Breaking News: Mark Nickolas Files Suit Against Governor Fletcher

This just in. 

Mark Nickolas tells governor he'll see him in court over censorship of blogs.  Actually, suit was filed in federal court over the censorship mess.  Jennifer Moore and attorneys with Public Citizen are representing Mr. Nickolas in this First Amendment case.  Jennifer is an outstanding attorney with a firm known for quality legal work.  Therefore, this is not a posturing suit but a legitimate legal action seeking a restraining order against the governor's actions.

Although one initially might think it a legitimate government interest to keep government employees on the government payroll spending their government time on government business, this is not how the blog filtering worked or was implemented.  Reports from Frankfort and others reveal that some blogs were blocked, others were not, some were then they were not, and a distinction was made between various publications (be they blogs or the on-line equivalents of main stream media (newspapers).  Plus, many on-line publications such as LawReader and our sites (www.KyCases.com and www.KentuckyLawBlog.com provide legally useful content or so we hope).  We never did stick our head into the lions jaws to ask "were we blogged too?"   Why would we would want to come up on their radar and risk their ire. 

This appears to be another fine mess that Ernie has gotten himself in as he plays a political version of cowpie bingo.   

Yesterday it was censoring political opinions, today it was flying a trial balloon on changing the law to allow gubernatorial appointments of the attorney general and state treasurer.  With all that is going on, someone at the state's power center needs to follow this sage advice - it's best to remain silent and let them think you are the fool, rather than open your mouth and speak and thus remove all doubt.

Here is a link to the posting at Bluegrass Report.

• ***NICKOLAS VS. FLETCHER FILED*** Federal 1st Amendment & Equal Protection Clause Lawsuit Filed Against Governor Fletcher, Secretary Rudolph, and Secretary Farris Regarding Censorship Of Political Speech
• Here is a copy of the Press Release from Public Citizen
• Copy of the Complaint

Here is a link to the story at LawReader: Federal Lawsuit Challenges Kentucky’s Censorship of Popular Online Journalist Mark Nickolas

Looks like the thermostat just got raised a few degrees in Frankfort!

Comments

[peaceout]

I just really don't see how anyone's First Amendment rights are violated simply because their employer wants them to work ... while at work. In other words, workers should work as would be described in their job description. Anything outside of that, i.e., reading the newspaper or blogsite, too many personal phone calls, would be grounds for firing. It seems easier, from the employer standpoint, to make it simple and block such sites off the computer.

On Saturday, July 8, 2006 Mark Nickolas banned posters that CLEARLY pointed out stories (threads) of Mark's that were not true ... graphs where Mark used FALSE data ... conclusions that were FALSE.
So, instead of Mark apologizing for his erroneous reporting ... he banned the posters ... so he could continue to fool his readers.

Just to name a two of the threads of Mark's I claim are wrong, false or otherwise misleading are, "Trending Democratic" and "Obsessed."
Mark is constantly writing blogs as fact based off of other blogsites as his source. For instance, "Typical Far Right Response." There are many more though.

I am guessing that Mark Nickolas will be banning a lot of future posters since he has filed this lawsuit. My guess is that Mark won't want other readers reading postings that point out his erroneous threads. I suppose since Mark Nickolas is banning posters, and employers are banning blogsites ... that makes Mark a ... hypocrite?

I am glad Mark Nickolas filed the lawsuit. I just wonder if Mark will be able begin to see himself with "grand delusion" and miss that people are really laughing at him over this?

[caroline mcbrayer]

I think the exact quote is "tis better to remain silent and appear a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt" Benjamin
Franklin???