal curtailment of this student’s rights. ”

The legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado seconded Murray’s remarks. “If the parents call here, we’d be very happy to look at the facts,” Mark Silverstein told the Colorado Independent Tuesday afternoon.

“It’s a First Amendment issue and the ACLU is very concerned with First Amendment issues,” Silverstein said, pointing to a 2004 Florida case where the ACLU stepped in after school officials forced a high school senior to remove a T-shirt that read “International Terrorist” under a picture of President Bush. “The issue is whether the school has sufficient grounds to suppress the message,” Silverstein said.

The legal issues aren’t clear without fully examining the facts, Silverstein told the Colorado Independent. “The school would have to demonstrate there’s a risk of material disruption of school activities, that wearing the T-shirt substantially interferes with the work of the educational mission of the school.”

“We respect the free speech rights of our students, but at the same time we respect the rights of all students to learn without interruption,” APS Superintendent John Berry told a press conference Tuesday afternoon, according to Denver’s 9News.

“I am not one to sit there and say that, you know, I don’t want to offend somebody, because the truth offends a lot of people,” the suspended student’s father, Dann, told the television station.

Dalton also said he wants an apology and compensation for the time he took off from his job as a trucker to spend at home while his son was suspended.

The Rocky Mountain News reported Tuesday afternoon that the 11-year-old was suspended for three days. The Rocky also reports Daxx says his father came up with the slogan and “did most of the work” to create the T-shirt.

The father of an Aurora fifth-grader said Monday he plans to sue after school officials suspended the youth last week when he wouldn’t remove a home-made T-shirt reading “Obama a terrorist’s best friend.”

“It’s the public school system,” Dann Dalton told Fox31 News, “let’s be honest, it’s full of liberal loons.”

Eleven-year-old Daxx Dalton wore the crudely handwritten shirt the day Aurora Frontier K-8 students were urged to wear red, white and blue to express their patriotism. School officials gave him a choice, he said, “switching the shirt, or wearing it inside out, or getting suspended.”

“They’re taking away my right of freedom of speech,” Daxx told Fox31 report Christin Ayers. “If I have the right to wear this shirt, I’m going to use it. And if the only way to use it is get suspended, then I’m going to get suspended.”

Aurora Public Schools officials declined to comment on Dalton’s suspension but told Ayers it’s district policy to “Respect a student’s right to free speech, such as the right tto wear specific clothing.” A letter from the school shown on camera by Fox31 cited “willful disobedience” as a reason for the suspension.

It’s not about politics, Dann Dalton said, but about his son’s First Amendment rights. “The facts are, his rights were violated,” he told Ayers. “Period.”

It isn’t the first time Dalton, a self-described “proud conservative,” has made news testing the limits of First Amendment expression.

Dalton was among a group of anti-abortion protesters who marched through an Arapahoe County neighborhood to protest a Planned Parenthood doctor in July 2000, according to a Colorado Springs Gazette story. The protest came in response to a law passed that week by the Arapahoe County Commission that banned “targeted picketing” outside the physician’s home. The picketers, led by Bob Enyart, had been gathering at least once a month in the doctor’s cul-de-sac.

“This is God’s work,” said Dann Dalton, a Denver truck driver who took part in the protest along with his two young children. “They think this ordinance will end the problem, but now the entire neighborhood can enjoy the annoyance.”

Aurora schools are no strangers to free speech controversies sparked by conservative students, either.

Two years ago in the neighboring Cherry Creek School District, a high school geography teacher made international headlines after a student recorded a lecture that included comparisons between the speaking styles of George Bush and Adolph Hitler.

The student, Sean Allen, passed the recording to a radio station and soon Fox News was airing it while blasting the Overland High School teacher for “indoctrinating” students. The recording included the teacher, Jay Bennish, asking, “Who is probably the single most violent nation on planet Earth?” He agreed when a student said, “We are.”

A media circus descended upon Aurora and talk radio shows went wild over a number of Bennish’s statements. When students walked out of class in support of their teacher, Fox commentator Alan Colmes claimed students had walked out to protest his views. Bennish flew to New York for an interview with the Today Show’s Matt Lauer, where he said his comments were taken out of context and included contrary views expressed after the recording ended.

Civil rights lawyer David Lane represented Bennish, who contested a suspension from the classroom for failing to provide varying viewpoints for students. The school board reinstated Bennish, who agreed to change his teaching style.

Daxx Dalton said on Monday he’s willing to leave his anti-Obama shirt at home for a while. “Except on Election Day,” he told Ayers, “when I’m going to wear it again.”