Publisher's Notebook

Piers Morgan, the British-born host of the CNN program “Piers Morgan Tonight,” got into a verbal dust-up Dec. 19 with a guest on his show, Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America.

Morgan ostensibly asked Pratt on the show to have a discussion on guns. But the host, incensed over the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, called Pratt an “idiot” and “an incredibly stupid man” for arguing, among other things, that teachers should be armed.

What did Morgan get for voicing his opinions? A bump in the ratings? Nope. Two days later, a guy named “Kurt N.” in Austin, Texas, launched a petition drive, asking the Obama administration to deport the British national.

The White House has an online mechanism by which anyone can petition the government to take some action. Kurt N. said that “Morgan is engaged in a hostile attack against the U.S. Constitution by targeting the Second Amendment.”

He demanded “that Mr. Morgan be deported immediately for his effort to undermine the Bill of Rights and for exploiting his position as a national network television host to stage attacks against the rights of American citizens.”

By Dec. 26, more than 70,000 people had signed the petition. Half of those were added after news coverage of the petition first broke Christmas Eve.

Since the petition has topped 25,000 signatures, President Obama will have to respond.

Don’t expect Morgan to be packing his bags any time soon. The First Amendment still protects freedom of speech in this country. Even for British television hosts.

Take another example. A young Massachusetts woman named Lindsey Stone last month posted a goofy picture of herself on Facebook. She and a friend visited the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, where a sign asks “Silence and Respect.”

Stone, grinning all the way, flipped a bird and pretended to shout in the mugging shot. After she put it on Facebook, it went viral and veterans’ groups and families went ballistic.

A Facebook group called “Fire Lindsey Stone” was created, quickly gaining more than 4,000 likes. The drumbeat of publicity kept going; Stone herself received death and rape threats.

Her employer, a small non-profit, did indeed fire her, along with the woman who snapped the picture.

What does everyone I have discussed so far have in common? They all acted kind of stupidly.

Morgan asked a pro-gun guy on his show, then resorted to haranguing and petty name-calling. Pratt wants every schoolmarm to pack heat. Kurt N. needed two days to concoct a silly overheated petition. Stone’s dumb photo speaks for itself. Then some people lost all perspective and wanted her to lose her job, or wanted her killed, for a childish prank. Come on, everyone.

On one hand, you could start to worry about what’s happening to the ability to speak up or speak out.

But then, you need to remember that you have the right to do or say stupid things – in the marketplace of ideas it all gets sorted out. And it’s been that way in this country for a long time.

Ashley Messenger, associate general counsel for NPR, gave a talk on the First Amendment to the Society of Professional Journalists, Virginia Pro chapter, on Dec. 16. (I am the president of this group).

The setting: Gunston Hall in Fairfax County, Va., home of George Mason, author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Mason’s Declaration was the forerunner of the Bill of Rights, and Thomas Jefferson liberally cribbed Mason’s concepts and wording for the Declaration of Independence.

Messenger noted that when Mason, Jefferson and the other Founders were debating how to set up the new American government, there was a willingness to respect and protect the freedoms of others, particularly the freedom to express ideas.

The best way to deal with offensive speech or acts is not seeking to silence the speaker or resort to punishment, said Messenger. “The remedy for offensive speech is more speech,” she said, meaning, identify why the statements or acts are wrong or hurtful. Put the ideas on the table for discussion in an effort to increase understanding. The Founders had great faith that good ideas would win out and lesser ones would fall, after a respectful, vigorous exchange.

Morgan was given a megaphone along with a star on his door and his name on a show. But he used it to shout and failed to put it to his ear to listen to any point of view beside his own.

Respecting freedom of speech, Messenger said, must be “cultural” – people must be educated to respect other ideas and even to be “fighting for the right to say something offensive.”

Veterans’ families were offended by Stone’s prank, but it’s not overstating or disrespectful to note that their honored late loved ones went to war to preserve her right to do what she did.

Mason and Jefferson believed in protecting the expression of all ideas – good, bad, even stupid.

If we forget that, and allow blowhards or online lynch mobs to carry the day, well, that’s the surest way to “undermine the Bill of Rights” and for us to lose our freedoms.

A Fairfax judge has been found guilty of one of the most elementary computer security blunders. Read on.

Fairfax lawyer Sharon Nelson reports on her blog, Ride the Lightning, that she and her partner and husband, John Simek, were in one of the courtrooms at the Fairfax courthouse the other night giving a CLE session.

Simek was helping someone with a technology question, then he walked up to the bench. On the bench was the judge’s computer. And there it was: Attached to the judge’s monitor, for all to see, was a sticky note. With the judge’s user name. And the judge’s password.

Nelson’s response: “C’mon guys!” There is no rule of information security so fundamental, she said. You just don’t put a sticky note “with the keys to the castle” on your monitor, under your keyboard or in an easily accessible drawer, she added.

Wonder if the password was “123456.” As we have reported previously, that’s the most commonly used, and therefore most easily cracked, password.

Discretion being the better part of valor, Nelson didn’t name the errant judge or provide his/her courtroom number.

She did ask the rhetorical question, “Maybe we need to have a data security CLE for the judges?”

FAIRFAX—Last Friday, 11/11/11, was the day of the 10th annual “Jazz 4 Justice” concert at George Mason University. It also was Veterans Day, which gave this year’s performance its theme.

The GMU Jazz Ensemble played “The Music of World War II,” tunes from an era when bandleaders Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller and Woody Herman, among others, took the jazz genre to its “high point,” said Jim Carroll, ensemble director. Jazz was at its most popular during the war years.

Carroll told the audience that he really didn’t know how to say thank you enough to veterans, except through the music.

The GMU Jazz Ensemble did all vets in the audience proud – and there were quite a few at the GMU Center for the Arts, judging from the number of people who stood during an “Armed Service Medley” of all the service branch themes.

A trio of students channeled the Andrews Sisters in a rendition of the classic, “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” Other top tunes of the era included, Carroll said, a “song that needs no introduction,” Miller’s “In the Mood.”

Fairfax lawyer Ed Weiner, the founder of Jazz 4 Justice and past president of the Fairfax Law Foundation, took a turn at conducting the ensemble. The GMU music department honored Weiner with the Director’s Award, thanking him for 10 years of work on the concert, which raises money for the foundation and for the music programs at Mason.

Members of the ensemble bore gifts, too, presenting Weiner with a framed photograph of the group and their leaders in China during their recent visit. Weiner and his wife Maura were able to accompany the GMU students to the Far East.

At the concert, Weiner also announced the results of the Jazz 4 Justice hat contest – an annual exercise to see who can take a hat with the J4J logo the farthest from Fairfax. This year’s winners were Linda and Paul Hammack, who sported their hats in a snap in front of the Sydney Opera House in Australia, some 9,758 miles away.

Here’s to one of the good guys: Ed Weiner.

Weiner was honored by the Fairfax Bar Association luncheon today with the FBA’s James Keith Public Service Award. Among the reasons: As Judge Stan Klein said in presenting the award, “Ed is a tireless fundraiser for the Fairfax Law Foundation.”

Each year, Ed’s law firm, Weiner, Rohrstaff & Spivey, holds the annual Law Day Weiner Roast around Law Day and the Jazz 4 Justice program, a joint effort between the foundation and the music school at George Mason. Klein noted that these programs have raised more than $100,000 for the foundation and more than $25,000 for music scholarships at GMU.

Weiner has been active in numerous other charitable efforts, which help, as the judge noted, “make Fairfax an even better place to live.”

Klein concluded by noting that you can find Weiner at the Union Mill Shopping Center every Saturday this December, “ringing the bell for the Salvation Army.”

Hats off.