donald l. luskin has just threatened to sue atrios. luskin is a contributing editor to the national review, who has a seemingly irrational hatred of new york times columnist and princeton professor paul krugman. last may luskin published a column called "we stalked. he balked." in which he discusses how he has been tracking krugman's "egregious lies." (go read the column to see if you think he actually scores any points on krugman. i personally think his arguments are either pretty weak or simply miss krugman's point). the important part about this column is that the title clearly identifies himself as a "stalker" of krugman. of course, he probably intended it to be a joke. but it's a joke that he himself wrote.
meanwhile as luskin publishes articles picking apart krugman, atrios has published a few blog entries picking apart luskin.
on october 7th, luskin posts on his blog about showing up at a krugman book signing. the post is entitled "face to face with evil", the "evil", of course, is krugman. on that same day, atrios links to luskin's post, entitling his link "diary of a stalker".
so today, atrios received an email from luskin's lawyer claiming that atrios has libeled luskin by "mak[ing] [the] false assertions that Mr. Luskin has committed the crime of stalking." the email asserts that "Such a statement constitutes libel per se, an actionable tort subjecting both the author and the publisher to liability for both actual and punitive damages." the email also objected to some unidentified comments to that post (which were written by other people), and demands that atrios remove both the post and the unidentified "libelous" comments within 72 hours or "further legal action will be taken."
this whole thing is pretty appalling. i doubt if any lawsuit would go anywhere. after all, luskin referred to himself as a stalker last may. but this case, like the case against al franken a few months ago, is just another example of conservative journalists who cannot tolerate anyone pointing out the flaws in their logic. instead of arguing with their critics, they file meritless lawsuits against them. but atrios is not like franken who had plenty of resources and a book to promote (and ended up with record sales because of the publicity generated from the lawsuit). atrios is a high school gym teacher who does his site for free. any lawsuit would ruin his anonymity and force him to pay the cost of litigating against an opponent with greater resources. these type of suits can really be intimidating, which is exactly why the likes of fox and the national review like to use them against their critics.
also, as atrios pointed out in his "calling all right wing bloggers" post, this kind of suit will have a chilling effect on all bloggers, especially those with comments. hopefully, this thing will backfire on luskin and deter others from trying the same thing.
UPDATE: the ninth circuit has apparently ruled that a blogger is not liable for the libelous content of posts generated by others. assuming that case is followed by whatever jurisdiction ends up with luskin v. atrios (and assuming there ever is such a case), that would at least take care of the allegations concerning atrios' comments. (via steve gilliard)
