The background for this case is the Long Island community of Lawrence, NY in Nassau County. Pamela Greenbaum is an elected member of the Lawrence school board. With the recent influx of Orthodox Jews into Lawrence, (all who send their children to Yeshiva or private school), there has been a bitter battle for conrol of the school board between these new folks and the old guard whom Pamela Greenbaum represents. At a recent session of the school board Pamela Greenbaum was the deciding vote against the district expending money for certain remedial reading courses for private school children. Orthomom is an Orthodox Jewish housewife living in the community who maintains an anonymous blog on the internet dealing with current events affecting the Jewish community. Her blog focused extensively on Pamela Greenbaum's negative vote and its implications. During a heated and emotional discussion, one anonymous poster to the blog described Ms. Greenbaum as "an ugly bigoted anti-semite". This ruffled Pamela's feathers and she filed a defamation lawsuit against Orthomom claiming that she should have deleted that particular post which libeled her. Google was served with papers by Ms. Greenbaum's attorney, Adam Feder Esq. trying to force them to divulge the real name of Orthomom and the anonymous poster who posted the offending comment. Orthomom is defending the suit based upon First Ammenment rights of free speech. She also claims that since Pamela is a publicly elected official, the bar is set higher for criticism and defamation.

If this lawsuit is allowed to go forward and succeed, it will be a tremendous blow to the first ammendment rights of every poster on the internet, including us here at Mudcat. With all the things we say on this forum about our illustrious president and vice president we would all be vulnerable.

A Google search on Pamela Greenbaum will turn up all the information that you need to have an informed discussion about this matter here and now.

                                              SOL ZELLER