donal brown

Ex-San Jose mayor Chuck Reed won a $106,173 settlement with the state of California to pay his legal costs in contesting a $1 fine for allegedly moving $100,000 from his pension reform political committee to the campaign fund of a city council ally. Reed argued that the fine was a violation of his free speech rights. Reed had consulted the California Fair Political Practices Committee before he moved the funds, hence the light fine. (San Jose

Ron Fournier, National Journal, June 1, 2015, writes that it is possible for reporters to resist the deadly practice of government officials’ convening press conferences to spin the news and then declare the sessions “on background” thus hiding behind anonymity to evade accountability. Anonymous sources are often vital in reporting the news, but increasingly off-the-record briefings do not provide credible facts. Fournier suggests that to break the practice of “background briefings” that reporters report on

The U.S. Supreme Court voted 8-1 to void the conviction of a Pennsylvania man who served 44 months in jail for posting threats against his estranged wife on Facebook. The  court’s decision provides some slack for rap artists who routinely use hyperbole in their lyrics but did not provide any clarification of standards necessary to prove “true threat.” (Hollywood Reporter, June 1, 2015, by Eriq Gardner) The court determined that the postings – references to

Detained on espionage charges in Iran, Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian went on trial this week in a closed Tehran courtroom. The Iranian government has not released any justification for its indictment, and it is illegal to release any details of what occurs in closed-door trials. “It [the closed trial] certainly adds to concerns, and it fits, unfortunately, into a pattern of a complete lack of transparency and lack of due process that we’ve seen