School District 15 Tidbits

First, and most pressing, I need to inform my commenting community that Adam Feder, (Pamela Greenbaum's attorney), has identified the comments whose authors' he would like to see identified by Google. In a letter to the court, he said:

As per the stipulation So Ordered by the Hon. Marcy Friedman, please supply the ISP and IP addresses to the following posts:

a. Anonymous 7:19 PM
"Pam Greenbaum is a bigot and really should not be on the board"

b. Anonymous 10;19 PM
"Greenbaum is smarter than she seems, unfortunately there is a significant group of voters who can't get enough of her bigotry."

c. Anonymous 10:27 PM
"Greenbaum is not to be believed"

d. Anonymous 12:18 AM
"She is also ugly"

e. Anonymous 10:55 PM
"I heard that the majority of the board members support childabuse screening. Pam Greenbaum, refusing to ever agree with an Orthodox Jew, now opposes protecting children.
I've seen more maturity from kindergarten kids...what a stupid case of reverse psychology. Get a life, Pam. Even the public school parents (me) think you're pushing things too far."

f. Anonymous 10:46 PM
"I think you're reading her wrong. Pam is not only refusing to agree with an Orthodox Jew, she is also safeguarding the interests of the teacher's union"

Ok. That's all for the comments that the dynamic duo of Feder/Greenbaum have identified as defamatory. First and most important, if you are the author of any of these comments, please feel free to contact me, if you have any worries about maintaining your anonymity. And please rest assured that I and my lawyers intend to protect your right to anonymous free speech as zealously as we are trying to protect my own.

Now, for the meat. This letter Feder has sent out only shows how absurd and ridiculous this claim really is. The fact that an attorney of law can claim that any of these comments are defamatory is surprising. Even more surprising is the fact that Feder is seriously attempting to strip the anonymity of commenters who make statements such as "Greenbaum is not to be believed". Are we to take seriously the claims of a man who would like to strip someone's First Amendment right to anonymous free speech for simply stating that someone is "not to be believed", with no further qualifying comments on the statement??? Is this guy for real??? By setting the bar so low, it seems to me that Feder is going to have a heap of trouble making the case for any of the other comments he identified. Watch out world! If you say someone is "not to be believed" in an anonymous forum, you are risking getting stripped of your First Amendment rights - no matter your intention in making that statement!!

Another point: what ever happened to Greenbaum's and Feder's sworn affirmations that not only I, but my commenters, called her "anti-Semitic"? Never mind? Of course no one ever called her an anti-Semite. I've been saying all along that they clearly misrepresented that salient point in their filing. Also? They still have not shown where I make the comment against Greenbaum that they claim is defamatory. Of course, I know that the reason for that is because the supposedly defamatory comments made by me do not actually exist.

One last point: a careful reader might note that the comment calling Pamela Greenbaum "ugly" (though that happens, in any event, to not be an actionable claim - offensive as the subject may find the term) is not actually located anywhere on my blog. That is because I deleted the comment within hours of it being posted, months before this idiotic court case was initiated. My personal policy on non-substantive attacks such as those has always been to delete them, as they add zero to the discussion. So memo to Adam Feder: there always existed a somewhat simpler method of getting me to delete comments one may find offensive - certainly simpler than writing letter to judges with preposterous claims of defamation.

I will venture to say that Feder's letter shows how tenuous this case really is. What Feder and Greenbaum are asking is for a judge to rule that they are making a strong enough case for defamation that the speakers' First Amendment rights should be jettisoned. I certainly don't think they have done so.


In other news, Pamela Greenbaum seems to have flip-flopped on her decision of a few weeks ago not to run in the upcoming school board election:

The three public-school candidates are incumbent Pam Greenbaum, Andrew Levey of Atlantic Beach and Maribel Camcelliere of Lawrence.

Of course the Herald article mentions her candidacy as if she hadn't just publicly and clearly stated her decision to withdraw from the race - which is a bit odd. The article also strangely makes no mention of the lawsuit Greenbaum has filed, which I can't imagine anyone feels is irrelevant to the upcoming race. The article does bring up a lovely quote though, which it appears was made by Greenbaum in the aftermath of her win in the 2004 election:

In 2004 Greenbaum won a full-three year term on the board with a decisive victory over challenger Shlomo Huttler. "I'm in it for the long haul," she said. "I'm there fighting for your kids. We must beat them and get them off the board."

Who's "them"? Let's just say I won't spell out what I'm thinking, out of deference to Adam Feder's very loose interpretation of what constitutes defamation.