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FCC Commissioner: Free Speech Is Endangered, From Campuses to the Internet

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai warned about the erosion of free speech in an interview with the Washington Examiner on Tuesday, making a crucial point about how a generation comfortable with thuggish intimidation on campuses and the Internet will have a weak immune system against the virus of official censorship. Liberty is a habit, which Pai perceptively warned we are losing.

free speech

Santana Pans Super Bowl Exclusion of Local Bands

Legendary Bay Area guitarist Carlos Santana addressed an open letter to the NFL on his Facebook page Tuesday, criticizing the organization for its decision to forgo local bands for the Super Bowl 50 halftime show, and opting to go with the British band Coldplay instead.

Carlos Santana (Don Emmert / Getty)

Yelp Loses 4 Stars: Stock Down 50%, CFO Out

Yelp! stock became the latest Silicon Valley darling in the week before Valentine’s Day to tank by double-digits, as big investors retaliated for the 50 percent stock drop since December by forcing the company’s CFO to resign.

Yelp NYSE (Richard Drew / Associated Press)

Facebook Censorship and the War on Free Speech

Free speech is under assault — not only in repressive dictatorships suddenly able to influence global conversations through the Internet, but across the Western world, and even in the American bastion of free expression. Absolute protection for speech as an inalienable right has given way to bitter squabbling over how much free expression should be sacrificed for various, ostensibly noble goals, and who the censors will be.

Associated Press

Rick Santorum Blasts USA Today, ‘We’re Fighting Back!’

GOP presidential candidate former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, the winner of the 2012 Iowa caucus, blasted the media because of a USA Today article that suggested he was thinking about exiting the 2016 race. Santorum said that from the start of the campaign “[the media] decided that we’re not worthy of them.”

Santorum APJ. Scott Applewhite

Islamic State Creates Its Own Secure Messaging App

Islamic State supporters have explored a variety of social media tools for distributing propaganda and coordinating their efforts, most recently the Telegram app — whose owners originally refused to take action against ISIS accounts because they wanted their platform totally free of government interference but changed their stance after the Paris massacre and began blocking ISIS-related channels.

Islamic State fighters

Millennials: The Curated Generation

A few weeks ago I accidentally found myself surrounded by millennial college students. I was walking by the Verizon Center in Washington D.C. after the Georgetown vs. UNC-Wilmington basketball game when I overheard a group of millennials talking.

Getty Images