The Authors Guild, of which I am a member, has filed an amicus brief asking the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals to affirm a lower court ruling that Iowa’s book ban law is unconstitutional. And of course it is. The subject barely warrants legal examination because it is impossible to draft a content-focused general book ban law that does not ...
In the 1980s, the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), led by Tipper Gore and several other wives of Washington insiders,[1] sought to compel record labels to place stickers on albums warning consumers that the songs within contained “explicit lyrics.” Songwriters, including Frank Zappa, John Denver, and Dee Snider testified in Senate hearings to oppose the label initiative on First Amendment ...
If I believed in Hell and a “special place” reserved for certain villains, I would say that one of those suites in the stygian underworld is the destiny of all book burners. And lately, it seems that room is getting overcrowded. According to a recent story in The Guardian, “the ALA has been tracking bans for two decades and reported ...
