Podcasts

ACLU First Amendment Minutes

By ACLU attorney Bill Newman, with introductions by Rachel Maddow

The ACLU First Amendment Minutes -- with Bill Newman, director of the ACLU's Western Massachusetts Legal Office -- highlight threats to our civil liberties and what you can do to protect our freedoms. Hear new episodes throughout the week on WHMP 1240/1400AM or 96.9FM in western Massachusetts. You can also download the show on iTunes (please note that Apple's privacy policy differs from ours).

Listen to the latest Episodes:

2.5.10
ACLU First Amendment Minute: Howard Zinn
A true American Hero, Howard Zinn, has died. But how can someone who is known as a radical, as Zinn was, also be known as an American Hero?

ACLU First Amendment Minute: Close Guantanamo
In late January 2009, President Obama pledged to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility within one year. That year has come and gone.

ACLU First Amendment Minute: The FBI and Your Phone Records
An FBI agent who wants to surveil and inspect telephone records doesn't go to court to get a warrant and doesn't have probable cause or even reasonable suspicion to conduct the surveillance. The FBI agent doesn't get the telephone records, does he?

ACLU First Amendment Minute: Tariq Ramadan
You may recall the story about Tariq Ramadan, the Muslim scholar prevented from taking his job as a professor at Notre Dame by the Bush Administration in 2004. This story has a new conclusion.

ACLU First Amendment Minute: The Highest Court in Texas
The presiding justice of the highest criminal court in Texas refused to keep the courhouse open late in order to receive a request for a stay of execution to which an inmate on death row was entitled. The result of the ethics complaint is what?

2.3.10
ACLU First Amendment Minute: Canada's Largest Trading Partner
America is Canada's largest trading partner, and that country recently imported something from The United States that should make us proud.

ACLU First Amendment Minute: Senator Scott Brown
Here's the ACLU's take on the new senator from Massachusetts, Scott Brown.

ACLU First Amendment Minute: Texting While Driving
A law that prohibits a motorist from text messaging while driving clearly is an unconstitutional, government-imposed restriction on free speech. Or is it?

1.31.10
ACLU First Amendment Minute: Cold Winter of the Great Recession
In this cold winter of this Great Recession does the Constitution do the hungry and the homeless any good?

ACLU First Amendment Minute: Life Without Parole
Almost all of the 100 people in the world serving a sentence of life without parole for crimes committed as a juvenile in which no one was killed are locked up in one country.

ACLU First Amendment Minute: A Venerable Democracy
Today's freedom of speech question: In a venerable democracy, when a citizen posts online a video of a government official lying, what's the likely result?

1.27.10
ACLU First Amendment Minute: Police Misconduct
Police misconduct, lying on the witness stand, in New York City has become institutionalized. Who said that?

ACLU First Amendment Minute: A New Record
The USA has set another all-time record!

ACLU First Amendment Minute: Wikileaks.org
Can WikiLeaks.org survive? It's a website that publishes documents that someone, somewhere thinks should be made public, and then dares the government, any government, to try to shut it down.

1.07.10
ACLU First Amendment Minute: A Hot Stock Tip
Today, for a change of pace, we have a hot stock pick. Though the interested investor probably needs a Teflon-lined stomach.

ACLU First Amendment Minute: An Irritated Driver
An automobile driver, as the New York Times so delicately put it, "gestured offensively with his middle finger," at another driver who, whoops, turned out to be a cop. The result may surprise you.

ACLU First Amendment Minute: Ed Meese
Ed Meese, Ronald Regan's law-and-order Attorney General, who once blasted the ACLU for being what he called, "part of the criminals' lobby," now is standing before the US Supreme Court, shoulder to shoulder, with the ACLU.


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