Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren was invited to speak  to about 500 students at University of California at Irvine on Feb. 8.

About 6 minutes into the presentation a number of protesters from the Muslim Student Union rose and began chanting, “MR. OREN! MASS MURDER IS NOT FREE SPEECH!” as well as allegedly yelling “Killers!” “How many Palestinians did you kill?”

Mr. Oren left the stage but eventually came back out and finished his presentation. The protesters were removed from the venue by security.  11 were arrested for disrupting a public proceeding and the students among them face university discipline.

There has been debate over whether the students who were engaging in what is being called a “heckler’s veto” should be punished. Were the students engaging in protected free speech which would preempt any type of discipline?  Has the the line between free speech and the academic freedom needed to put on such presentations without disruption been blurred beyond recognition?  In coming to any conclusion it is important to keep in mind that UC-Irvine is a State University.  This was a University sponsored event.  Both the Federal 1st Amendment and the California 1st Amendment would therefore be in play.

While I  disagree that there is no right to a heckler’s veto as an absolute, I am on the side of Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the UC Irvine School of Law in his editorial published in the L.A. Times and Professor Alan Dershowitz in his Huffington Post editorial.  This was not spirited political debate in which a response was expected or allowed. It was coordinated censorship.  What’s the point of academic freedom if it can not be exercised to the benefit of the student body to the same extent as the protesters would expect if someone they admired was speaking.

From a practical spectator standpoint, I would also be pissed as hell if I was sitting in that auditorium unable to hear because of obnoxious students. I don’t care if they are Muslims, Jews, Hindus or Hare-Krishna’s.They are ruining the experience I have a right to enjoy and engage if I so choose.  Let’s be clear.  This was a structured event. It was not a “free for all come-all” in a public square. Unlike a public square, the protesters got into the event to the exclusion of other protesters and spectators. That is not open free speech as if they were in the square and anyone could chime in.   It implies rules of conduct and a level of respect and decorum.

I understand that free and unpopular speech does not always occur in convenient places. One of the the points of protest is to do it in a manner to make a point.  As obnoxious as these kids were, that can not be brushed off.  Free speech sparing is not always done by the Marquess Of Queensbury Rules.  We can only protest if we are nice and polite?  Were the framers always polite in their dissent of the crown?  They never shouted down the King’s emissaries as they addressed the colonies on new taxes?

In the end, the video speaks for itself to the detriment of the motives of the yelling students. This was not a spirited debate. This was an attempt to silence by screaming.  The epitome of verbal terrorism. It was an attempt to stifle the academic freedom rights of Ambassador Oren and other students on the same level they claim their rights were snuffed out.  This was not a come all campus wide  protest on the University Green.  This was an invited speaker, organized event in which the attendees had a right of reasonable quiet enjoyment and Ambassador Oren had a right to retort to any protest.  This  was not an open public square available to all who want to shout down the shouters.  The hecklers should have been escorted out.

The statute under which the hecklers were arrested reads as follows:

“Every person, who, without authority of law, willfully disturbs or breaks up any assembly or meeting that is not unlawful in its character, other than an assembly or meeting referred to in Section 302 of the Penal Code….. is guilty of a misdemeanor”

In Hill v. Colorado the court held that the First Amendment right to free speech was not violated by a Colorado law limiting protest, education, distribution of literature or counseling within eight feet of a person entering a health-care facility.

What this tells me is that the University and city can establish reasonable content neutral rules that prohibit acts that endanger the safety of the speaker or the other members of the audience. They however can not regulate based on the content of the speech.  It does not end there.  I take issue with the California statute as applied here.   What does “disturb” or “break-up” mean?  Would it even be possible to craft a jury instruction?  There is an argument that these words as applied to the protesters are so vague as to be unenforceable and therefore unconstitutional as applied to the protesters.

In the end, I am glad the protesters were escorted out.  I have the same right to listen that they have to be heard.  They can be heard outside the event.  They do not have the 1st amendment right to shout down to the exclusion of all others in the room. This is not a public square.  I however am uncomfortable with any academic discipline or legal action against the protesters.  They wrere not inciting either the speaker or the crowd to violence against the speaker or other members of the crowd.  We should be arresting the dangerous, not the obnoxious.

Most do not know that I have actually served in the military. Between my 1st and 2nd year in law school I spent a whole 3 weeks  in the Marines Officer Candidate School at Quantico Virgina before I was drummed out for knee and foot problems.  During that three weeks the only combat I  saw was the daily verbal assault from my Sergeant Instructor about my unworthiness to be a Marine. (He turned out to be right).  The only heroic deed I accomplished was to not cry when I was being yelled at.

I do have some regrets about not being of the caliber the Marines were looking for. Not being one of the Few Good  Men.  If I stayed, I may have been deployed to Desert Storm which is where many of the the people I was in with ended up.  Maybe I would have went on to save my platoon, fallen on a grenade, some other heroic deed.  Hopefully I would have  lived to tell about it and received my medals, maybe even the “Medal Of Honor”.  In the end, the closest I have come to Marine bravery since is finishing the Marines Corps Marathon with a personal best of 3:27.

The Medal of Honor is the highest award for valor in action against an enemy force which can be bestowed upon an individual serving in the Armed Services of the United States. Generally presented to its recipient by the President of the United States of America in the name of Congress.  The bravery required to receive this honor are chronicled in the heroic acts of the living and dead since 1861.

In 2005, Congress felt so strongly about protecting the memory and integrity of military awards  and the “integrity of valor” inuring to military  medals from those falsely claiming they have received them, that the Stolen Valor Act was passed, signed into law in 2006 by President George W. Bush Jr.  The law expanded a previous law against fraudulently wearing a service medal to include falsely representing that one had received that honor. Violators can be fined or jailed for up to six months.

In essence, the new law criminalized lying.  Not just lying about having received a medal to profit in some way but lying for ANY reason.  The constitutionality of this under the 1st Amendment is about to be tested.  Attorneys in Colorado and California are challenging the law on behalf of two men  charged under The Stolen Valor Act taking the position that the First Amendment protects almost all speech that doesn’t hurt someone else.

While I disdain those who would dishonor the honor paid for so dearly by thous fighting for democracy,  I also hold the 1st Amendment in the highest regard. While those lying for the sake of lying are not engaging in any act personifying the debate that embodies the “idea of free speech” such as burning the flag which is protected, they are also not engaging in conduct that creates any “tangible” harm, only perceived intangible harmed.  To criminalize this when it is not an element of another criminal act such as fraudulently claiming medals for profit,  personifies the essence of the “thought police” and is not what our military brethren paid for with their lives and limbs in receiving such medals.

The Stolen Valor Act to the extent it criminalizes lying for the sake lying is unconstitutional and should be struck down.

I have been following the debate going on within the Internet-cop set regarding “Ghost Blawging”.  Ghost Blawing is just what it sounds like.  Hiring someone to do what you are unable or unwilling to do for yourself-string together coherent sentences in written form.  Following it up by hiding from your audience the fact that the brilliant legal prose and  cutting edge opinions are not really yours.

I am frankly stunned that there are attorneys who hire people to write their blawgs, manage their Facebook pages, Tweet for them.  I am stunned and I laugh out loud. We pay tens of thousands of dollars for a higher education that is supposed to take our thought process to a higher level and teach us how to write. We then show how little we have learned, thinking we are being smart lawyers because smart lawyers know how to delegate the irrelevant things regardless of how much more relevant we want to be.

While I know I will get irate lawyers writing me about theirs busy practices and millions made in their “Rainmaker” seminars, here it is.  For the record. If  you are an attorney and are paying someone to write your blawg, manage your Twitter account or Facebook page then you know so little about social media and business in general that you could not possibly be having any current success as an attorney.  If you were killing it under the old guard of no one reviewing your bill at 350 an hour, times have changed my friend.  You actually have to put in some real effort using your real time to get clients.

People who might be willing to do business based on a social media contact are no different than the person walking through your office door. They want a personal connection. They want a personal connection and you are sending your P.R. rep to the waiting room to talk to them.  Complete idiocy.

It is a humorous, vicious cycle.  Attorneys who know zilch about social media and have lagging practices hire ghost blawggers and P.R people to do their social media dirty work. No business results and the remedy is to engage in even more social media antics that don’t work.

In the end ghost blawgging is just out and out unethical and indicative of an overall intent to deceive that carries into other areas of your practice.  It’s like taking a case that may get tried and and never telling your client you have never tried a case.

Take my advice.  Fire your ghost blawgger today.  Right now.  This minute.  Now sit down and write something, anything.  Don’t think, just write. Proof-it,  Post it.  You’re on your way…

Martin Grossman is set to be executed in Florida on February 16th.   He was convicted of murdering Pinellas County wildlife officer, Wildlife Officer Margaret “Peggy” Park, 26, in 1984.  He and a friend went to a wooded area on Dec. 13, 1984 to shoot a stolen handgun.  Park interrupted them. Grossman pleaded with her not to report him for having the gun and being outside Pasco County, both of which were violations of his probation for burglary.

During a struggle with Officer Park, Grossman got control of  her gun and shot her in the head.

A jury convicted Grossman of first-degree murder and unanimously recommended a death sentence. Taylor, who was 17 at the time, was convicted of third-degree murder and was released in community supervision after serving two years and 10 months of a seven-year prison term.

There is now an outpouring of support in the Jewish community asking the Governor of Florida to commute his sentence to life in prison.  In reviewing the “fact sheet of Amnesty International who opposes the death penatly in general, the main points seem to be as follows:

1.   Ineffective Assistance Of Counsel at Sentencing-The Appeals Court rejected this claim.

2.   A forensic psychologist hired years after conviction called Grossman’s mental state into question as to whether he could act in a pre-mediated fashion or whether his conduct should be mitigated.   Grossman had a “a high level of fear and depression, and parental neglect, abandonment and mistreatment.”

3.   The jury was not presented with evidence that Grossman was high on mind-altering drugs that negated the state of mind needed for a 1st degree murder conviction.

4.   The length of time Grossman has been on death row-24 years.

5.    He has become a devoutly religious Jew and has been a model prisoner.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied an appeal in 2007. The Florida Supreme Court rejected has latest one 11 months ago.

There is no reason for the governor to spare this guy’s life.

His ineffective assistance  of counsel claim has been considered on appeal and rejected.  It is not a proper purview of a Governor for commutation.

A judge has rejected a motion to consider the fact that the jury never heard about  Grossman being on mind-altering drugs at the time of the crime. This decision was proper.  Voluntary ingestion of illegal drugs generally does not negate the element of intent.

If there was evidence that despite the appeals court ruling, the 1st degree conviction was so out-of-whack with the facts I might be on board with looking at that.  That however is not the case here  Mr. Grossman killed a law enforcement officer in the course of her duties.  He knew she was an officer when he killed her.  In my mind, that is 1st degree murder.

His claim of “finding religion” fails as well. He has become a devout Jew gaining the support of Rabbis and Jewish organizations claiming he is a “changed person”.   I am Jewish.  I am glad Mr. Grossman has found his god in our religion.  That does not get him off the needle.  Theological considerations are not a proper criteria is making a commutation decision.  Are we going to commute the sentence of  every prisoner who claims he/she has “found god”?  I hope Mr. Grossman’s god absolves and blesses him in the after-life.  He however has been judged by his peers with due process on earth.

The fact that he has been a model prisoner carries no weight.  That gets him extra commissary and television privileges, not a  pass on the judgment of a jury.

Matthew Grossman, absent new evidence relating to his innocence or guilt or that the sentence is completely out of whack with the facts(which they do not appear to be) should be denied commutation and  executed as scheduled on February 16th.