Last year's winners: http://www.politechbot.com/p-01916.html Follow the link below for the details. -Declan --- http://www.tjcenter.org/muzzles.html "Did you ever hear anyone say 'that work had better be banned because I might read it and it might be very damaging to me'?" Joseph Henry Jackson, American Journalist, 1894-1946 THE JEFFERSON MUZZLES Since 1992, the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression has celebrated the birth and ideals of its namesake by calling attention to those who in the past year forgot or disregarded Mr. Jefferson's admonition that freedom of speech "cannot be limited without being lost." Announced on or near April 13 -- the anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson -- the Jefferson Muzzles are awarded as a means to draw national attention to abridgments of free speech and press and, at the same time, foster an appreciation for those tenets of the First Amendment. Because the importance and value of free expression extend far beyond the First Amendment's limit on government censorship, acts of private censorship are not spared consideration for the dubious honor of receiving a Muzzle. Unfortunately, each year the finalists for the Jefferson Muzzles have emerged from an alarmingly large group of candidates. For each recipient, a dozen could have been substituted. Further, an examination of previous Jefferson Muzzle recipients reveals that the disregard of First Amendment principles is not the byproduct of a particular political outlook but rather that threats to free expression come from all over the political spectrum. If you know of an act of censorship you believe is deserving of a Jefferson Muzzle, the Center encourages and invites your nomination. MUZZLE RECIPIENTS THE 2002 JEFFERSON MUZZLES GO TO ... (individual accounts of the winners follows) The United States Department of Defense and Secretary Donald Rumsfeld The New York City Police Department Intelligence Division's Threat Assessment Unit Kettle Moraine (Wisconsin) School District The Coalition of Brown University Student Groups Who Stole 4,000 copies of The Brown Daily Herald The Administration of Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical School, Fitchburg, Massachusetts Dacula (Georgia) High School Principal Donald Nutt The Kanawha County Board of Education (West Virginia) and Sissonville High School Principal Forest Mann The Hamilton County (Indiana) Prosecutor's Office Hecklers in the Audience at the December 2001 Commencement Ceremony at California State University-Sacramento ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sign this pro-therapeutic cloning petition: http://www.franklinsociety.org -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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