[jpl]

His earlier work, before the anthrax incident, clearly puts him into this category.

Get real. You had ever heard of the guy before 2002, and neither had 99.9% of us. I guarantee that this goofy judge had never heard of him before either.

Under this absurd interpretation, any person who writes a letter to the editor of a newspaper and gets the letter published is a "public figure". The same thing would probably apply to anyone with a blog, even if the blog is read by all of 50 people.

[MindBender26]

"Curse neither the law, nor the gods, nor the wind."

Sorry, but under the law, in order to keep our strong heritage of free speech and public accountability alive, the issue of being a public figure is necessarily broad.

>You had (n)ever heard of the guy before 2002, and neither had 99.9% of us. I guarantee that this goofy judge had never heard of him before either.

Yes, but many chemists and scientists had, and they had, not because of what was "done to him," but because he had sought publicity, recognition, etc.

For example, I have no doubt that JR is a public person, not so much because he established FR, but because of use of FR's notoriety to fund raise for it, etc.

His doing so was a good and very smart thing. It gave Conservatives a voice, a method of communication, the ability to organize to petition the government, exercise our rights to speak, write and publish, and to give meaning and actionability to many other Constitutional rights.

Being a public person is not a bad thing. It is simply the price of using other liberties, other freedoms to our advantage.