And CNN can legally publish and speak about the details of sealed records how?
And in receiving (and publishing) ‘stolen goods’?
“And CNN can legally publish and speak about the details of sealed records how?”
The same way that the L.A. Times published the confidential IRS tax return of gubenatorial candidate Bill Simon in 2002. The rats have their operatives inside the court houses and inside the IRS. It should not be too hard to find out who did this illegally. I will not hold my breath waiting for somebody to be fired for the leaking.
“And CNN can legally publish and speak about the details of sealed records how?”
It involves a Republican who threatens a DEMOCRAT, silly.
The laws no longer apply to this. Where have you been hiding for the last 20 years?
they can and will continue to do so until someone in the GOP has the balls to stand up against them and the rest of the criminal liberal media for their bias, hypocrisy and criminal ways....
hopefully Gingrich follows through on all of the above and files a suit...
It's called the prior restraints doctrine. While the state can enjoin parties over whom it has jurisdiction against disclosure of documents (and punish them with contempt if they violate that injunction), the state cannot establish restraints on the free speech of third parties. The most famous example of this was the Pentagon Papers case in which a white paper on Vietnam was published by the usual liberal suspects after being stolen by, IIRC, a defense department contractor who was under a confidentiality agreement.
1st Amendment, no prior restraint. They might be held liable for something after they actually publish, but they can’t be stopped from publishing in the first place.
4 posted on Tuesday, December 27, 2011 11:10:45 AM by Gene Eric: “And CNN can legally publish and speak about the details of sealed records how?”
What Tupelo, FateAmenableToChange and Boogieman
wrote is right.
Printing these is legal, and should be. Releasing the documents to the media may or may not have been legal — I'm not yet sure since divorce records are usually public documents and some here are saying they were misplaced rather than sealed. Quoting the article: “Retired clerk Kenneth Skinner told CNN his deputy took Gingrich's file out of the public records room around 1994, ‘when he (Gingrich) became the center of attention,’ because Skinner feared tampering and theft.”
But in any event, once the media have them, there's nothing illegal about publishing them even if they **WERE** sealed (which in this case they probably weren't). That was settled decades ago by the courts with the Pentagon Papers case, and there are precedents dating back far earlier.
We don't live in Britain with an “Official Secrets Act” allowing judges to issue gag orders. In America, the legal offense, if any, is incurred by the person who leaked the documents to the media. Preventing prosecution of newspapers for reporting things unless they are libelous is what the First Amendment is for.
If FOX News or the Washington Times somehow got hold of some highly incriminating stuff about President Obama or Sen. Harry Reid or Rep. Nancy Pelosi, we would all be clapping our hands when we saw it published. That would be right.
The First Amendment exists for a reason. The framers of our Constitution knew from personal experience what happened when corrupt colonial governors, acting on behalf of British interests, tried to use the courts to control the press.
Government power is too dangerous to give judges the ability to exercise prior review and restraint against the press. If we don't like what a newspaper or TV station is reporting, turn it off and choose another one. Capitalism, not the courts, should control what gets published.