Well, now I know: Eliot Spitzer is joining CNN. Maybe CNN offered him a really sweet deal on his expense account…
Of course, this won’t even count as CNN’s most egregious breach of ethics, since that would still be Eason Jordan’s decision to cover up Saddam Hussein’s atrocities in order to maintain access.
CNN: The Least Trusted Name in News.
A few links you may find of interest:
Several commentators on yesterday’s post and video about a man being assaulted by liberal thugs for the crime of videotaping Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Kitzhaber at an event open to the public at Emmanuel Temple Church in Portland, Oregon, opined that no crime had been committed, since the videographer was on private property, and thus should have complied with a request demand to stop filming.
I’m not a lawyer, so I am not clear on the issue, namely: Does a political event open to the public, but set in a private space, count, for the sake of the law, as occurring in a public space or a private space? I can see how both might apply, depending on the circumstances and on individual state law.
To clarify the issue, I asked two of the leading legal lights of the blogosphere, Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy and Instapundit Glenn Reynolds for their opinion on the issue.
Volokh’s response:
Neither the press nor other speakers have a right to stay in a church when the owners or the agents tell them to leave. The same is true for other private property, except in a few states as to large shopping malls. Moreover, the owner of property has the right to use reasonable, nondeadly force to eject trespassers. But if the event is billed as open to the public, then trespassers wouldn’t be trespassers until they’re told to leave and refuse. I haven’t seen the video, so I can’t speak to the facts in this case.
Reynolds’ response:
I agree with Eugene. As a practical matter, if I were the filmer in question I would probably sue for assault, etc. on general principles. Fear of lawsuits causes people to do all sorts of things; it might as well make them more reluctant to hassle photographers. But that’s just me following the “punch back twice has hard” philosophy propounded by a great man.
Thanks for both gentlemen for clarifying some of the legal issues involved.
A few points:
With the economy still struggling and unemployment still high, you might think that Senate Leader Harry Reid’s top priority would be working on bills to get Americans back to work.
Of course, you’d be wrong.
No, even though 68% of Americans support stricter enforcement of immigration laws over an illegal alien amnesty, Harry Reid decided to go full steam ahead on his bill to provide an amnesty and college subsidies to illegal aliens 35-years old or younger by attaching it to the Defense appropriations bill. Thankfully, a cloture vote failed by an entirely-too-close 54-46. (Blanche Lincoln was among those voting against cloture, which is a slight surprise, since she’s so far behind her Republican opponent that it’s not like the vote could make things any worse.)
There are many theories about why Reid tried to push such an unpopular and divisive issue through less than two months before the election. One theory is that Reid, locked into a very close race against Sharron Angle, will need all the help he can get come November, and thus the need to pander to Hispanic voters. I think there’s an element of truth to that.
Another theory is that the Democratic leadership simply doesn’t care what American voters think. After all, they were more than happy enough to ram ObamaCare down the country’s throat despite widespread opposition, and the judicial arm of the Democratic Party has made it clear than voters will only be allowed to give their opinion on gay marriage if they approve it. They seem to regard the Nascar retards of flyover country (or should I say “Jesusland) with contempt, and “the consent of the governed” simply isn’t an important factor to Democratic congressmen when living in their natural home of Washington, DC. They know that none of their friends inside the safe reality bubble spun by The New York Times, NPR, MSNBC, Salon and Media Matters would ever offer them anything but praise for their “brave” stance in favor of illegal alien amnesty.
And those panicked political consultants complaining about a coming tidal wave of Republican gains uneseen since 1994? Well, those are hard to hear over the clink of self-congratulatory champagne glasses, and the sounds of all your friends on Capitol Hill and in the MSM saying how awesome you are.
Molly Norris, the cartoonist who created Everybody Draw Mohammed Day as a joke, has now gone into hiding because American-born, Yemen-based imam Anwar al-Awlaki has put a fatwa on her head. As the WSJ asks: Where’s Obama standing up for her First Amendment rights?
In other news, award-winning science fiction writer Elizabeth Moon has enraged some of the usual suspects (including one deploying the classic “but-but-but Pope Alexander II” fallacy) by pointing out that modern Islam has some problems as part of a larger essay on citizenship, with which there is much to agree. (I do take exception to her passing comments about “Libertarians, survivalists, Tea-Partyers” being people whose “whose goals benefit only their own group;” as smaller government and lower budget deficits are indeed goals that would benefit United States citizens as a whole. And survivalists need only bring up Katrina, Ike, etc., to point out that people with sources of functional food, communication, transportation, etc., in an emergency greatly benefit the community as a whole as well.) I thought about posting this on my non-political blog, where I cover a lot of science fiction topics, but thought it fit in better over here.
As long as we’re on the topic of The Religion of Peace™, there are ten time as many antisemitic hate crimes in the U.S. as anti-Islamic hate crimes. (Figures are from 2008, the most recent for which the FBI has released figures.) As for Europe, some may find it appalling that every single “assault rape” committed in Oslo, Norway between 2007-2009, “the offender was a non-Western immigrant.”
At some point in the future, I hope to touch on the topic of why Islamists have become the most sacred group in the American Far-Left Pantheon of Victimization (perhaps one could ask Lynne F. Stewart, assuming you could contact her during visiting hours while serving her 10-year sentence for aiding and abetting terrorists), but this post is already long enough as is…
(BTW, I have some of Elizabeth’s books for sale over on at Lame Excuse Books for those of you who read science fiction.)
Today’s New York Times reveals that the Democratic Party isn’t just going to run against Bush this fall.
Mainly they’re going to run against Sarah Palin.
It’s interesting to see the irrational sputtering and fuming from the left on Palin, especially when asked what they think of her. They always start with the assumption that every right-thinking (which is to say Left-thinking) person believes that Palin is some sort of drooling moron. When asked to back up this judgment they become very defensive, or else cite widely debunked sound-bites such as her being a book-banner or a bad student (as opposed to being a member of the Honor Society), or saying God made dinosaurs 4,000 years ago.
It’s amazing that a political party who has controlled the House and Senate for four years, and the White House for two is, instead of running on their own record, attacking someone who currently holds no elective office. I’m sure that will earn some ink in any official history of the Democratic Party’s failure in this year’s elections…
According to this story,
Convicted DC sniper Lee Boyd Malvo tells actor William Shatner on a cable TV special that he and his partner tried to recruit fellow shooters for their 2002 spree and that his accomplice killed one man for backing out, according to the program set for airing Thursday [on A&E].
That little tidbit raises a number of interesting points:
I guess we’ll have to get used to saying “William Shatner, Investigative Journalist” in the same way we’ve gotten use to saying “Emmy-Award-winning actor William Shatner.”
(Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds, although I think Instapundit buried the lede here, leaving out the all-important Shatner Angle.)
Journalists used to say things like “I disagree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say them.” In fact, they still do. The problem is that they no longer believe them.
Daily Caller has put up more JournoList posts, and they show that a significant number of liberal journalists would be happy to see the government shut down Fox News. Jonathan Zasloff asks “is their any reason why the FCC couldn’t simply pull their broadcasting permit when it expires?”
Who knew that, despite all their posturing, liberal journalists cared as little about the first amendment (or at least letting their ideological opponents exercise it) than the second? How dare anyone have a different view of consensus reality than them?
Free speech for me, but not for thee.