Click here to view the video on YouTube.

“In my professional opinion, it is very, very important on a university campus to have some sex education going on,” DiPietro told the Knoxville Republican at one point, adding that if a single unwanted pregnancy or sexual assault was prevented as a result, that would justify the program.

“I have to go back to the First Amendment,” he said. “I have a professional obligation to preserve the First Amendment. I’m sorry.”

Campfield replied that he, too, supports freedom of speech under the First Amendment, but the issue is “forcing students to pay for speech they find objectionable.” He cited as an example a “transgender cross-dressing show” during the April week of events.

“If someone wants to dress up like a duck, God bless them. But I shouldn’t have to pay for it,” said Campfield.

DiPietro led a contingent of UT officials at a hearing before the Senate Higher Education Oversight Subcommittee. A group from the Board of Regents system was also on hand for the panel’s review of how mandatory student fees are spent on campuses around the state.

Both groups made lengthy presentations to the legislators — the hearing lasted almost two hours — including slide show presentations.

One slide showed that from 2010 until the present, UT has paid $495,385 for 96 speakers at campus student organization events, including those speaking at Sex Week. Regents schools have paid $703,724 for 239 speakers. In both cases, that is about 1 percent of the student activity fee budget.

Sen. Joey Hensley, R-Hohenwald, who presided over the meeting, billed it as an information-gathering session. He said the subcommittee would compile a report for the full Senate Education Committee, possibly including recommendations for legislative action next year.

There were no recommendations for legislation at Thursday’s hearing, but there were several debate clashes between Campfield and DiPietro. Among them:

Campfield compiled a list of paid speakers at UT in the past three years that he said, with one or two exceptions, appeared to be “left-leaning people.”

UT officials had explained that policy on speakers brought in by campus organizations, largely dictated by lawsuits and court decisions, required that the university be “content- or viewpoint-neutral.” Campfield said the list shows “there probably seems to be some content bias.”

“The list you have doesn’t reflect the whole portfolio of speakers we have on campus,” replied DiPietro.

He said many conservative speakers and Republicans appear on campus regularly, typically speaking without being paid a fee. He listed recent speakers including Sen. Lamar Alexander, former Sen. Howard Baker and Gov. Bill Haslam.

Further, he said, the College Young Republican chapter at UT has not requested funding for any speakers in the past three years and, if groups do not put in an application and go through the student-controlled selection process, they cannot get funding.

Campfield said some Sex Week activities were apparently open to students who are under the age of 18, an assertion that one UT official acknowledged was correct. But DiPietro said that only “six out of 27,000” students were under age 18, and they were admitted under special circumstances that included counseling with parents.

The senator asked DiPietro if he considered it appropriate for underage youths to be viewing events at Sex Week.

“I have a personal opinion and a professional opinion,” replied DiPietro, adding his professional opinion was that UT policy calls for all students to be “treated the same.”

Campfield asked if the UT president would consider adjusting that policy.

“I think we would consider that, sir,” replied DiPietro.

A three-judge panel of the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Thursday in a lawsuit filed by the Delaware Coalition for Open Government, or DelCOG, which claims the law is unconstitutional. The panel gave no timeframe for its ruling.

DelCOG, backed by The Associated Press, The New York Times and several other major news organizations, claimed in its lawsuit that the secret arbitration conducted by Delaware’s Chancery Court violated the First Amendment rights of citizens to attend judicial proceedings and access court records.

A federal judge last year agreed with the coalition, saying that the chancery judges, who often preside over high-profile business disputes involving some of the world’s largest corporations, cannot preside over binding arbitration proceedings behind closed doors.

“They are, in form and substance, civil trials,” attorney David Finger, representing DelCOG, told the appeals court Thursday.

But Andrew Pincus, an attorney for the chancery judges, suggested that there is little difference between what the chancery judges were being allowed to do and private arbitration, which is traditionally secret.

“This is classic arbitration,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any aspect that differs from a traditional arbitration.”

The judges did not seem convinced.

“It just seems to me that the Delaware model is a very novel model for judge-run arbitration,” said Judge Julio Fuentes, noting that the chancery arbitration involves a sitting judge in a closed courtroom issuing enforceable judgments.

“The problem is when a judge steps in with a robe, and powers of state. … At that point you’re more like a civil proceeding than an arbitration,” Fuentes said.

But Judge Jane Roth, widow of former U.S. Sen. Bill Roth of Delaware, questioned why Delaware’s legislature wouldn’t have the power to allow chancery judges to take on the additional role of arbitrator.

“Why can’t they do it?” she asked, noting that the legislature also has designated the head of the Chancery Court to serve on Delaware’s Board of Pardons.

The dispute involves a law passed by Delaware’s General Assembly in 2009 that allowed secret arbitration in business disputes involving claims for monetary damages exceeding $1 million.

Under the law and court rules, the Chancery Court charges a fee of $12,000 for filing an arbitration petition, and a daily fee of $6,000 for each day after the first day that a judge is engaged in arbitration.

The rules state that the court will not include any petition for secret arbitration on its public docketing system. The petition and any supporting documents are considered confidential unless the arbitration proceedings are the subject of an appeal. The arbitration hearings and related communications involving the judge and the parties also are considered private.

Attorneys for the state argued that secret arbitration made the court more efficient and generated revenue for Delaware, corporate home to thousands of companies.

In response to the filing of DelCOG’s lawsuit in 2011, Chancellor Leo Strine Jr., head of the Court of Chancery, issued a statement saying the law establishing the secret proceedings was designed to ensure that Delaware remains “the most attractive domicile in the world for the formation of business entities.”

But attorneys for the chancery judges deny in court papers that the state is invoking economic concerns to override the First Amendment.

“The question here is whether a First Amendment right should be recognized in the first place, not whether an established right may be overridden because of a state’s compelling interest,” they wrote in their appeals briefs. They noted, however, that if the appeals court agrees that the secret arbitration is unconstitutional, “it would make Delaware, and the United States generally, significantly less attractive as a location for global businesses to incorporate — thereby reducing not only state revenues but also job creation within the state.”

The appeals court judges wondered whether one way to solve the controversy would be to remove some of the secrecy by striking a provision in the law giving the chancery judges the power to issue enforceable judgments and requiring that their decisions be sent to the state Supreme Court for approval, resulting in at least some disclosure about the result of the arbitration.

But Judge Dolores Sloviter noted that the appeals court is not in the business of rewriting state statutes.

“We will take this interesting case under advisement,” Sloviter said at the end of the hearing. “My guess is that you will not get an opinion within 24 hours.”

Arguments are scheduled Thursday before three judges in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In September 2011, Lexington officials adopted an ordinance that prohibits the flying of the Confederate flag on city-owned light poles. It limits flags that may fly on the poles to those representing the city, the U.S. and the state of Virginia.

The city enacted the rule after some residents complained that the flag is an offensive, divisive symbol of the South’s history of slavery. It says it can dictate what flies on city property.

Attorneys for the Southern heritage group argue the ordinance violates the group’s constitutional right to free speech, among other claims.

Pestered by Republicans and some Democrats, Holder testified that he has faith in the individuals conducting the broad investigation, driven in large part by GOP outrage last year over the possibility that administration officials leaked information to enhance President Barack Obama’s national security reputation in an election year.

Holder said he had recused himself from the case because “I am a possessor of information eventually leaked.” He said he was unable to answer questions on the subpoenas and why the Justice Department failed to negotiate with the AP prior to the subpoenas, a standard practice.

That elicited frustration from some committee members with the Obama administration and the attorney general.

“There doesn’t appear to be any acceptance of responsibility for things that have gone wrong,” Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., told Holder. He suggested that administration officials travel to the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and take a photo of the famous sign, “the buck stops here.”

It was the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, Deputy Attorney General James Cole, who made the decision to seek news media phone records, Holder said.

Last year, Holder appointed two U.S. attorneys to lead a Justice inquiry into who leaked information about U.S. involvement in cyber-attacks on Iran and an al-Qaida plot to place an explosive device aboard a U.S.-bound flight. Holder had resisted calls for a special counsel, telling lawmakers that the two attorneys, Ron Machen and Rod Rosenstein, are experienced, independent and thorough.

Holder was grilled on several scandals rocking the administration, including the targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service and any missteps in sharing intelligence information prior to the bombings in Boston.

Responding to news of the gathering of AP records, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., planned to revive a 2009 media shield bill that protects journalists and their employers from having to reveal information, including the identity of sources who had been promised confidentiality.

The law does contain some exceptions in instances of national security.

“This kind of law would balance national security needs against the public’s right to the free flow of information,” Schumer said in a statement. “At minimum, our bill would have ensured a fairer, more deliberate process in this case.”

The White House threw its support behind the push Wednesday morning, with Ed Pagano, President Barack Obama’s liaison to the Senate, placing a call to Schumer’s office to ask him to revive the bill — a step the senator had planned to take. White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama “believes strongly we need to provide the protection to the media that this legislation would do.”

Obama’s support for the bill signaled an effort by the White House to show action in the face of heated criticism from lawmakers from both parties and news organizations about his commitment to protecting civil liberties and freedom of the press.

White House officials have said they are unable to comment publicly on the incident at the heart of the controversy because the Justice Department’s leak probe essentially amounts to a criminal investigation of administration officials.

Holder on Tuesday defended the move to collect AP phone records in an effort to hunt down the sources of information for a May 7, 2012, AP story that disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen to stop an airliner bombing plot around the anniversary of the killing of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. The attorney general called the story the result of “a very serious leak, a very grave leak.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence committee, said Wednesday that the leak was “within the most serious leaks because it definitely endangered some lives.”

Feinstein said it was her understanding that the information gathering did not focus on the “content of phone calls,” but rather “to see who reporters have spoken to, that somebody did provide this information with respect to this bomb.”

At a news conference Tuesday, Holder defended the subpoenas to the AP and disclosed that the department was investigating the IRS for giving tea party groups extra scrutiny when they applied for tax exempt status.

Documents obtained by the AP suggest the targeting of conservative groups could be more widespread than the IRS has acknowledged. The agency has said it was limited to low-level workers in a Cincinnati office.

At Tuesday’s news conference, Holder said the U.S. has gotten good cooperation from the Russians on the Boston bombings investigation. U.S. law enforcement officials are trying to determine whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev was indoctrinated or trained by militants during his visit to Dagestan, a Caspian Sea province of Russia that has become the center of a simmering Islamic insurgency.

The GOP-led House voted 32-24 along party lines to move the bill forward after little debate. Senate Bill 1178 now goes to the Senate for passage.

The proposed law would allow people to sue over an “impending violation” of religious liberty, as opposed to waiting until after the attack has occurred. It protects the practice or observance of all religions, including actions motivated by religious beliefs, against state and local laws or policies.

Civil liberties groups have rallied against the bill, saying it would be a nightmare for businesses because it doesn’t specify what constitutes a potential violation of religious liberty.

Arizona law and the U.S. Constitution already protect the free exercise of religion, but proponents say stricter language is needed. For example, they claim the bill will expand protections for prayer events hosted by government officials, as well as for religious leaders who don’t recognize gay couples.

Sen. Steve Yarbrough of Chandler, the bill’s sponsor, initially introduced a broader bill that would have allowed people to sue governments over attacks on religious freedom, regardless if the government was involved in the claim. The initial measure also stipulated that governments could only limit religious liberties to further an “interest of the highest magnitude.” Proponents said that version of the bill would have been one of the strongest religious freedom laws in the nation.

The bill was recently tempered to win over some critics who said it was too expansive. Yarbrough said Wednesday that he would have preferred if the bill had not been changed, but he supports the amended legislation and wants to see it advance in the Senate.

No prayer, no graduation.

On May 6, the school board voted to cancel sixth-grade graduation at Lake City’s two elementary schools. The action came soon after the district received a complaint letter from the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) objecting to prayers at previous graduations.

Rather than drop the prayers, the district opted to drop the entire ceremony.

The decision appears to be popular in the community. For many Christians in the predominately Christian community, no graduation is better than graduation without prayers.

A group of Christian parents have come up with plan B: Privatize graduation by organizing a graduation ceremony at a local church where participants can pray as much as they like.

No word yet on what parents and students of minority faiths or those with no religious affiliation will do on graduation day.

Meanwhile in Georgia, Houston County school officials also got a letter from FFRF demanding an end to prayers and religious music at the high school graduation.

The district is forging ahead with plans for a high school graduation ceremony – but minus the devotional content.

Needless to say, many conservative Christians in Houston County are angered by the change. Stripping the prayers and hymns from the ceremony is an “attack on Christianity,” one local pastor told Fox News.

What’s remarkable about these prayer conflicts (and we have them every May) is that some local school districts are still fighting about prayers at graduation twenty-one years after the U.S. Supreme Court declared the practice unconstitutional (Lee v. Weisman, 1992).

Every year, advocacy groups uncover school districts, typically in rural, religiously homogenous communities, that continue to practice a form of civil disobedience by including prayers and devotional music in their graduation ceremonies. And every year, school districts breaking the law are made to uphold it.

Defending school-sponsored prayers at graduation is a lost cause, as Lake City and Houston County school officials can testify. But prayer doesn’t have to be banished from the graduation experience altogether.

First and foremost, communities are free to hold Baccalaureate services during graduation weekend with as many prayers as they choose. As long as such services are privately sponsored, the school can announce the event and even allow it to be held in the school (on the same basis as other community groups use school facilities in non-school hours). Students and teachers are free to attend or not.

It’s also possible that a student speaker will offer a prayer. But under current law, such prayers are only legal if the student speaker was chosen by neutral criteria and given primary control of his or her speech (i.e., not reviewed or edited by the school).

If school officials do decide to let students speak freely, they would be wise to put a disclaimer in the program explaining that the speech represents the views of the student, not the school.

But the best way to accommodate prayer at graduation is to let people choose for themselves what, if any, prayers they want to pray by putting a “moment of silence” on the program.

After all, the decision to pray or not to pray is a matter of conscience – and not the business of any school or state.

Those of us who regularly work on freedom of expression issues are sometimes hard-pressed to convey the urgency of protecting these core freedoms. Concepts like freedom of speech, faith and assembly can seem abstract. Many view freedom of the press as just a news media issue. And few recognize the role of petition in shaping our nation.

But this week we learned that the Internal Revenue Service used its power to impede conservative political organizations with “patriot” and “tea party” in their names. They’ve even targeted groups that try to educate the public about constitutional issues. (We’ll try not to take that personally.)

Days later, we discovered that the U.S. Department of Justice had seized the records of phone calls made from 20 lines used by about 100 Associated Press journalists.  There was no advance notice to the AP and no communication with the news organization beyond a brief e-mail sent on Friday.

In a letter objecting to the records seizure, AP CEO Gary Pruitt called it “a massive and unprecedented intrusion by the Department of Justice into the newsgathering activities of The Associated Press.”

There’s still no way of knowing exactly what the Department of Justice sought in its probe of government leaks, but there’s little question that the subpoena was overly broad and clumsily-handled. News media organizations across the country have echoed Pruitt’s criticism.

The news this week gives us a glimpse into a very different America. Imagine a nation in which a government agency with the power to tax every citizen can play favorites, rewarding or punishing people for their political views. And consider a country in which no American would dare call a news organization about government misconduct for fear of being identified in a dragnet.

That’s a chilling and perhaps overly dark vision. Yet the news of the week is a sobering reminder that government bureaucracies can’t be counted on for self-restraint. That’s why the first generation of Americans insisted on a Bill of Rights, including the guarantee of freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly and petition.

When the government goes too far, we have the freedom to raise our voices and say “Not so fast.” That’s exactly what we’ve seen throughout the news media and social media the last few days.

Our real protection against the abuse of government power is vigilance by the press and public, and steadfast support for the freedoms we hold dear.

A congressional official said Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York plans to reintroduce the 2009 bill. The legislation stalled in Congress in past years.

The government obtained the records from April and May of 2012 for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists, including main offices. AP’s top executive called the action a massive and unprecedented intrusion into how news organizations do their work.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to publicly discuss the senator’s plans. a

Breaux Mart Supermarkets Inc. sued WWL-TV on Tuesday before the CBS affiliate aired the video in a report on the death of Norbert Gallego. The footage shows employees of the Chalmette store tackle and restrain the 51-year-old man before deputies arrived and took him to a hospital.

The New Orleans-area chain argued that the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff’s Office shouldn’t have released the footage to the news station, but U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance ruled that Breaux Mart hasn’t shown its video is entitled to copyright protection.

Breaux Mart lawyers said allowing WWL to use “unlawfully obtained intellectual property” could deter other businesses from sharing surveillance videos with police.

“Imagine if the businesses near the Boston marathon bombing had to think about whether or not to share their surveillance records with police after the bombing because of some other business consideration,” they wrote in a court filing.

WWL attorneys said the station lawfully obtained the video through a public records request and has “every right” to use it.

“Simply put, an injunction against WWL prohibiting it from using the Breaux Mart security camera video would be an unprecedented prior restraint of WWL’s First Amendment rights,” they wrote.

In her one-page order, Vance denied Breaux Mart’s request for a temporary restraining order but scheduled a May 23 hearing on its request for a preliminary injunction.

Breaux Mart lawyers said one of the chain’s owners saw a promotion for WWL’s news report and recognized the surveillance footage.

“The advertisement ended with a statement to the effect of ‘Why weren’t these men charged?’ leaving the viewer to infer that the Breaux Mart employees had committed a crime,” they wrote.

WWL reported  that nobody was charged in Gallego’s death after the parish coroner, Bryan Bertucci, concluded he died of natural causes. Bertucci told WWL that it “wasn’t an easy case.”

“He had a bad heart and a host of other problems. It’s not just one thing,” he said. “Was it complicated by this altercation? Yes. Did it contribute to his death? Probably. But in my opinion, that’s not what killed him.”

Breaux Mart lawyers said Gallego appeared to be intoxicated when he entered the store on June 9, 2012, and tried to leave with stolen merchandise. Two employees who detained him were injured in the struggle, they added.

When deputies arrived, Gallego complained of chest pains and was taken to a hospital, where he died about a month later.

St. Bernard Parish District Attorney Jack Rowley’s office recused itself and referred the case to Louisiana Attorney General James “Buddy” Caldwell’s office, which ultimately ruled out any criminal charges.

However, Breaux Mart agreed to pay about $500,000 in a civil settlement with six siblings of Gallego, a lawyer for the chain told WWL.