Poor Mojo's Newswire

OAKLAND -- A proposed law would make it easier for police to arrest Occupy Oakland agitators by prohibiting them from possessing their weapons of choice at protests. The proposal would make it a misdemeanor to bring a host of items to protests including shields, fire accelerant and pressurized paint sprayers that several Occupy members have used against police officers and on private property. Rather than having to catch Occupy agitators in the act of damaging property or using the makeshift weapons, police would be able to arrest protesters they saw carrying the prohibited items, potentially weeding out agitators before protests get violent. "It's not the end all be all, but it does provide an extra tool that makes it more likely that vandals will get arrested," said Councilwoman Pat Kernighan, who heads the council's Public Safety Commission that will take up the proposal on Tuesday. Occupy Oakland member Mike King feared the law would give police greater latitude to search protesters and lead to even stricter prohibitions. "It's just a way of controlling and manipulating what should be constitutionally permitted forms of protest," he said. Attorneys with the ACLU and National Lawyers Guild did not return calls Wednesday. . . . Those arrested under the ordinance would face up to six months in county jail and a fine of up to $1,000.

The publisher behind the steamy New York Times bestseller "50 Shades of Grey" is coming out swinging against libraries that have banned the book -- claiming the censorship violates readers' First Amendment rights. A rep for Random House tells TMZ, the publishing house "fervently opposes literary censorship and supports the First Amendment rights of readers to make their own reading choices." The book, in case you don't know, is about a man and his sex slave in Seattle -- hooray! -- and libraries in Georgia, Wisconsin, and Florida have already banned it due to its racy content.

As November 2009 elections loomed, B.J. Roberts, the sheriff of Hampton, Va., allegedly learned that six of his employees were actively supporting one of his opponents in the election, Jim Adams. Several employees had recently expressed their support for Adams by clicking the "like" function on Adams' Facebook page and by attending a barbeque fundraiser. . . . Roberts then called a department meeting in which he advised the staff to get on the "long train" which him, rather than ride the "short train" with Adams, according to the six employees' complaint. After Roberts won re-election, he fired several employees, including three civilian workers and three uniformed deputy sheriffs who supported Adams. These six booted workers, thinking their Facebook 'Like' was the cause of their dismissal, sued Roberts for violating their First Amendment rights. Their position: a Facebook 'Like' is protected free speech. U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson's position: It is the Court's conclusion that merely "liking" a Facebook page is insufficient speech to merit constitutional protection. In cases where courts have found that constitutional speech protections extended to Facebook posts, actual statements existed within the record.