Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc. has announced:
The VCDL Board of Directors, after careful consideration, has decided that the recent ruling dismissing the VCDL case against Katie Couric, et al, CANNOT STAND!
The lawsuit has far reaching implications for all Americans. If the media can be allowed to change a person’s words to suit the media’s own needs or beliefs, then a grievous blow will have been struck against the very core of the freedom that the United States stands for!
NO! We are going to fight this because too much is at stake.
Today, I have directed VCDL’s attorneys to move forward with the appeal to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, where it will be heard by a three-judge panel “de novo” (which means the merits of the case will be heard anew with no consideration of the judge’s ruling that recently dismissed the case).
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If you wish to contribute to help covering VCDL’s legal fees, click here:
I’m not a lawyer but it would appear to me that it’s going to be a tough case to win. Apparently the bar they have to get over is:
Despite Couric’s admission, Judge Gibney dismissed the defamation suit against her last week. He ruled that the depiction of VCDL members did not meet the threshold of making them appear “unfit as a gun rights advocacy organization.”
I’m all for making anti-gun people pay a price for their lies and deception and I don’t know of any better hills to take a stand on, but it would be best if you had a good chance of winning the battle.
18 USC 241 remains un-enforced in this regard. A blatant attempt (as part of an on-going, coordinated program of obfuscation, deception and outright lying) to chill the exercise of a constitutionally enumerated right, it would seem to me, is at the heart of this matter.
Free speech is protected. Sedition is not.
And so, rather than a defamation case against an organization, it would seem that a more solid case could be made for an attempt to “foment a rebellion” against the constitution and the underlying principle of human rights that it protects. How such a case would fly in our already corrupt courts is another issue.
A similar case is that of the cut and pasted dispatch recording in the Zimmerman case, and the later fabrication of the “hand’s up, don’t shoot” meme, which together resulted in riots. Dan Rather comes to mind here also.
All this points to that “on-going program” I mentioned above. Their deceptive tactics have consequences, and a solid case could be made that those consequences are both known and intentional.
You don’t have to be able to win. You just have to make it too expensive for the other side.
If it’s known that shenanigans like Couric pulled will result in expensive and embarrassing litigation, the odds of someone else doing it will be reduced even if Couric ultimately wins.