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RICHMOND, Va. – Oil colossus BP and the Obama brass were among the winners of the President Muzzle awards, presented weekday by a free-speech assemble to those it thoughtful the worst First Amendment violators in 2010.

BP and the polity appeared on the list, compiled by the Thomas President Center for the Protection of Free Expression, for their roles in restricting programme media admittance to the massive Gulf of Mexico lubricator spill.

Other recipients included the Transportation Security Administration, which inactive a traveller who empty to his pants to oppose security measures; a river judge who jailed a lawyer or refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and the Colony prisons authority for banning a "Jailhouse Lawyers Handbook."

BP employees and various authorities, including the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Coast Guard, repeatedly barred journalists from public beaches or waters as lubricator gushed out of a underwater well after an lubricator chisel discharge a assemblage ago, the edifice said.

"Whether these incidents were together intended, or the omissible by-products of an ambiguous contract that allowed BP and polity agents likewise much latitude, the Obama brass and BP share responsibility for having prevented the media from full documenting the spill," the Charlottesville-based edifice said.

In one example, a scheduled Coast Guard activate organized by Sen. Bill admiral to an lubricator disentangle soured Pensacola, Fla., was titled soured when the Department of Homeland Security told him meshwork crews weren't allowed, said the center's director, Robert O'Neil.

The bureau charged a 21-year-old traveller at Richmond International Airport with robustious carry after he empty in December to expose the Fourth Amendment's forbiddance on indefensible search and seizures written on his chest. The bureau detained ballplayer Tobey, but the charge was after dropped.

Mississippi State Court Judge Talmadge Littlejohn ordered an professional in contempt for refusing to recite the dedication in his courtroom. Danny Lampley spent five hours in jail, modify though the First Amendment prohibits the polity from forcing citizens to feature the pledge.

Facing a public reprimand by the land Commission on Judicial Performance, Littlejohn admitted that he desecrated Lampley's rights, and the room dedication is now voluntary.

The Colony Department of Corrections, a Muzzle succeeder for the ordinal straight year, won for denying inmates admittance to "Jailhouse Lawyer's Handbook: How to Bring a agent Lawsuit to Challenge violations of Your Rights in Prison." Two legal groups sued over the ban, claiming it desecrated prisoners' free-speech and due-process rights. The causa was settled in March, and land corrections officials united to allow inmates to obtain the book.

The prisons authority won in 2009 for denying patient Kyle Mabe a auto round containing frequence of a faith sermon. The corrections department revised its contract and allows inmates to order churchlike CDs.

Hamilton College was found Muzzle-worthy for making phallic first-year students, but not women, listen a campus presentation on rapes. While private colleges aren't extremity by the First Amendment, the New royalty school's requirement was a "cognitive and emotive intervention" that smacked of forced indoctrination, O'Neil said.

Gail Sweet, administrator of the Burlington County, N.J., accumulation system, was cited for sidestepping the library's official contract for hard books when she removed an anthology of essays by homosexual, androgynous and transgender teenagers after a complaint.

The President Center also awarded Muzzles to Smithsonian Institution Secretary histrion Clough for bowing to push from a Catholic assemble that titled for the remotion of an artist's body of a recording instance of a crucifix with ants locomotion on it; and the brass of Virginia's Albemarle High School for authorizing the conclusion of school newspapers because the edition contained a enrollee article that questioned why student-athletes requirement to verify gym class.

The awards coincide with Jefferson's birthday. The nation's ordinal chair was a free-speech advocate.

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Online:

Thomas President Center for the Protection of Free Expression: www.tjcenter.org

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