Justin <justin-cypherpunks@soze.net>wrote:
On 2005-10-19T19:59:18+0000, Gil Hamilton wrote:
Reporters should have no rights the rest of us don't have. It's hard to imagine the framers of the constitution approving an amendment that said freedom of the press is granted to all those who first apply for and receive permission from the government.
Blame the framers. They separately enumerated freedom of speech and freedom of the press, which suggests at least a little bit that freedom of the press includes something extra.
Yes, it specifies printed material rather than spoken; this wouldn't have been unusual to them -- English law has long distinguished libel from slander, for example. Your statement implies that you think the framers were being deliberately vague or encoding various sorts of subtle nuances in the amendment's language. It's much simpler to presume that they said what they intended to say. GH _________________________________________________________________ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/