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Posts Tagged ‘freedom of speech’

Judge Diane E. Gibbons Confirms Herself An Enemy of Free Speech and Supporter of Abuse By Silencing The Psycho Ex Wife Website

February 25th, 2012 66 comments

In June 2011, Judge Diane E. Gibbons of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, illegally ordered an excellent web site called The Psycho Ex Wife to be taken down in violation of the US Constitution’s First Amendment. The site is reportedly owned by a Pennsylvania woman named Misty Weaver-Ostinato whose partner for the last several years has been a man named Anthony Morelli. On the site, they identified themselves as DW and “Mister M” never using their real names or identifying information, nor the real name or identifying information of Morelli’s ex who allegedly inspired the site with her behaviors.

First Amendment rights expert Eugene Volokh writes that he believes this order is blatantly unconstitutional, especially because of its expansiveness:

from “Father Shall Take Down That Web Site and Shall Never on Any Public Media Make Any Reference to Mother At All,”

If the father says anything about the mother in public, he could be sent to jail for contempt of court. The order isn’t limited to banning libelous statements (though I think even such a much narrower ban would itself pose constitutional problems, especially under Pennsylvania law), nor is it even limited to statements about minor children (though even that sort of order strikes me as constitutionally impermissible). Rather, the court order categorically orders the removal of a Web site, and prohibits all public statements — factually accurate or not — by one person about another person.

Allison Morelli apparently claims that PEW (the abbreviation for “Psycho Ex Wife”, one of the main characters discussed on the site) is her, even though nobody is ever identified or named on the site. According to reports in other publications, PEW served as the source for around a quarter of the articles describing bizarre and abusive behaviors on the banned website.

Allison, for reasons that don’t make any sense to me at all, wants us all to believe that PEW is her and therefore the whole site is an attack on her. She claims the site is about her without naming or identifying her or anybody else. She simultaneously implies or maintains that she didn’t behave as the PEW character behaved but somehow she knows they were writing the site about her to attack her. This makes no sense to me, nor does it to much of anybody else except apparently Allison Morelli, her supporters, and Judge Gibbons.

The PEW character may not be meant to be literally interpreted. The words and actions appear to be what you could see as a synthesis of behaviors and conduct of more than one troubled ex-spouse. Certainly describing a person as looking like “Jabba the Hut” (a description used for PEW) is obviously figurative speech that no rational person is going to believe is a literal statement. Yet Allison Morelli claims the site is about her and is an attack on her, all the while trying to imply or claim she didn’t write the emails or do the actions described. But somehow she “knows” it is all about her.

However much literary license may have been taken with PEW’s words and actions and no matter what victimhood badge Allison is trying to win with her weird assertions, it is clear that “PEW” as used on the site often does not even refer to Allison Morelli even if you believe it sometimes does.

PEW is used to refer not just to the PEW character but also as a generic abbreviation throughout the site’s content. It means different things in different places. This abbreviation is often used to refer to any generic “psycho ex wife” or at times even more broadly any “psycho ex” regardless of gender or marital status.

Even the readers of the site used such terms to describe their own conflicts. “PEW” is frequently used to generically refer to a “psycho ex wife” or to some other unnamed specific ex-wife that could not be Allison Morelli, unless of course she wants to claim she has been married to dozens or hundreds of the readers and they are all writing about her, too.

The site and its readers also use “PEH” to refer to “psycho ex husband” which can’t be about her. Or can it? If she were to claim she was a man named Alfred in some past life and therefore any references to “PEH” are about her, too, from her actions to date it looks like Judge Gibbons would be convinced by that argument.

The generic “psycho ex” content and discussion included all the kinds of things you’d expect to see discussed about malicious Borderlines, Narcissists, Antisocials, and other personality disorders that are typically seen in sociopaths. These include drug abuse, alcohol abuse, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, manipulation, projection, gaslighting, pathological lying, distortion campaigns, and more. They even discussed at times how these people get to be their malicious selves, often from a history of abuse as children. All of that is very generic and helpful information that doesn’t specifically pertain to Allison Morelli. Some of it may not have been written to have anything to do with her. Yet Judge Gibbons, in her infinite stupidity, sought to silence all of that content, too, because she apparently is unable or unwilling to differentiate between content that is widely and generally applicable and not specific to any one person and content (be it information or misinformation) that has to do with the Morelli dispute in particular.

Unfortunately for the operators of the site and its readers, Judge Gibbons does not seem able to ask basic questions about how an anonymous site naming and identifying nobody but quoting bizarre and abusive emails and describing similar behaviors could be about a person unless that person is also in effect admitting she is behind those words and actions.

Gibbons must also have failed her Constitutional Law classes on the First Amendment, nor does she understand that even if there was some defamatory or harassing statement on the site that this does not justify banning all the content. She evidently can’t comprehend or doesn’t care that roughly 2/3 or more of the material on the site wasn’t even about the PEW character and therefore could not have been about the Morelli dispute, even if Allison wants people to believe she is the PEW character.

Did Gibbons even review the site? By the appearance of the alleged transcripts I’ve seen so far, it looks like she just took Allison’s word for it when she moved to ban the site.

Take Down the Site Or Go To Prison

The judge stated among other things that if the site was not taken down, she would imprison Anthony and take away his kids. Here’s a direct quote from the alleged June 6, 2011 transcript:

THE COURT:
Father shall take down that website and shall never on any public media make any reference to the mother at all, nor any reference to the the relationship between mother and children, nor shall he make any reference to his children other than “happy birthday” or other significant school events. The father’s girlfriend shall not be referred to as mother and father shall not in any way interfere with mother’s relationship with her children.

Mother will not consume any alcohol at all and will continue in alcohol treatment.

This matter is continued for a period of four months.

By her words in the alleged transcript, Judge Gibbons indicates that Allison Morelli is an alcoholic. Later you see:

NAME REDACTED: You know, in the course of having custody evaluation, it was discovered that I had developed a drinking problem as a result of gastric bypass surgery that I had in March of ’09. And that after that point, you know, I suffered from addiction transference and, you know, it — I am certainly not going to minimize that today, that of course it impacted the children. But the children saw me intoxicated four times in the course of two years. And I am in treatment. I attend AA meetings.

To date I have not seen anybody disputing the legitimacy of this transcript. There’s also a second alleged transcript of a June 14, 2011 hearing available. I’d like to have some reasonably easy way to quickly authenticate such documents with court records, but apparently the Pennsylvania courts don’t publish such court records online.

The website had a lot to say about the “PEW” character over the years. “PEW” was alleged to be an emotional child abuser, harasser, abusive litigator, perjurer, frequent violator of court orders, and was suspected by Anthony and Misty of suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder.

If Allison Morelli didn’t do such things, then why on earth would she be arguing that the site is about her? And if she did so such things, why on earth would she want the public to hear about it by publicly claiming the site is about her?

If Anthony and Misty believe that PEW behaved so abusively, regardless of who PEW is, those familiar with such destructive situations should be able to understand why they would have been motivated to write anonymously about such conflicts.

Later in the transcript, Gibbons talks about incarcerating the father if he does not follow her orders, apparently including the ones regarding the illegal restrictions on his free speech rights and the illegal orders made regarding his partner’s website:
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Why We Show Your IP Address

October 13th, 2010 4 comments

If you are like some of our readers, you may have been wondering why we show your IP address in the control bar on the website. Some of our readers feel their privacy is being violated by this. On the contrary, it is intended to assist them in preserving their privacy. Here’s why.

Widespread Monitoring Of Your Computer Usage

Every time you use your computer to access a web site, there are several, likely even dozens, of pieces of software running on computers spread across the Internet that log bits and pieces of information about you. Such information typically includes your IP address as the unifying element to glue it all together. Other bits of information include the web browser your are using, the operating system your computer is running, web sites you visit, comments you post, email addresses you use, and questions you answer in surveys of demographic information that may not seem at first glance to be related to your web browsing at all. They might be software registrations, surveys for “free coupons”, “free email newsletters”, or something else. Your IP address can be used to tie it all together, to track your “Internet identity” and the usage of the Internet associated with it. Such information is being collected about you all the time. Every day, it is bought and sold routinely as a matter of regular business practice by many of the top brand names in the Internet world.

Have you installed any of those popular browser toolbars from Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft? Such software can log similar information about your usage, too. So can Flash, Java, and other apps that are common on many popular websites.

Your Internet Service Provider (Cox, Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, etc.) probably logs a substantial amount of this type of information and retains it for multiple years. Some countries actually have laws requiring this. Even if they don’t, the ISP and hosting providers for any websites you visit log and save similar information for years, too. Your web browser also retains such information, too, and it will persist for months or years unless you take steps to erase it. Even if the company, organization, or people running the website you are visiting go to great effort to discard that information, virtually nobody else is going to do likewise. Like it or not, you are creating a great big trail that others can use to find and track you, be it for reasonable or very hostile purposes. Your IP address is often the single most important piece of information typically used to glue together the bits and pieces of your Internet trail into a cohesive whole that somebody can portray as representing you, rightly or wrongly.

Why We Show Your IP Address

We show you your IP address for two primary reasons:
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Tamworth, NH Shows Why You Should Stay Anonymous

July 13th, 2010 3 comments

Tamworth, New Hampshire, resident Scott Finman was upset with a local law banning citizens from carrying guns on town property. In the “Live Free or Die” state, it was an offensive law. Rather than just being upset, he took action. He blogged against the firearm restrictions that violated New Hampshire state law. He even drew cartoons and posted them on the Live Free and Comply website to poke fun at the illegal law at the tyrannical behaviors of the town government. The town’s volunteer firefighters and other residents joined him in his criticisms.

This was too much for town tyrants John Roberts, Willie Farnum, and Cassandra Pearce to tolerate. Recently, the Tamworth Selectmen (the local government council) decided to get even with Finman. They reassessed his home for $4 million and issued him a $70,000 tax bill, reasoning that since he didn’t let an assessor enter the home to inspect it that they could apply whatever valuation they wanted. This is at least the second time this year they have reassessed a property to punish a critical local resident. They did this earlier to former Selectman Tom Abugelis for writing a letter-to-the-editor criticizing the attitudes and actions of the town government.
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Crimes Against Children: “Zero Tolerance” and “Kids for Cash”

October 29th, 2009 No comments

Our nation’s children are no longer safe in their homes, schools, or anywhere they go. Far too often, the threat is not from traditional miscreants such as school bullies, class-cutters, and neighborhood drug-dealers but rather from the adults entrusted with the care of our children. Intolerant and extremist teachers, school administrators, police officers, district attorneys, and judges are a serious and growing threat to our children. They believe that children who make a minor mistake or dare to express an opinion or personal preference that is not in compliance with government thought control and anti-free-speech policies should be treated like felons. Even having to attend to basic bodily functions like using the bathroom and eating in schools controlled by these extremists can be a threat to the safety of our children.

Our friendly faced jackbooted government goons have made up euphemisms for their agendas. Given their limited intelligence, their choice phrases must be succinct.

“Zero tolerance” is one catch-phrase invented by “safety minded” school employees. No tolerance for dissent, suppression of individuality, banning freedom of speech, enforcement of dogmatic thinking, and criminalization of opinions that are counter to the teachers unions is what it objectively means. Coming from a more sensible age in which I could chose the color of my clothes and a pocket knife was not a weapon of mass destruction but rather a basic tool that many kids carried to school, it seems to me that kids today should be raising civil disobedience groups and learning guerrilla warfare tactics after they have been exposed to this extremism. But oddly it seems to be gradually zapping many of them into mind-numbed drones. Or maybe they are too busy playing Grand Theft Auto and Halo to know that sometimes criminals and conflicts are real.

“Kids for Cash” is another catch-phrase invented by somebody in the government, quite possibly by thousands of them at about the same time. They realized that when they see smiling little kids, they think of $$$ MONEY $$$ in their pockets, so it was a natural expression of their intent to use other people’s children for their own economic security. Although it’s not clear which government agency invented it first, many of them, from the courts to “CPS” to schools, are living by it. Seldom is anything done to distract the government from viewing our children as money sources and pawns for profit except in the most bizarre and extreme cases that even the goons are embarrassed by it. I suspect when something is done to temporarily divert the greedy goons from monetizing our children, it is only because these extreme examples are getting so far out there that it’s amazing that parents and grandparents who love their young ones are not storming courthouses with automatic weapons to protect their offspring from true evil. You’ll see some of these cases below.

Teacher Will Kick In Your Face If You Use the Potty!

If you’re a kindergartener in Miami, Florida, and go the the bathroom without permission, you might get your face kicked in by your teacher.

(from From Sex to Assault: What’s Up With America’s Teachers? Teachers Busted for Kicking Students, Showing Up Drunk, Having Affairs With Pupils)

For a 5-year-old Miami student who came home from school with a cut lip from being kicked in the face, the bully wasn’t a playground menace — it was, she alleges, her teacher.

The preschooler’s offense? Using the restroom without permission during naptime.

Miami police arrested Head Start teacher Jean Dorvil, 56, on child abuse charges. Miami-Dade Schools Police Sgt. Ivan Silva told ABCNews.com that detectives found during the course of their investigation that Dorvil had allegedly kicked two other students during the school year.

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Sotomayor Nomination Focus on Abortion Rights is Misguided

May 29th, 2009 No comments

Mainstream media and political pundits are winding up their broken record players to interrogate Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor with the inevitable and unending question: “What are your views on abortion?”

It’s time to get off this broken-down bandwagon. Her views on rights of due process, parental rights, 2nd amendment gun rights, freedom of speech, illegal government law enforcement tactics, and many other civil rights issues are far more pressing than her views on abortions. Yet abortion questions seem to be the the majority of the discussion on her qualifications for a seat on the US Supreme Court.
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