freedomforum.org: Federal judge quashes subpoena for Kansas bookstore's sales records

[Jim Choate]

On Tue, 13 Feb 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote:

> In any case, I'm inclined to believe that the First Amendment should not 
> grant special rights to people who call themselves bookstores and 
> journalists. Rather, we should all enjoy those rights. Being an Official 
> Approved Government-Certified Journalist -- and I am one -- writing an 
> article should not mean I have special privileges that only I enjoy and 
> someone from an unapproved newspaper, or a cypherpunk subscriber writing 
> about the same topic, does not.

As usual you get it bass-ackwards...there must be a 'journalist' gene that
causes these sorts of cerebral mis-wires.

It isn't the store that's being protected. It's the purchaser of the
book, the reader to wit. To force a person to reveal their reading habits
violates the 1st because it infringes both speech and press. It's that
pesky '...no law..' clause that almost (whew!) everyone keeps wishing
wasn't there. Trying to voilate a persons civil liberties via a 3rd party
doesn't make it any less a violation and it doesn't redirect any
culpability to the initiating party simply because they are so removed.

There is no concomitent 'Congress shall make no law restricting the
manufacture, sale, possession, or use of hobby fish' so whichever law
officer it was that compared it to a fish store also failed to catch the
distinction.

Journalist are scum (like lawyers) they sell their integrity, they deserve
no protection and actually get none. If you look at the history and
beliefs of the founding fathers they did NOT equate freedom of 'press'
with 'newspaper' or 'reporter'. I've forwarded Jeffersons comment on the
distiction and value of 'press' versus 'newspaper' already, take Tim's
advise and do a little digging in the archives. The reality is the only
protection the reporter gets is as a recognized agent of the press owner
and the right of the people to know what is going on around them (that
thing about you have rights until they impact another).

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