Fire, Fury, And The First Amendment

We have a new presidential biography on the market, called, Fire And Fury, by Michael Wolff. Donald Trump, styling himself as the forty-fifth president of the United States, has reportedly reacted badly to this book. At this point, Trump should know a few things about elected officials and publicly spoken and written words: primarily that after winning an election, the official is no longer a private person and therefore no longer protected by state and federal laws pertaining to libel and slander. Such an individual is still entitled to a certain amount of privacy, and making threats of violence against an elected official is unlawful in most cases, but satire and whistle blowing are fair game; more so than in the case of a private person. An elected official in northeast Kansas discovered this for herself in 2013. Satire and whistle blowing are still very acceptable under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Another very important aspect of the laws about libel and slander concerns specific losses that can be ascertained by the court. If one does not have those, one's case will generally be dismissed. Since we have laws about the types of income a United States president may rake in while in office, declaring a loss might be difficult for Mr. Trump. Using the White House for financial gain is legally defined as a conflict of interest for a president, and if published, written material impedes a president's ability to commit a civil tort, the president scarcely has legal recourse!

Donald Trump has been in office long enough to understand the legalities of satire and financial conflicts of interest involving elected officials, so it appears that he is only running his yap in an ongoing effort to distract the American public from matters that are more important that Fire And Fury. It is nice to see Americans take a renewed interest in reading books, though.

Whistle Blowing The Old Fashioned Way

Whistle blowing. A fun, new concept that really shouldn't represent a necessity. But yet, it does. What a shame that we do not teach history well enough in our public schools to avoid that other necessity of repeating history when we fail to learn an important lesson the first time. Or the second, third, or fourth time, as the case may be.

The subject of the expectation of privacy, and respect for the same, has been in the spotlight many times in American history. We have local and federal laws protecting privacy, and our nation's Constitution addresses it, as well. Verdicts in capital murder cases have been overturned because of governmental abuses of citizens' rights to privacy. A republican president even resigned as a result of the way his administration treated the rights of others to privacy. Anyone remember Watergate? So why was it necessary for Edward Snowden to remind the general public that we still have not learned a damn thing from our own history?

Back in the day, before the internet, we got things done the old fashioned way. A very recently published book titled The Burglary describes the actions of John and Bonnie Raines, and Keith Forsythe whistleblowing without the internet. J. Edgar Hoover, the head honcho of the FBI in 1971, was already notorious for blackmailing and threatening others. Despite American law and the Constitution, he established and sanctioned government practices of blatantly ignoring the rights of American citizens. Digging up dirt and using personal information to which he had no legal right was his most typical tool of blackmail, and it was his policy to encourage all law enforcement agencies to violate the law this way. Granted, he was FBI, not state or local police departments, but we cannot forget what rolls downhill.

Bonnie Raines cased the FBI building in Media, Pennsylvania, and one night, she and her cohorts broke in and stole a bunch of classified documents which outlined directives to snoop illegally, blackmail, threaten, and bypass the rights of anyone and everyone who found themselves at cross purposes with the government, as it concerned J. Edgar Hoover. After finding pertinent bits and pieces of information in their loot, the group anonymously gave it to a journalist for the Washington Post. The attorney general serving at the time asked the Post not to publish this information, and J. Edgar Hoover was furious.......yet, the show went on. Much of the privacy and many of the rights connected to privacy enjoyed by Americans today, along with the ability to question authority from the individual standpoint owes to this anonymous action and risk, taken by these three individuals. J. Edgar Hoover sought to become more powerful than the Truth, but alas! He was unsuccessful. The burglars were never caught, and their identities never came to light until their book was published. What did come to light was the corruption that had engulfed and swallowed all branches of the government at the time.

What isn't known is whether or not J. Edgar Hoover ever stopped to consider the irony of this particular burglary taking place in a town called "Media".

Happy Birthday, Stetson Kennedy

Stetson Kennedy was born on October 5, 1916 in Florida. He was, in addition to being a writer and researcher of folklore, a human rights activist. The latter actually began as a means of research, in order to write about the Ku Klux Klan, which he infiltrated after World War ll, in a successful effort to gain information. From this research and information, he authored the titles, Southern Exposure, and The Klan Unmasked. He also gave information about the Klan to comic book writers, who used it in creating villians to be defeated by Superman. Anonymous hackers would have been proud.

This method of infiltrating, researching, then finally exposing is what shedding light is all about. Stetson Kennedy infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia at a time when that hate group controlled Southern politics, and heavily influenced Northern politics. When he felt that he had enough information to address the public about who the Klan actually is and what they do, he went ahead and exposed them, nothing withheld. He wasn't worried about keeping anyone's secrets, hiding anyone's incompetence, or covering up anyone's criminal predilections. This not only what makes his writing great, but what makes the First Amendment great. Stetson dared to tell the world what he saw firsthand, and our Constitution allowed him to do so, even when it meant blowing the whistle on some very powerful terrorists.

Kennedy died in 2011, after a lifetime of publishing books and articles about folklore, activism, and human rights. He was richly rewarded by following his passion, and not many people believed the social strata of the United States, before the Civil Rights Movement, would ever change. He was never terribly clear on whether or not he thought he would see change at the time he wrote about the Klan, but the efforts of political activists and counter culture revolutionaries paid off. We need more writers like Stetson Kennedy.