free speech for me and thee -- but I'm not so sure about thee

Another State Dept. embarrassment -- this episode in which a Palestinian cartoonist is uninvited to take part in a program focusing on free speech because, well, they don't like his cartoons, aka his speech.  Can't tell if the U.S. govt is immune to embarrassment or just tone deaf.

When is speech not speech?

       No, it's not a bad joke.  It was at the nub of the decision by the Supremes yesterday, decided in favor of some data mining companies, which sell information from pharmacies about prescriptions individual doctors write.  They then sell them to drug companies, which use the info. for selling more drugs back to the docs. The case, Sorrell v IMS Health Inc. was a challenge to a Vermont law that barred selling, disclosing or using that information for marketing purposes.  Selling it for research, much of which is probably carried out under the auspices or funding of drug companies, was still kosher, and that was the problem. 
       The decision's not a great surprise, given the make-up of the court, although maybe surprising that it was 6 to 3. There's not an extensive body of First Amendment law on commercial speech & this decision didn't address whether commercial speech hews to a lower standard than political speech.  The dissenting justices, however, claimed it was established law that commercial speech could be regulated without violating the F.A. 
       Seems to me this case involves a similar questions as regulating political contributions: Is a corporate entity guaranteed the same speech projection as an individual?  And, is money speech?  In practical terms, I don't think that Glaxo, Smith or Klein and their ilk are being stifled nearly enough and I can tell the difference between a dollar and a damn.  But money certainly buys speech, and it 's a cornerstone of First Amendment law that that the govt. can't pick and choose among types of speech, which did seem to be part of the Vermont law.  I suspect the founding fathers would have been as eager to protect free enterprise as free speech.  They weren't exactly socialists, after all.
       Which leaves me wondering if there isn't a better way to limit the rapacity and predation and intrusion of big pharma into our health care and our health -- like maybe a single-payer system, for starters?  Oh, I forgot; that's socialized medicine.

domestic surveillance? enemies list? la plus ca change -- et continue, bien sur

       In the we're-not-surprised and they-should-be-ashamed categories:  Someone found out that under the Bush administration, the CIA went after Juan Cole, who attacked the war in Iraq, among other misbegotten policies, on his blog, Informed Consent.  The CIA claims to be able to find no record of such surveillance, and Cole assumes he wasn't alone as a target.  All very familiar.  And depressing. 
       And continuing more publicly under the Obama administration in its aggressive prosecutions of government whistleblowers, including Tom Drake (ex-NSA), Jeffrey Sterling (ex-CIA), Steven Kim (State), Shamai Leibowitz (ex-FBI), and Bradley Manning, whose current status is unclear while the Army stashes him away in Leavenworth and the government figures out what they want to do about him, and through him, about WikiLeaks Julian Assange.