Posted on 03/09/2012 8:16:15 AM PST by sickoflibs
SCHULTZ: Joining me tonight is Sandra Fluke , the woman Congressman Darrell Issa rejected as a witness today. Ms. Fluke is a law student at Georgetown University . Great to have you with us tonight, Sandra . Now, I understand that you already planned your testimony. You were going to cite examples of people who could have benefited from President Obama ‘s mandate for birth control coverage. Share with us what you would have told that committee today.
SANDRA FLUKE, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY LAW STUDENT: That is what I was there to speak to the committee about. That's why I was so stunned when Chairman Issa made the decision to not allow me to speak on behalf of those women and to say that I was not an appropriate witness, that those women ‘s stories were not appropriate for this committee . I cannot think of who would be more appropriate for the committee to hear from than the women affected by this policies whose lives were affected. One of the women I wanted to talk about today is a close friend of mine.
(clip)
But unfortunately when university administrators and employers and insurance companies get involved in deciding whose health needs are legitimate and whose aren't, what happens is that women ‘s health needs take a back seat to that type of ideology.
Full Video at : Feb 16, 2012 Schultz/Fluke interview
Full Transcript is below the video at the above link
(Excerpt) Read more at video.msnbc.msn.com ...
I would think that if anyone wanted to sue her it would be the women of Georgetown U. since she has pretty much pinned a tag on them that reads “Georgetown Girls Are Easy”.
The real committee hearings - the ones that rejected her testifying - because she's NOT an expert on Church/State issues - probably didn't know that she also knew NOTHING about birth control.
Anyone who thinks it costs a thousand dollars a year for birth control is soooooo out of touch they might as well be walking around asking conservatives 'what they're afraid of'.
I'd like to know if her daddy has been footing the bill for her going to school the last 25 years. ( I assume she stated school at 5 ) and that that's why she's so clueless about what things cost. Maybe she thinks the average family spends $2,000 a week on groceries. I assume daddy pays for her apartment and puts money in her account for food...
Thank heavens she has that liberal attitude. Without that the MSM might not be able to buy her bullshit.
You should be aware of two tricky little catches in the law (and remember that she's a 'limited public figure').
You look at somebody at a point in time. If she brought a defamation lawsuit against Rush Limbaugh, then it wouldn't matter at all what her status is now. What would matter is what her status was at the precise moment Rush made his first allegedly defamatory comment.
The second is that Rush isn't given 'credit' for any of the fame she has as a result of his comments. If you've watched enough crime shows on TV, then you've heard the expression 'fruit of the poisonous tree.'
Rush would not be allowed to say she was a public figure based on any of the attention he drew to her by his comments, or by the attention that came from the liberal reaction to his comments. That's the law; it's not something I made up.
She gets to start with a clean slate.
I think she was a limited public figure for purposes of the topic of women's contraceptive rights the moment she testifies, under something called the Gertz test - and she may have been a limited public figure since she got media attention for protesting a pro-choice display at Cornell.
But none of this after-the-fact attention counts at all under the law, when it comes to considering whether she was a limited public figure when Rush spoke about her.
Caveat: I am by no means a legal expert.
Your comment makes sense, but this interview was on Feb. 16. (before Rush's comments AFAIK). A timeline would help, but then isn't it true that a court would have to decide to what extent this interview made her a "public figure?" I think that judgment would involve a generous degree of opinion. Yes, facts matter too, but I don't think there is an exact mathematical measure of how much of a public figure she was before Rush made the S-word comment.
OK, putting on my political hat now. I will repeat the suggestion that Fluke, acting as the agent of deep-pocketed Leftist entities, could file a lawsuit even if she knew that she would almost certainly lose in court, with the following goals:
1) Try to gain public sympathy, especially if private investigators investigated her private life (needless to say, we know which side the MSM would take). Obama could make public statements, while working behind the scenes to "encourage" feminists, disguised as salt-of-the-earth mothers and daughters, to organize rallies.
2) Go for an out-of-court settlement. Try to make the legal proceedings as expensive as possible for Rush, both to make him settle, and to hurt him financially.
One of the reasons I dug up this February 16 interview and posted it today is because Sm was making that exact same argument to me a few days ago. But at the time I remembered seeing this interview and specifically that it was made before Rush's comments, and even before Pelosi’s make believe hearing,
Her purpose for this interview as a activist was to gain the public's attention and to change the mind's of the viewing public,
This interview kills your case councilor.
And if Fluke sued him, Rush's lawyers would make that argument. But I don't know if that TV appearance, plus her appearance with congressional Dems, constitutes ironclad proof that she was legally some kind of "public figure." Before the Rush comments, I'll bet that nobody even thought of doing a poll to find out what % of people knew who she was. Maybe Fluke's lawyers could do a poll asking people what it was that made them aware of her.
I don't know the answer. I think it would be a somewhat subjective judgment, like whether somebody suffered sufficient "mental anguish" to win a legal jackpot.
What case?
On another thread I posted that Sandra Fluke may have been a limited public figure for the purpose of women's reproductive rights ever since she was interviewed by a newspaper as treasurer of treasurer of Students Acting for Gender Equality (SAGE), during a protest of a pro-life display. That would have been pre-2003.
It's still the law that Rush Limbaugh has to deal with her status before he made a comment.
There's no place in my comment where I said her status before Rush's comment was a private figure.
I was addressing a comment that Fluke was now a public figure because of all that was going on - I said that didn't help Limbaugh. It doesn't. I said what mattered was her status when Rush first spoke, because that's the law.
I never said what her status was before Rush spoke; I'm just clearing up some blatant misinterpretations of the law.
Geez, in all of my posts, I've never said a positive word about the activist Fluke.
But if you want to be lawyers - have at it. I'm no longer part of this discussion. I tried.
She wont sue. See that's easy.
Saying she could sue and win is like saying Palin could have won as a POTUS candidate. She won't run/
She wont sue because she doesn't want to answer questions about her claims under oath.
Next, what damages would she sue for? Rush helped her cause of becoming a MSNBC liberal activist victim-hero. Given the interview I posted it's obvious it furthered her agenda.
Is she going to claim her boyfriend broke up with her thinking Rush was serious and knew about her sex life that he didn't know about? What's she going to claim that is worth? Did she lose standing as a contraceptive activist because Rush said she must be having sex frequently ??? HA-HA
And third, she wont get private figure protection.
last, she wont sue. This is about nothing.
Today one poster told me we are all in danger of these lawsuits. Lawsuits?
I heard Fluke uses the same hair gel as Cameron Diaz in “There’s something about Mary”.
GROSS!
“B A R F!” I just lost my morning tea.
NOT a Fluke!
Thanks sickoflibs.
No doubt about that. Blech...
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