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Originally Posted by The_Jazz
Ubertuber - if this is a threadjack, please accept my apologies (and please don't "moderate" me out of existence), but...
The 1st Amendment warrants the protection of a free press but does not define what a free press is. The issue now is whether or not a blogger, who is unpaid and self publishes, is actually a journalist. On the one hand, you can have far left and far right bloggers out there deliberately publishing misinformation at the direction of co-conspiritors, and then you can have concerned citizens publishing misdeeds and quasi-legal actions by local politicians (see Knoxville, TN and Venice, FL for excellent examples). If I had links to the two bloggers that I'm referrencing archived, I'd post them, but frankly I don't have time to go back and find them. If you want me to, pm me, and I'll see if I can dig anything up. Remember, the BoR sets up the press as a special class deserving of special priviledges - for instance, as a nonjournalist, you can be forced to reveal your sources for information.
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This isn't really a "moderator moment", but I think your post is excellent - it fits here, but it will live an even better life in the 1st amendment thread. Can you put the appropriate info there too so we can shoot a tangent off?
Dksuddeth - I think there was a spate of "federal rights" rulings post Civil War. I've seen references to this a couple of times recently. I'll follow up and get back to the thread later. This is probably quite relevant to the issue of changing interpretations.
I think the process of amending the Constitution is a completely separate question from the idea of a "living" document. Of course an outlet was provided for formal change, this doesn't imply that interpretation of legal principal changes because the times do. In fact, it sort of implies the opposite - since a process of formal change exists, it is sort of cheating to change the meaning without using it. There's a reason the amendment process is so difficult.
Anybody have thoughts on formal change vs. organic change? (revolutionary change of interpretation vs. evolutionary change?)