I have to do this.

I’m sorry.

A federal judge on Saturday ordered the Los Angeles Times to remove information from an article that described a plea agreement between prosecutors and a Glendale police detective accused of working with the Mexican Mafia, a move the newspaper decried as highly unusual and unconstitutional.

More seriously, there seems to be a long recent string of judges deciding that they can just disregard the Supreme Court and order newspapers to do whatever the judge wants. Just once before I die, I would love to see an editor or publisher say to one of those judges:

“Your order is illegal and unconstitutional, and we believe that you are fully aware of these facts. We will not obey your order. We will also not initiate violence. But if this court attempts to enforce its illegal order, we will treat that as the initiation of violence against our staff, and we will defend ourselves with whatever level of force is necessary to stop said violent acts.”

Edited to add 7/16: Ken White over at Popehat:

This is not a close call. Judge Walter’s order is not plausibly lawful. It is patently unconstitutional, and the sort of order that is only issued when a judge deliberately defies First Amendment law or is asleep at the switch. This is utterly unacceptable. The Los Angeles Times will be challenging the order, and I expect them to win, and look forward to all of the briefing — and the original article — becoming available.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 15th, 2018 at 9:56 am and is filed under California Über Alles, Cops, Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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