The First Amendment protects our freedom to say and write just about anything we want — but that doesn’t mean we ought to, particularly in public life.

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Students are free to pray in public schools — except when they aren’t.

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Assembly and petition are the “quiet freedoms” among the five rights set out in the First Amendment.

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They were a band of brothers, intellectual, spiritual and battle-hardened. Some of them, men like the Rev. Vernon Dobson, had come down from the pulpit to join their congregations on the street.

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Does anybody remember from their school days that a student ever went to jail for scrawling a slur or insult against a teacher or a janitor on a bathroom wall?

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I can say what I want, even if it offends you. And so can you.

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Constitution Day has become an annual fixture each Sept. 17 in the nation’s schools since it was mandated by Congress in 2004 – and 2012 may well be the best year yet for understanding its history and appreciating its meaning.

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Remember all the media chatter during the primaries about how the “Mormon factor” could undermine Mitt Romney’s candidacy? Forget about it. American voters, it turns out, are mostly unconcerned about Romney’s religious affiliation or have no idea what it is. ...

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Louisiana State Rep. Valarie Hodges used to be a big fan of school vouchers. “I liked the idea,” she explained, “of giving parents the option of sending their children to a public school or a Christian school.”

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Just how much should we worry about privacy? Near-daily incidents demand that we as a society redraw the line between our private lives and our public personas. The “public” is that part of us found in public records, subject to ...

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