Paranoia
Hi. Sorry I'm late.
My hardware AND the Net have been really flaky 'round these parts. Flaky to the point that I'm still not sure I've teased them apart. P6's load time sucked, but that was because a graphic in the "search for your legislator or media" box--which you'll note ain't there right now--was hanging. It's hosted remotely, one of those cut-and-paste-the-HTML dealies, which I forgot. So I'm looking at Mozilla's status bar saying it's getting something from fff.capwiz.com, and I'm like "WTF? I didn't post anything hosted there!"
The night light's reflection glinted brightly off the peak of the tin-foil hat.On the other hand, there was no reason the site's CGI was unresponsive.
And as I said, the local hardware is screwy. The OS, actually…IE6 has a couple of nasty reproducable symptoms. It's not viral. I take excellent prophylactic measures (I've actually never had a computer virus) and the anti-virus is basically up to date anyway. I know when the problem started and it would be unfortunate if the particular web site I was loading at the time was a problem…I would just blame Microsoft but…
I got a Federal file just like everyone else. That wasn't a big concern to me a few years ago. But then:
And you know that legal thing Talkleft posted, that I said should be linked all over he place so folks know Luskin's threat toward Atrios is empty? Well, did you see the NY Times editorials today?
In an alarming ruling earlier this year, a closely divided Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to dismiss a patently unmeritorious libel action against Consumer Reports for a 1988 review that rated the Suzuki Samurai sports utility vehicle "not acceptable." It said the car, since discontinued, had a life-endangering tendency to tip and roll over. The court's refusal to reject this flimsy libel case and avoid an expensive jury trial has set an awful First Amendment precedent that threatens to chill reporting about important public issues, especially health and safety. Dozens of media organizations, including The Times, are calling upon the Supreme Court to add the case to this term's docket and undo the damage.
These calls for review come nearly 40 years after the Supreme Court's seminal decision in The New York Times Company v. Sullivan, which sought to safeguard robust reporting and comment about public issues by making speech about public figures actionable only when there is clear and convincing evidence that the publisher spoke with "actual malice." Among other things, that decision elevated the role of summary judgment as a tool for minimizing the speech-silencing specter of costly lawsuits by public figures.
Interesting, ain't it?
In the current environment, it wouldn't surprise me to see NYT v. Sullivan challenged. Nor would I be surprised if the Ninth Circuit's decision was used as a precident for a while. Not that it would be smart to press this vis a vis leftist bloggers, as some feel is the intent. The left is getting just as mean as the right…though if LGF and its ilk were shuttered…nah, nevermind.
I never used to be concerned about that sort of crap. And I don't like being concerned. It's enough reason in and of itself for me to go recruiting anti-neocon voters.
