Here is the full text of the Amicus Letter filed by the National Coalition Against Censorship for me, against the LA Times, in California Supreme Court.
Thanks to the NCAC for standing up against the Times’ attempt to chill journalism and free speech!
Weighing in with an Amicus Letter in Ted Rall v. Los Angeles Times, Project Censored calls the LA Times’ legal tactics “backwards and obscene.”
Project Censored is the sixth major First Amendment organization to support me with an Amicus Letter to the California Supreme Court.
Here is the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists’ amicus letter to the California Supreme Court opposing the Los Angeles Times and in favor of my lawsuit.
Thanks also to the National Coalition Against Censorship for filing an Amicus Letter on my side with the California Supreme Court as I defend myself against the LA Times and its billionaire owner, which are trying to bankrupt me because I criticized their close political ally and former business partner, the LAPD.
Thank you to Cartoonists Rights Network International for supporting my lawsuit against the LA Times with an Amicus Letter to the California Supreme Court.
Turkey, Malaysia, Equatorial Guinea…and Los Angeles? Cartoonists Rights Network International compares how the LAPD corrupted the LA Times in my case to those countries. Meanwhile billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong (owner of LA Times) still wants me to pay him hundreds of thousand$!
Thank you to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund for filing an Amicus Letter in my case against the LA Times and in favor of free speech with the California State Supreme Court! Anti-SLAPP laws should not be abused by giant corporations to stifle free expression.
Whether journalists in California will keep basic employment protections and whether libel will remain actionable are now important issues in the hands of the California state Supreme Court. We filed our Petition to Review with the court yesterday. Please read it here. It’s a good primer about an important case. And please wish me luck. I need it!
Thank you for your continued support.
President Trump keeps coming under attack for his foreign policy, predictably by Democrats but also by legacy Republican leaders.
“I’m very concerned,” Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said about Trump’s plans to bring troops home from the Middle East.
“It makes it abundantly clear that we are headed towards a series of grave policy errors which will endanger our nation, damage our alliances and empower our adversaries,” said Marco Rubio.
Trump’s late-2018 announcement that he planned to withdraw 2000 US troops from the meatgrinder of Syria’s brutal civil war prompted bipartisan dismay. Next the new Doha peace framework to end US involvement in Afghanistan had establishment politicos and pundits reviving their hoary, false canard that America’s “abandonment” of Afghanistan after the Soviets withdrew in 1989 led to 9/11. Now he’s getting attacked for trying to reach a nuclear disarmament deal with North Korea (possible bonus: a formal end to the Korean War).
Deescalation? Why, that could cause peace! What could be a more dangerous threat to American interests?
Meanwhile, Trump is still in Syria. He’s expanded Obama’s drone assassinations. He wants to spend even more on defense. The pro-war wise men of the media have zero problem with hawkishness, no matter how stupid or immoral.
Conventional wisdom holds that this criticism will cost Trump. I disagree. While the president’s America First foreign policy has no constituency within the leadership caste of either party, it has one he cares about more: the voters.
Interestingly, a high percentage of Americans (65%) disapprove of Trump’s handling of international affairs generically. No doubt they’ve been influenced by “Trump is a child on foreign stuff” coverage.
Yet when it comes to specifics, Americans mostly approve of his moves to deescalate tensions overseas and reduce foreign entanglements.
77% of Americans approved of the first summit between Trump and Kim. 54% thought it went well. That’s significantly more than the portion of Americans who approved of his presidency in general, indicating that on this issue he enjoyed support from many Democrats.
Support for withdrawing troops from Syria is close to 50-50, not stellar yet significantly better than his overall mid-40s approval rating.
Afghanistan is a no-brainer for the president. Most Americans want immediate withdrawal and a whopping 70% say that we never should have invaded in the first place.
Trump’s disentanglement policies are popular. The reason that his overall numbers on international matters run low has more to do with the tone and image he projects than the policies he has promulgated. People like what he’s doing but not how he looks and sounds as he does it.
Trump got elected in large part by ignoring GOP dogma and selling his ideas directly to the American people. Voters were tired of an immigration crisis created and prolonged by both parties and they were angry about deindustrialization and vicious “free trade.” Trump’s proposed solutions—the Wall and a trade war—might not be intelligent or effective. But he addressed both issues when others, especially Hillary Clinton, would not. Voters prefer a president who does something stupid to fix a problem to one who pretends it doesn’t exist.
With foreign policy, Trump is trying to pull off a similar trick as he did with domestic issues in 2016: addressing the “endless war” problem that spun out of control under Bush. If not for Trump neither major party would have touched a Pentagon with so many bases abroad it can’t give you an exact number. The question for 2020 is whether voters — who traditionally decide how to vote based on the state of the economy — will give Trump credit for nibbling at the edges of America’s militaristic bloat.
(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Francis: The People’s Pope.” You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)
Dear California Supreme Court,
All I want is a day in court.
All I want is for 12 Angelenos to hear my case.
All I want is for the jurors to hear what I have to say, what the LA Times has to say, and decide who they think told the truth: me or them.
The judge in the LA Superior Court told me that I told the truth, but that I shouldn’t get a day in court.
The Times’ lawyer told the court it didn’t matter if I told the truth.
That was after the court told me I had to pay $75,000 just to be allowed to have a case at all.
Then the justices in the Court of Appeal agreed with the Times’ lawyer. They said that, even though I told the truth and not the Times, I’m not allowed to have a trial.
When I took civics class in Kettering, Ohio in 1979, my teacher told me that everyone is entitled to a trial by jury. Liar.
You are my last hope. May I please have a jury trial? Please tell the Times that they’re wrong. Please tell them the truth does matter. Please let 12 Angelenos weigh the evidence and decide who’s being truthful.
Thank you very much for your consideration.
Very truly yours,
Ted Rall
