Forum Post: operation inherited resolve: #DOD kills nameless "top" ISIS leaders daily as news proclaims

DOD still reports its targets as terrorist call it operation inherited resolve evoking prejudicial tactics

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Defamation

Defamation.—One of the most seminal shifts in constitutional jurisprudence occurred in 1964 with the Court’s decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.1008

The Times had published a paid advertisement by a civil rights organization criticizing the response of a Southern community to demonstrations led by Dr. Martin Luther King, and containing several factual errors.

The plaintiff, a city commissioner in charge of the police department, claimed that the advertisement had libeled him even though he was not referred to by name or title and even though several of the incidents described had occurred prior to his assumption of office.

Unanimously, the Court reversed the lower court’s judgment for the plaintiff. To the contention that the First Amendment did not protect libelous publications,

the Court replied that constitutional scrutiny could not be foreclosed by the “label” attached to something. “Like . . . the various other formulae for the repression of expression that have been challenged in this Court, libel can claim no talismanic immunity from constitutional limitations.

It must be measured by standards that satisfy the First Amendment.”1009

“The general proposition,” the Court continued, “that freedom of expression upon public questions is secured by the First Amendment has long been settled by our decisions .... [W]e consider this case against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”1010

Because the advertisement was “an expression of grievance and protest on one of the major public issues of our time, [it] would seem clearly to qualify for the constitutional protection . . .

[unless] it forfeits that protection by the falsity of some of its factual statements and by its alleged defamation of respondent.”1011

Erroneous statement is protected, the Court asserted, there being no exception “for any test of truth.” Error is inevitable in any free debate and to place liability upon that score, and especially to place on the speaker the burden of proving truth, would introduce self-censorship and stifle the free expression which the First Amendment protects.

1012 Nor would injury to official reputation afford a warrant for repressing otherwise free speech. Public officials are subject to public scrutiny and “[c]riticism of their official conduct does not lose its constitutional protection merely because it is effective criticism and hence diminishes their official reputation.”1013

That neither factual error nor defamatory content could penetrate the protective circle of the First Amendment was the “lesson” to be drawn from the great debate over the Sedition Act of 1798, which the Court reviewed in some detail to discern the “central meaning of the First Amendment.”1014

Thus, it appears, the libel law under consideration failed the test of constitutionality because of its kinship with seditious libel, which violated the “central meaning of the First Amendment.”

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“The constitutional guarantees require, we think, a federal rule that prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with ‘actual malice'—that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”1015

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http://law.justia.com/constitution/us/amendment-01/45-defamation.html

calliph

if we say what they want is a kingdom|

then they will accept a top down rule

I hope Israel doesn't bomb Palestine like the US and Brits bomb the semites in response to a deal with a country that isn't bombing anyone