>>My main question is "Why should an elected official of a local school board be entitled to greater protection under the law than the elected President or Vice President of the USA who have been vilified to a much greater degree right here on Mudcat" <<

(1) The school board official Greenbaum is not entitled to greater protection than GWB. GWB and Greenbaum have equal rights to sue their respective tormentors. They are equally entitled to have their cases thrown out of court.

(2) I think you may be more worried than necessary because of the technical definition of malice being less than clear-cut. ("A false statement of fact that was uttered with knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth.") I think you should focus on the fact that in their respective arenas the speech is question is simply not defamatory in the first place. That is to say, calling Greenbaum an ugly anti-semite is not defamatory, and calling GWB an asshole baby killer is not defamatory. Both are arguably "true" or "not true," so that you could end up in expensive litigation over each assertion. However, in context, they are not defamatory speech. Defamatory speech must "harm the reputation of another as to lower him in the estimation of the community or to deter third persons from associating or dealing with him." In politics and with political editorials, the courts recognize not only the need to protect such speech with wide leeway, but also that political and editorial rants and hubris do NOT tend to damage reputations of politicians, they are merely part of the landscape into which the policiticans have voluntarily entered.