Lee Kaplan's Censorship By Libel Suit

It's difficult to imagine a lower order of scum than Lee Kaplan, one of the many right-wing nuts who writes for David Horowitz on frontpagemag.com, where he expresses his outrage that colleges don't ban pro-Palestinian speakers.

Now, Kaplan has sued blogger Yaman Salahi, a student at Berkeley, and won $7,500 in a laughable excuse for judicial integrity known as California's small claims court. As Salahi explains on his blog, the allegedly libelous material ("douche bag") never actually appeared on his blog, but on a fake website created by another critic of Kaplan; however, the judge in the case didn't want to actually hear evidence.

Of course, the notion that a douche bag like Kaplan cannot be called a douche bag in a free society is ridiculous. But to be found guilty of libel for something that's not on your own website is Kafkaesque. Or perhaps we should start calling it Kaplanesque.