Readin', 'Ritin', and (Publishing) 'Rithmetic

An Alabama judge imposed a 90-day sentence this week on corruption-fighting Alabama blogger Roger Shuler, whom authorities have jailed indefinitely for alleging a sex scandal involving a prominent attorney.

At right, Shuler, now 57, is shown puffy-faced in his mug shot following his arrest Oct. 23 in his garage in a suburb of Birmingham.  

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported Jan. 12 on the threats to civil rights law posed by the libel case underlying Shuler’s jailing. The Times headlined the story, Blogger’s Incarceration Raises First Amendment Questions.

The Times story sought so hard to be balanced that it underplayed the court system's outrageous confiscation of Shuler's rights -- and the looming impact on the public.

Among the harms, the kangaroo court proceedings set back the state's image more than 50 years to the time of the segregationist Jim Crow era when libel and contempt of court proceedings were used to crush the civil rights movement.

Today, many should fear living and doing business in a state operating under one-party rule enforced by a court system aggressively deployed by its political leaders to operate in a lawless manner.

...In view of the apathy of much of the media regarding Shuler's dire circumstances, national coverage in the Sunday edition of the nation's most influential newspaper was a net positive for Shuler and other advocates of the First Amendment.

Bu neither Robertson, a native of a nearby Alabama community, nor his selected experts featured in the article conveyed to the public the appalling danger of a court system operating so lawlessly. Under de facto direction from the state's highest court, the system is on its way to destroying a journalist without a trial and other due process safeguards that the American legal system theoretically requires...