I'm sure Officer Peter Flannery had better things to do than pay me a visit and alarm my neighbors. This neighborhood polices itself and idling cruisers here are rare.

First, I'm not a lawyer. If I don't know something for sure I double check by looking it up on Google before I post about it.

Mr. Slager says he filed a criminal complaint with the Wareham Police Department. He has every right to do so. I think he could have filed it with District Court as well.

The police have a lot of discretion in what they decide to investigate and pass on to the district attorney. I think they could decide there's no merit to his complaint and not send it to the DA. I'm not sure, but if they decided this Slager might be able to refile it directly with the DA.

As I noted before, I don't think he has a very strong case for claiming criminal harassment. What significant harm has been done to him? Is he living in fear?

If you remember the OJ trials, there are different standards for being convicted of a criminal and a civil charge. The former is beyond a reasonable doubt, the later a predominance of the evidence. But in both cases the evidence has to support the exact letter of the law. Murder is murder, but when it comes to harassment there's a lot of room for interpretation.

We also get into the First Amendment, and in an interesting way because both sides can claim they are protected under it.

The description by Mr. Slager of how Mr. Whitehouse's current site evolved makes him sound immature and, depending on who's ox is being gored, malicious.   I seems to me that Whitehouse has a plausible defense in stating that this is a political website which often uses satire, sometimes barbed, and sarcasm. He could point to the link with a porn site as an example of journalistic mischief.

He could also say that his readers take with a grain of salt posts attributed to people like Mr. Slager and that he expects them to do so. I did, and asked directly whether it was really him.

My advice to Mr. Slager is not to waste any more money on a lawyer. I doubt there will be a criminal prosecution. What would his goal be? To get a restraining order? If so, what would it restrain? He can't get this website taken down. He can't force people not to write about him.
Of course, there's no monetary damages from a criminal case.

For monetary damages he'd have to file a civil suit. He would both have to win his case and justify why he should receive a monetary award.

I think he was right to ask for Mr. Whitehouse not to allow posts signed Robert Slager. I suggest taking him at his word and removing his name even if the posts remain.

Others should be free to speculate whether Slager posted under other names. He easily could have done so with a laptop from a MacDonalds with Internet access. Then all that would be available would be the operating system of the laptop and the IP of the MacDonalds.

I think I saw him in the bagel shop  playing on a computer.  There were complaints that after the person left, cream cheese had been smeared on the keyboard.

How do we know someone else didn't register as robert slager and post in his name.  Are there any other robert slagers in massachusetts?

To urneighbor...BS.. .if you are not a lawyer or part of the legal system, you should be.

I think everyone should just calm down, sip a nice cold (iced) drink. Oh, hit the massage tables and relax those tight muscles!  Breathe.....in with Jesus, out with Satan.......

Thanks Dan. Saying someone sounds like a lawyer can sometimes actually be a compliment.

For some reason I think Mr. Slager decided to write this up as a news article instead of an editorial, and used the third person for this reason.

That is, of course, unless someone  else interviewed him. If this is the case as editor I would have included a byline to avoid such confusion.

As a news report the article is lacking. I can't imagine a responsible editor publishing it because there is no indication that an attempt was made to interview Mr. Whitehouse for this article.

All the article says about an effort to contact Whitehouse is that he "did not return an e-mail sent to him this morning requesting that the fraudulent attributions be removed immediately."

There is an important distinction here. Slager or his reporter apparently did not contact Whitehouse for an article.

In my opinion this is poor journalism.

Assuming that the editorial staff of The Wareham Observer paper is comprised of one person this should have been written as an editorial using the first person.

Who cares what Bobo thinks? This is just his way of MAKING HIMSELF THE NEWS!

It's also classic distraction. You bat this stupid rift around for a while, and in the meantime he hopes you forgot or miss what's going around around you.

Don't feed in to it!

I totally agree with commonsense, Slager lives to make himself the news..The Rag, and its tri-town counterpart, aren't even worthy of discussing..anyone who read last weeks tri-town was treated to a full page of former welterweight Champ Alexis Arguello!!..never heard of him??..unless you were a boxing junkie, chances are you haven't!!..I wonder what possesses the advertisers in either one of those alleged newspapers to continue to fork over their money..Do they even read these pieces of shit??..screw Slager and the horse he road here on from the housing project in Halifax..

AND A BIG SLIMEY FAT UGLY ASSHOLE OFF WORLD RENOUN , SLAGER PUT YOUR NEW PICTURE IN YOUR ARTICALS, AND FOR THE LIFE OF ME WHAT  MAKE PEOPLE WASTE THERE MONEY ADVERTISING IN THE RAG , I GO OUT OF MY WAY NOT TO  SHOP AT A SITE WHO ADVERTISES IN THE  RAG , STOPPED GOING TO SHOOTERS A LONG TIME AGO , WONT GO TO ANCHOR LICQUORS IN WEST WAREHAM , WONT BUY A FLAG FROM FRANKLIN FLAGS.  AND  THAT IS MY OPINNION IF YOU ADVERTISE IN THE RAGOR YOU SELL THE RAG YOU WILL NOT SEE ME IN YOUR PLACE OF BUSINESS .  WHY I WOULD NOT EVEN GIVE HIM 75 CENTS FOR HIS RAG , I WOULD RATHER TAKE THE 75 CENTS AND THROW IT DOWN A MAN HOLE , MY NAME IS  I HATE LIZ , BUT I WOULD RATHER BE KNOW AS A I HATE SLAGER BUT THAT NAME WAS TAKEN  I AM THINKING OF CHANGEING MY NAME TO I HATE SLAGER MORE THAN  I HATE SLAGER DOES.

Last edited by ihateliz (2009-07-15 07:00:36)