Your article contains many factual errors and does not give an accurate review of the Kaplan vs. Salahi case, nor is it fair to Lee Kaplan. The case took over one year, not nine months, Salahi did not show up in court for the first hearing although he knew about the case and psoted it on the Web, then he lied to the court when he was granted a new trial after losing the first round by default. He then appealed this case to Superior Court where he was represented by a free attorney whereas Kaplan had to pay for his attorney. In his declarations that are available on the Alameda County Courts website, Salahi lied so much that he even blindsided his attorney. Kaplan is a reputable professional journalist who has outted subversive groups on American campuses that support terrorism and Salahi is a student leader of the Students for Jsutice in Palestine at CAL, one of those groups that syupports such overseas terrorists. Kaplan only had one physical meeting with Salahi for less than five mintues when Salahi began a blog dedicated solely to trying to smear the man's professional reputation by claiming he had been sued for libel, viiolated contracts, supported terrorism and was involved in criminal activities--all accusations fabricated from whole cloth. After Salahi could not stop Kaplan's investigative journalism by spreading this calumnny over the Web, he began calling and emailing Kaplan's publishers threatening their businesses with the same treatment over the Web if they did not stop running Kaplan's articles or used his services as a writer. This case even involved Salahi and his internet posse posting homosexual porno images with Kaplans head pasted on the bodies on the Web, although that is not what cost Salahi the case. It was the fact that Salahi is just plain stupid. Salahi's constant whining that this was a First Amendment issue is a diversion from what he did. In fact, after losing this lawsuit, he immediately said nobody made him remove his smearsite and that he would continue to attack Kaplan as he had done before. So where is the First Amendement issue? I will tell you: Salahi is asking bloggers to give him money to pay off the judgment to preserve free speech rights because of his own illegal activities. He doesn't tell them aboout the threats and libels he engaged in for a year against Kaplan, all of which were proven in court after five hearings before three judges, two who were Superior Court judges and that Salahi had free legal counsel. For Yaman Salahi this adventure is just fun and games, but Lee Kaplan is a professional journalist and his reputation was at stake. The fact he writes in support of Israel is not an excuse to libel the man or try to snow his fellow bloggers that Salahi is some kind of champion for free speech rights. If the editor who wrote the above article had someone writing that he fabricated all of this articles and engaged in criminal activities that might cost him employment would he be as neutral regarding this real victim's experience? The judges in this case are no fools. The court was in liberal Berkeley. Salahi has always made money off this smearsite of kaplan and now is trying to do so again at the expense of journalist Lee Kaplan. Even the ACLU had him remvoe their name from the article soliciting funds on the smearsite becasue they knew what he was up to. Readers and the Express editor should not be so gullible as to accept the story by one side, a side that lost in a legitimate court of law. The case was tried on the evidence and Salahi lost. Can anyone doubt he would be carrying on over the Internet about the "Failures of the Justice System" had this case been decided against him in Superior Court and stop his stalking and defamation? Certainly not. Salahi has always amde money off his smearsite and now wants the suckers in the blogosphere to feel sorry for him and send him more money. Some would consider him a slimeball. I know I do in this case.

Dear Editor: As the defendant in Kaplan v. Salahi, I was most distressed to read Mr. Singer-vine's coverage of the affair. It is difficult to understand the framing of what has happened as a sandbox brawl: every brawl, after all, has a bully, and in this case one has to wonder whether the bully was the well-paid and middle-aged journalist or the third year college student in his teens. Nevertheless, while the spat between Kaplan and myself may be entirely juvenile (I am inclined to agree with this), the moment it entered the legal sphere it should have become something of concern to everybody in the state of California, especially considering that it involved one of the most fundamental rights guaranteed by our constitution's first amendment. In California, defendants in defamation lawsuits are guaranteed certain special protections under the anti-SLAPP statute. My attorney had written and filed a strong anti-SLAPP motion to have the case dismissed, but the judge refused to consider the motion on the grounds that it was inappropriate for small claims court. This may be true, given that small claims court is a mess, and really not that far off from what you see on Judge Judy or The People's Court. But if that is the case then it is equally true that defamation cases, in all their complexity (which you rightly noted), are similarly inappropriate for small claims court. Indeed, a number of other states around the country do not allow plaintiffs to bring defamation claims in small claims court. There is good reason for this because it directly involves our rights under the first amendment, and has the potential to endanger or punish our legitimate exercise of those rights. While for me personally this lawsuit means that I am $7500 in debt, for everybody else in the state of California, I hope it is also a wake-up call that will lead to productive reform of the system by removing defamation suits from the jurisdiction of small claims court. That, besides refusing to be silenced by Kaplan's evolving forms of intimidation, is now one of my goals in state politics. I hope that others can look past the muddled stories to recognize this fact at the very least, and will do what they can to prevent this from happening again to somebody else. Yaman Salahi Lee Kaplan Watch - for more information about my views on the ruling, the trial, and their implications

So Salahi and Kaplan are just the same? Equally bad? Children fighting in a sandbox? Then how do you explain that Kaplan won a judgment THREE TIMES in 5 hearings before two judges? That kind of indicates that one side had more merit than the other. Judge Tabor, stated at the hearing where she allowed Salahi to have his day in court despite his "cleverness" in ducking service for the first hearing, that she didn't like either party. So I doubt there was political bias for either party. The burden of proof was on the plaintiff. He made his case. He persuaded two judges who looked at ALL of the pleadings, many of which went well beyond the material printed on Salahi's website. All of this despite the fact that Kaplan is a public figure. While I always appreciate the knowledgeable comments of Peter Sheer, its obvious he knows nothing of the particulars of this case. This is not a freedom of speech case. It is a libel, slander, and intentional interference in a business suit. Salahi bragged he would destroy Kaplan's career. He went out of his way to research any possible website, publisher, or server that Kaplan used to target them with threatening e-mails and phone calls. He told them that if they didn't disassociate with Lee Kaplan, he would start a similar websmear on them. He slandered Kaplan by saying he had threatened members of his family (not true), that he had been implicated with leaving a death threat on a woman's answering machine (not true), that he was stealing property (not true), and that he had been named in a libel lawsuit (essentially not true. Kaplan's name appeared in a footnote in another libel case---hardly what Salahi's headline suggested). He also claimed that Kaplan fabricated his stories from scratch.(not true). Salahi even linked to another site which had photoshopped porn material satirizing Kaplan in a crude manner. While Salahi had a right to link to the site under the first amendment, he denied in court, and under oath, that the link had never existed on his site. Undoubtedly Salahi was looking to remove obvious evidence of malice from his site before judicial review. Rather than admit that he had posted the link, and then later took it down, he accused Kaplan of introducing fabricated evidence. Now he complains that the "standards of evidence were too low". Missing from your article is that for Salahi's appeal, Jewish Voice for Peace sent a pro bono attorney, Adam Gutride, to defend Salahi. He still lost. Don't JVP members have to wonder why their organization is defending libel, slander, and interference with a business? I attended two of the five hearings and am a member of DAFKA. Anyone who says Salahi and Kaplan are "just alike" is not willing to face the differences.