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"New
York City's feisty mayor has censored so many so often that an Albemarle
County-based center for First Amendment rights has awarded him its first-ever
Lifetime Muzzle Award, officials there said Monday" (Maria Sanminiatelli,
The Daily Progress, April 13, 1999).
"'During his tenure as mayor, [Rudolph Giuliani] has stifled
free expression to such an unprecedented degree that we felt he deserved
special recognition,' said Josh Wheeler, an attorney with the Thomas
Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression" (Maria
Sanminiatelli, The Daily Progress, April 13, 1999).
"Every year on Thomas Jefferson's April 13 birthday, the center
presents the questionable awards to those who, in the opinion of its Board
of Trustees, deserve censure for censoring. This year's winners also include
Independent Counsel Kenneth
Starr and the Louisiana Supreme Court" (Maria Sanminiatelli,
The Daily Progress, April 13, 1999).
"This year the center presented 12 awards - the highest number
ever - a fact for which officials at the center blame the rising tide of
censorship in public schools" (Maria Sanminiatelli, The Daily Progress,
April 13, 1999).
"The winners will receive T-shirts with the text of the First
Amendment printed on the back and a huge pair of zipped-up lips on the front,
Wheeler said" (Maria Sanminiatelli, The Daily Progress, April 13,
1999).
"Giuliani already won a regular Muzzle Award last
year for directing the city's transit authority to remove New York Magazine's
ads that read, 'Possibly the only good thing in New York Rudy hasn't taken
credit for'" (Maria Sanminiatelli, The Daily Progress, April 13,
1999).
"But the New York mayor's Lifetime Award is a first" (Maria
Sanminiatelli, The Daily Progress, April 13, 1999).
"Wheeler said it is not yet clear whether the Lifetime Award
will be handed out every year" (Maria Sanminiatelli, The Daily Progress,
April 13, 1999).
"'It will depend if there's a deserving recipient every year,'
he said" (Maria Sanminiatelli, The Daily Progress, April 13, 1999).
"Giuliani's sins, according to the Center for the Protection
of Free Expression, include refusing to allow a group of taxi drivers to
assemble and protest against proposed city pick-up and drop-off rules, imposing
strict licensing rules on sidewalk artists, imposing a daily $45 permit
fee on street musicians and forbidding city employees to talk to reporters
without specific approval" (Maria Sanminiatelli, The Daily Progress,
April 13, 1999).
"'He has stifled speech and press to so unprecedented a degree,
and in so many and varied forms, that simply keeping up with the city's
censorious activity has proved a challenge for defenders of free expression,'
officials with the center said in a prepared statement" (Maria Sanminiatelli,
The Daily Progress, April 13, 1999).
"In the late 1990s, the American Civil Liberties Union has brought
12 First Amendment suits against the mayor and the city, and has won all
but one, officials said" (Maria Sanminiatelli, The Daily Progress,
April 13, 1999).
"Giuliani's office did not return phone calls asking for comment
Monday" (Maria Sanminiatelli, The Daily Progress, April 13, 1999).
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