Carmen Electra Goes Down

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"Bong Hits 4 Jesus": Student Protest Goes to Supreme Court

Legal Experts Call Case Most Significant Student Free Speech Case Since the Height of Vietnam War

Joseph Frederick, a student rebel halfway through his senior year of high school, tried the patience of his principal when he displayed a drug-referenced sign reading “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” at a public parade in Juneau, Alaska, in 2002.

The 18-year-old had fashioned a 14-foot paper banner, which he held as the Olympic torch passed across the street from his high school on a national relay leading up to the 2002 winter games in Salt Lake City.

Frederick said he wanted to capture the attention of TV cameras — and the ire of his principal.

Principal Deborah Morse, who had previously disciplined Frederick for other acts of protest, confiscated the banner and suspended Frederick, sparking a feud that has gone all the way to the Supreme Court.

Monday, the Court will hear arguments on Morse v. Frederick, in what legal experts say could be the most significant case on student free speech since the days of Vietnam War protests.

At stake is the 1969 landmark ruling Tinker v. Des Moines, which said that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

Since then, the Court has narrowed that ruling, giving schools the right to censor speech to maintain order and protect students from harmful messages.

Less Tolerance?

But since the 1999 student shootings at Columbine High School, the legal climate has changed, and that, experts said, could influence the Court’s tolerance for student free speech.

“The student has a better case than the school,” said Martha Minow, professor at Harvard Law School. “But the trend of the Supreme Court has been toward curbing student speech and increasing deference to school administrators. If the school district wins here, it could have important ramifications.”

The school charges that Frederick’s banner promoted drug use and had an offensive religious message. Frederick said the language, which he had seen on a snowboard, is meaningless.

Frederick’s case has been taken up by the American Civil Liberties Union, which agrees the message on his banner was controversial, but he had the right to express it. The ACLU further argues that student free speech restrictions since the Tinker case do not apply: The event was not school-sponsored and Frederick was not disruptive.

The controversy has drawn an array of high-profile players, including Kenneth Starr, independent counsel during the President Clinton-Monica Lewinsky investigation, who has offered his pro bono services to Morse. Morse has also received the support of school boards around the country and the Bush administration.

Also in the spotlight is Mary Beth Tinker, now 54 and one of the defendants in the historic Vietnam-era case; she was suspended for wearing a black armband to her Iowa school to protest the war. Now a nurse and advocate for student rights, Tinker said she’ll be an “active observer” on the side of young Joseph Frederick.

“I had no idea at all the significance of what we did,” Tinker, who was only a 13-year-old junior high student at the time of her suspension, told ABCNews.com. “But it didn’t feel fair, and after talking to Joe [Frederick], he felt the same way.”

Frederick was suspended for 15 days for his actions. The parade itself was not on school grounds, but Morse’s lawyers argue the event was like a school-sanctioned field trip — students were dismissed from classes, and the band and cheerleaders entertained.

All agree that Frederick was a rabble-rouser. The school had previously called police when he refused to leave a common area. The next day, he was disciplined after he remained seated during the Pledge of Allegiance.

“I never professed to be a saint,” Frederick, now 23 and teaching English in China, told reporters at an ACLU teleconference.

Mixed Messages

The ACLU claims Frederick was acting independently of the school, and at least one of his cohorts was a nonstudent. And, say his lawyers, even if his message was construed as pro-marijuana, that issue had been a subject of legitimate political debate in Alaska for years.

The case was first heard in federal district court, which relied on the 1988 ruling in Hazelwood v. Kulhmeier to uphold the school’s position that it had a right to censor expression if the decision was “reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns.”

But the 9th Circuit Appellate Court fell back on the 1969 Tinker ruling that forbade schools from punishing speech with which they disagreed. The Court also held Morse personally liable for her actions.

Morse’s brief argues the ruling undermines “the vital task of teachers, administrators and volunteer school board members in attending holistically to the needs of millions of students entrusted every school day to their charge.”

“We think it’s a draconian and punitive measure,” said Francisco Negron, lawyer for the National Association of School Boards. “They are holding Morse responsible for professional duties when she was acting to uphold the educational mission of the school.”

The legal team will also ask the Court to review its interpretation of school sponsorship in light of the Internet.

“In this era of instant communication, it’s quite a challenge for principals to maintain sufficient order and safety to do what they do — teach,” said Negron.

Steve R. Shapiro, legal director at the ACLU, argued Frederick’s protest was not at school and is therefore not a case of student free speech. To call it so would “change the architecture for student law,” he said.

“They didn’t like what he said, and the thought he wanted to convey, and it was censored,” said Shapiro. “That would permit schools to censor student speech whenever they chose to and completely unravel the Court’s understanding of the last 40 years.”

Last year, the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va., fielded 1,260 calls for legal advice from high school newspapers, according to Executive Director Mark Goodman.

One call came in January, from student editor Eric Sheforgen, whose St. Francis, Minn., high school principal objected to the publication of a theater department photo of a student tearing up tablecloth bunting that looked like a flag.

Fearing it would anger veterans, the school froze the newspaper’s funds and threatened legal action. Students countered with this replacement: “Originally, a photo was to be placed here but was censored by the administration.”

“It’s not at all democratic or American to silence the voice of students who will become leaders,” said Sheforgen, who said students had been responsible for the St. Francis High School Crier editorial content for 30 years.

The principal has invoked the more restrictive Hazelwood ruling, insisting that Sheforgen remove the paper’s editorial guidelines, declaring it is “an open forum for student expression.”

In a standoff between the editor and principal, the Crier has not published in two months.

“A lot of people don’t realize how dramatically Hazelwood changed the landscape for student expression,” said Goodman. “You look at a lot of high school journalism programs today, and what you see is more akin to journalism as it is practiced in China than in the U.S.”

Lawyers in the Frederick case said most schools are willing to work with students before sanctioning outright censorship. They say Frederick could have avoided suspension when Morse asked him to meet in her office after the parade, but he failed to show up.

Mary Beth Tinker, whose black armband now sits behind glass in the First Amendment Museum in Chicago, insists Morse v. Frederick is more than a referendum on drugs.

“Research has shown that what keeps kids healthy and in school is an atmosphere of democracy and involvement,” said Tinker, who now visits high schools to talk to students about her own Supreme Court challenge.

“Columbine started a wave of feeling that kids needed to be controlled and they were somehow a dangerous group of people to be feared,” Tinker said. “Kids need to be able to express themselves because in a democracy, the ones who are affected should have a voice.”

The ‘Burger King’ Will Have His Own Movie

By now everyone’s seen those bizarrely creepy Burger King commercials in which the massive-headed mascot appears in the most weirdly unlikely of places. Apparently this ad campaign has been something special for the BK corporation — it even spawned a series of Xbox video games that some of my friends call “addictively awful.” (I played the one called Sneak King … for about 3.3 minutes.) But now comes word that the King of Burgers is about to make the leap to the silver screen. Yes, that’s right: A feature film centered around a corporate mascot.

According to MSN, Burger King already has a studio and a distribution deal in place for Burger King: The Movie* — and they’re threatening to have the movie finished by the end of this year! The head marketing guru for the fast food franchise indicates that the flick will be an “origin story,” although I doubt it will be a re-enactment of the character’s true origins. Who’d want to watch a movie about a mid-70’s marketing meeting, anyway? (“Hey, I know! We’re called Burger King, so let’s use an actual burger king!”) It’s a horrible idea to make a Burger King movie, obviously, but at least the company is being honest about it. I distinctly remember a few movies that felt like feature-length McDonald’s commercials, only they were advertised as actual films.

Lawmakers in Italy demanded a fashion ad for Dol…

Lawmakers in Italy demanded a fashion ad for Dolce & Gabbana be censored and an industry advertising group complied.

The ad depicts a bare-chested man pinning down a woman in a black bathing suit while four other men look on. The image was part of Dolce & Gabbana’s spring campaign and had brought the ire of women’s rights groups around the world, including the National Organization for Women (NOW) in the United States.

On Monday (March 5, 2007), the Advertising Self-Discipline Institute of Italy banned the ad from all Italian publications. On Wednesday (March 7, 2007) designers Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce decided to pull the advertisement from publications worldwide. The duo said they didn’t mean to offend women.

“It was never our purpose to cause any controversy and instigate violence against women,” Dolce told Newsweek magazine.

The image was meant to “recall an erotic dream, a sexual game,” he added.

Kim Gandy, NOW president, told Bandweek: “It is a provocative ad, but it is provoking things that really are not what we want to have provoked. We don’t need any more violence.”

See the zillion other D&G Ad’s HERE.

Tara Conner Celebrates 90 Days Sober

Mess USA Tara Conner isn’t letting a little thing like 90 days of sobriety get in the way of her partying!

The rehabbed beauty queen celebrated her first three months of sobriety with a party at a Hollywood nightclub. Cheers! 51 of Tara’s closest pageant contestant friends — and the press — came out to Social Hollywood to, er, toast Tara on her crowning achievement. Britney , Lindsey ,Tara and Paris were invited, no word on if they were able to break free of rehab to join in with the celebration…Trump that!

Donald and Vince’s Violent Foreplay

Donald Trump and Vince McMahon might be getting henchmen to do their bidding in their upcoming Bald Battle, but they couldn’t resist mixing it up as a little appetizer.

If last night was any indication, Vince better get his trimming shears sharpened and ready, because Trump flexed some muscle and showed him who’s fired.

Donald and Vince signed the official contract on Monday night’s “WWE Raw,” setting the stage for the Battle of the Billionaires at WrestleMania 23 on pay-per-view April 1, with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin acting as referee. But Trump wasn’t having any of McMahon’s trash-talking — and demonstrated what he’d really like to do with those “Apprentice” castoffs.

"No, really it was ok…." I wanted it done…

Castration ring’s key figures gain freedom

WAYNESVILLE — The six men castrated in a sadomasochistic dungeon fashioned from an enclosed carport all told prosecutors they saw no need for criminal charges.

Even a judge Thursday said calling the men victims might be a stretch, though what happened was certainly a crime.

“I think this is a type of perversion that cannot be tolerated by society,” Superior Court Judge Dennis Winner said in sentencing three men who performed the castrations.

Richard Peter “Master Rick” Sciara and his partner of 20 years, Michael Mendez, both pleaded guilty to felony castration without malice and felony maiming without malice. The man Sciara and Mendez called their slave, Danny Carroll Reeves, also pleaded guilty to the charges.

Prosecutors said the crimes happened in 2004 and 2005 at house in a quiet neighborhood near Waynesville. In a search of the Peace Mountain Road home, investigators said they found evidence including a scrotum and a testicle kept in a freezer.

Plea deal trims charges

In exchange for the pleas, the state dropped charges of misdemeanor practicing medicine without a license and conspiracy.

Winner sentenced Sciara, 62, to a year in jail and three years’ probation. Sciara has been in jail for 350 days since his arrest last year. The judge said his time served while waiting for trial would apply to his sentence.

Sciara will be on six months’ electronic house arrest after his release on March 29.

Mendez, 61, got four months in jail but had already served six months so he was free to go. He is on house arrest for two months and has supervised probation for three years.

Reeves, 50, got eight months in prison, but he has also been in jail since his arrest so he was allowed to leave. Reeves got four months house arrest and three years’ probation.

All three will pay court costs and can’t perform surgery or have surgical equipment as terms of their probation.

The only witness called to testify during the 2 1/2 hour hearing and sentencing was Sciara’s brother, Anthony Sciara, a well-known Asheville clinical psychologist who has testified in other criminal cases.

He was there as a family member, not an expert.

Brother testifies on past

Sciara’s lawyer, Roy Patton, called him to talk about his brother’s past, his personality and his time in Vietnam as a Navy medical corpsman.

Anthony Sciara said his brother was different from other boys growing up but never violent. He said Sciara, from his time in Vietnam to his career as a physician’s assistant at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Topeka, Kan., has always tried to help other people.

Sciara learned how to perform castrations at the VA hospital, according to court testimony.

Anthony Sciara said he accepted his brother’s gay lifestyle and even encouraged him to move to Western North Carolina with Mendez when he retired from the VA in 1999.

Sadomasochism interests

But he said he was disgusted with his brother’s interest in sadomasochism and body-modification surgery and stopped speaking to him in 2002 because of it.

In his defense, Anthony Sciara said his brother performed the surgeries only to help others.

“His concept of himself is he is a helpful person,” Anthony Sciara said.

Assistant District Attorney Jim Moore said Sciara and his assistants performed the operations in the nude, and on one occasion, Sciara was drinking a beer and smoking while castrating a man.

His lawyer, Patton, disputed the claim that Sciara was drinking while performing surgery.

Voluntary body modifications

He said at least two of the men who visited the home were interested in extreme body modification.

They wanted Sciara to amputate their legs above the knees and had already each cut a finger off with garden shears to show their love for one another.

Sciara would not perform the amputation, he said.

The other men who had the procedures complained of testicular pain.

They included a computer programmer, a truck driver and an Army Reserve soldier, Patton said.

Some of the men had fake testicles called “nuteciles” implanted, and one had his penis removed entirely. Another man had the head of his penis cut off.

“(Sciara) felt like the medical system was not addressing the needs of this not-small group who had these needs, whether they were imagined or just emotional,” Patton said, likening the operations to abortions and breast enhancements.

The attorneys for the three asked the judge to consider Sciara’s medical experience and that the law doesn’t allow for consent as a defense to the crime.

They asked Winner to sentence the men in a range that would have meant credit for time served and a less restrictive probation.

No other criminal records

They brought up Sciara’s and Mendez’s military record. Mendez got a Bronze Star in Vietnam for carrying a wounded soldier to safety under fire.

None of the men had prior criminal records.

If the men had prior criminal histories and the state had been able to prove more aggravating factors in the case, they could have faced several years in prison.

Bill Leslie, Reeves’ lawyer, said his client was happy with the outcome.

“The judge did the right thing, and my client is walking out of jail today, so he’s happy,” Leslie said.

Patton said the men plan to start their life together again once Sciara is released. They will have to stay in North Carolina for now because of the probation.

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Listening to SXSW…

A few tips:

Tip No. 1: Minnesota’s The Current is broadcastcasting live from SXSW today and Friday. Today’s lineup includes The Young Knives, Money Mark, Sondre Lerche and more; tomorrow is jam-packed with Tom Morello, Andrew Bird, Fujiya & Miyagi and many others. Click the link for a schedule.

Tip No. 2: KEXP is streaming Peter Bjorn and John today, along with Apples in Stereo and others. Friday’s lineup includes The Stooges and Beirut. Go here to check it out.

Tip No. 3: WOXY.com is broadcasting live all week from SXSW. Get all the details here.

Tip No. 4: NPR is featuring live performances, interviews and other features during the fest. Bookmark this link and check it often.

Tip No. 5: If you have DirectTV, you can watch eight hours of performances every day during the festival. Here’s how.