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Carpal Tunnel
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If memory serves, in olden legal-usage a "slander" was oral and a "libel" was written -- but the law (in my state, at least) no longer treats these as separate categories. The current legal term is "defamation": you sue for defamation, not for slander or for libel.
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Carpal Tunnel
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In reply to:
can attributing great mental acumen to someone be considered defamation?
Another of A. P. Herbert's Misleading Cases would seem to be pertinent here:
http://www.kmoser.com/herbert/herb12.htm
Bingley
Bingley
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Keiva informs us: slander and libel (are) no longer treated as separate categories.
If this is true, then I (as a judicial dunce) think it is a mistake. That which someone says is over with once it is said - one can't mull over it like written defamation. Things spoken are off-the-cuff and must bow to the rhetorical situation. Thus, if people are quoted from conversations, then often things can be misconstrued to suit the purposes of those prosecuting. With libel the intent of the perpetrator should be far more clean cut In addition, slander can rarely (except perhaps for public figures) have as great an effect as libel has both on the victim and any of his/her contemporaries who may read it. I rest my case.
>Those who mock Mr Bush's intellect may .....
...have a good laugh at this article. The mere idea that Mr. Bush would in his wildest dreams be capable of solving a particle physics problem, never mind meeting the press with such exquisite elocution is certainly worth a laugh.
Good ol' sticky fingers Bush is probably not in command of his own bladder if the content and delivery of his rhetoric is any measure.
I think it is priceless that any article with a date at the top and cunning wording can receive recognition for being some kind of 'truth'. Year after year foreign onlookers watch as the American people are spoon feed pureed news for the masses. The demonisation of Bin Laden is a prefect example. Ask the clerk in your supermarket or the lawyer next door, all will agree this is an evil man who must be stopped. But what did he do? The answer - provide a good target onto which America could fire off political missiles. If they believe that he had anything to do with the bombing of some out-of-way US embassy then they haven't yet realized that the world's mass media is under control by a religious and political monopoly - that's right, it's the Muslim's arch-enemy. On the otherhand America as "an act of retaliation" for the bomb purposely planted next to the embassy by their own government (yes, it may not be on CNN, but it's no secret) bombed a medical factory in a completely different country, again with not the slightest connection to poor Mr Bin Laden. This discrimination is ongoing by the way - don't think things are looking rosy now. Just a few weeks ago fathers, brothers and sons disappeared from the streets of Italy on the pretext that 'they know Bin Laden'.
As for the destinctly lowbrow president - he should be up for the prize as Nostradamus's third Antichrist by the end of his term (now that's what I call libel :-).
It's more than a bit of wool that must be pulled from the US public's eyes, to much to tackle - it's like an entire sheep station ;-)
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I heard a very interesting piece on the radio a few weeks ago about slander and libel in Canada. The gist of it was that Canadian/British laws are very, very different from the US rules. Therefore, though I know little of Canadian laws regarding libel or slander, I know that what little I know is not at all relevant in the US.
However, since I have been inundated by US mass media since my birth, it is likely that I have picked up more informal knowledge about US libel/slander/defamation laws that Canadian ones! [argh]
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Carpal Tunnel
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I loved the Wooly summation, Mr B! and this rang a bell, in particular: "We have had in this case the advantage of the expert testimony of nineteen well-known writers and authors, fourteen literary critics, seven editors, and two philologists. And the one thing that emerges from this mass of informed opinion is that the expression complained of must be the most remarkable word in common use to-day. For though each of these authorities came prepared with a full and impressive theory of the origin and significance of the word, no two of these explanations were in any respect the same...."Now if he had only asked for expert witnesses from the ranks of AWADtalk...! 
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Carpal Tunnel
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According to this theory the divisions of the human race are not two, but three -- the lowbrow, the high-lowbrow, or broadbrow (or those of an intelligence and tolerance superior to the average), and the highbrow, who, though not necessarily more gifted than the second class, has in an intellectual sense the defects of character or outlook sufficiently suggested by the expressions 'prig', 'Pharisee', and 'smug'.
His Lordship misses the boat here only in that he bungles the opportunity to promulgate the term 'mezzobrow' for the middle category.
Mencken Amer. Lang. Suppl. I. 325 The search for a term to designate persons neither high-brows nor low-brows has led to the suggestion of mizzen-brow and mezzo-brow... but they have not caught on.
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the opportunity to promulgate the term 'mezzobrow'...yeahbut. It's got 3 syllabubs - cain't do that 
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enthusiast
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OP
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I must say that I surprised that anybody could mistake the irony obvious in this "news" item. There is none in the foloowing news item, which also relates very directly to the defense of the President: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2-2001301335,00.htmlMissiles aimed at the United States and shot down by its proposed defensive shield could explode instead over Europe or Canada, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Scientists have calculated that a missile shot down en route from Iraq to Washington could hit Britain. What are friends for?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Indeed® But those of us from other parts of the world fear the fall out from other Bushwacky forin policy far more, since the chance of global warming is infinitely greater than a missile ever hitting another missile fired in anger within the forseeable technological future! You don't need to be a maths genius to come to this conclusion either - just add up the number of missiles proposed to be deployed, and balance that against their need to multiple target incoming missiles and their proven susceptibility to thousands of kevlar proxies scattered as decoys... no, us UKns won't be losing much sleep over this, I reckon
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....won't be losing much sleep over this
Although the Bush stance on 'weapons of mass-destruction' is indeed unnerving, the direct results of the refusal to ratify a UN bill concerning the control of small-arms will no doubt have a more immediate affect. The US have thus shown their support for a homegrown weapons industry and for the products thereof, which are responsible for the most war-related and violent deaths in the world today - not H bombs or missiles. Then a moral stand is made on stem-cell research - ich fass es nicht.
Bush has the moral fibre of a rice cracker!
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