Media Law and Lit

In the 2014 film, Captain America: The Winter Soldier , the main plot is for Captain America is to stop an evil organization, who has built themselves up in the US Government, from starting a string of widespread assassinations called "Project: Insight."  Though arguably the greatest movie in the MCU, the plot of this movie seems fairly ridiculous when you think about it.  A secret terrorist organization builds itself up in our government for 60+ years, builds three flying aircraft carriers with thousands of guns on them, and those guns are all connected to some database that predicts who will be a threat, even before they can become one, and subsequently dispose of them before they can become a problem.  This idea makes for a good movie, but seemingly has no bearing on the real world.  Well, they aren't doing it with flying aircraft carriers, and they aren't very secret about it, but the American government seems to have a "Project: Insight" of its ow

"It's like if you were trying to buy a house, and Google owned the house, and a lot of houses on your block. And they were the buyer's agent and also the seller's agent," said Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt. "It would raise questions, certainly."'  This perfectly sums up the idea behind CBS News' article "48 U.S. states launch antitrust investigation into Google."  The article focuses on the lawsuit brought to Google by the attorneys general of all US States, except California and Alabama, as well as the attorneys general of Washington   D.C. and Puerto Rico.  They are investigating weather or not Google has a monopoly on the internet search engine business, and if Google is using this monopoly to push the search results it deems most important.  Google's firm grip on the search engine business leads to them virtually giving the first search result to the highest bidder, as the article explains.  The article highlights

  As we have talked about the founding of our nation, and especially our form of government, it has further astounded me that the Founding Fathers had enough foresight to form the government in the way they did.  Three separate branches, keeping each other in check, all getting their power to operate from the people, was an idea the world had never heard of before.  One of the aspects that I did not know much about was the supreme court.  The two videos we watched for class that are linked below really explained the courts in simple ways and had one main theme: the judges are Americans just like the rest of us, and they get their power from the people in the same way that the other two branches do.  When talking about the history of the supreme court, the fact that the courts receive their power from "public faith," as the video puts it, is possibly the most radical idea to come from the Founding Fathers.  A people who decides their own laws, and petitions the court to

For over 13 weeks, massive protests have raged in the streets of Hong Kong. Demonstrators and police have clashed with shouts and riot shields, and the growing unrest between the people their government and China is close to boiling over.  The protestors, showing up in throngs of millions, demand two things from Hong Kong's government officials: one, that they cement their government into that of a democracy, a system that has hung in the balance since Britain released control of it in 1997; and two, that their government hold the past and present police officers who have used brutal force against the largely peaceful demonstrators.  These protests are occurring now because of the deal Britain made with China when they let go of Hong Kong, and that was that China would leave Hong Kong alone for at least 50 years.  China technically owns Hong Kong, but there are two governments and two peoples residing in the nation.  China, however, has started to tighten its grip on the city-s