I think it is cowardly, unpatriotic and an insult to Amendment 1, to not use my name when I have at someone else online

I think it is cowardly, unpatriotic and an insult to Amendment 1 to not use my name when I have at someone else online. 

Defamation laws provide redress for slander (spoken) and libel (written) false allegations that damage person's character. 

For example, falsely accusing someone of being a criminal, unchaste, insane, etc., without any shred of proof and out of spite and malice. 

However, the truth is not defamation, nor is a stated opinion based on what the accuser knows and believes in good faith to be true. 

Public figures are not nearly as protected by defamation laws as private people. To prevail in a defamation lawsuit, a public figure has to prove the accuser knew the accusations were false and made the accusations with malice. 

In Key West and the Florida Keys, I made myself a public figure by running for local public office 10 times, attending and speaking at candidate forums, being interviewed by newspapers, radio and TV stations, speaking regularly during citizen comments at local government public meetings, publishing daily at my blog, commenting frequently under Facebook local issue posts, commenting frequently under articles at boat-rocker Key West the Newspaper (thebluepaper.com), and commenting frequently at bigpinekey.com's popular Coconut Telegraph public forum, which allowed anonymous pot shots at private citizens and anyone. 

The owner of bigpinekey.com built my first two blogs and showed me how to use them. I had many rounds with him and his readers about taking anonymous pot shots at me and other private citizens. 

I invited his readers to sit down somewhere with me face to face and get to know me. They could pick the place. If they were afraid of me, they could bring their friends and relatives and their their guns and knives. I would bring me and the angels that ran and bossed me around. Didn't get one taker.

I made it just about impossible for me to prevail in a defamation suit by being a public figure and ruining my reputation in all of those venues described above, and by being open about my political and spiritual views and my personal life. 

I sometimes wrote at my blogs, that once you ruin your reputation, you can be free. 

Then, came 2015, when I ran out money, again, and eventually I ran out of places to stay in other people's homes, again. 

For years, I had been subsidized by inheritances, because it seemed I was spirit-blocked from making a living wage. I had published that a number of times at my blog.

I went to a Key West City Commission meeting and during closing citizen comments told the elected officials and city managers and citizens, including journalists, in the live audience and watching on TV, what had happened.

I said, after leaving the commission meeting, I would head to the police station and ask to be allowed to sleep there in the front lobby, because I was banned from the city's homeless shelter for writing about it on my blog. Or, I would be taken to jail, as it was illegal for homeless people to sleep outside the shelter.

When I reached the police station, a Lieutenant came out and  said I could sleep there at night, if I wished. I figured he had received a phone call from the City Attorney, who was at the commission meeting. 

I knew the City Attorney pretty well. He knew I was part of why the shelter had been built, because a local lawyer, now a city commissioner, and I had promised the city we would sue it in federal court, if city police kept arresting and jailing homeless people for sleeping outside. 

The City Attorney knew, if I was taken to jail, I might sue the city in federal court. The City Attorney knew I had clerked for a federal judge and then had tried cases in federal and state courts. The City Attorney knew I had a laptop and lay and lawyer friends, including the lawyer on the city commission, who was my personal lawyer, might clandestinely help me sue the city.

The Key West Citizen reported on the front page that I was sleeping nights in the police station front lobby. The city's public affairs officer was quoted as saying I had to be allowed to sleep somewhere, in a park, on a bench, somewhere. The public affairs officer once was the Keynoter newspaper's Key West bureau chief. She had done several articles on me when I ran for the county commission the first time, 2006.

I slept months of nights in the front lobby of the Key West police station. $900 per month Social Security benefits barely covered my food and incidental expenses, because the local soup kitchen had moved to the homeless shelter, from which I was banned. I had no way to cook meals and ate cheap meals in restaurants and grocery store delis. 

In September 2017, my finances improved due my father's estate making a deal to loan $3,000 a month against an inheritance all of my father's children would receive when his second wife died. I reported that at my blog.

The monthly loans got me off the street and inside. 

Otherwise, I might still be sleeping nights in the Key West police station front lobby, or I might be dead or in an institution, because it was really rough sleeping with bright lights overhead and people coming into the front lobby throughout the night to report this or that or just have someone to talk with about what bothered them.

During the last of the six Key West's mayor's races I entered, 2018, I introduced myself at the first candidate event by saying, "Everyone here knows Key West is an open air insane asylum and I'm the head lunatic, (laughter in the audience), so why not make it official, Sloan for Mayor!" (More  laughter.) That had come from out of the blue for me to say when I was riding my bicycle to the event. 

I was quoted in the next day's Key West Citizen.

Riding my bicycle to the main candidate forum later that year, it came to me from out of the blue, that during my opening remarks I would pretend receive a telephone call from God about really serious issues facing the city government, which were making the front page of the Key West Citizen and the Keynoter, were all over Facebook, and elected city officials were dodging. 

A YouTube clip of that telephone call went viral in America and overseas. I was invited to be on Sean Hannity's FOX show, but at least one other of the seven mayor candidates had to join me. There were no takers.

I think I got 50 votes. 

When you destroy your reputation, you can be free.

Imagine me suing someone for defaming me.

Imagine what the newspapers, blogs, Facebook, twitter, etc. would do with me, and there would be no redress in the courts.

Imagine Donald Trump suing the mainstream media, Facebook, Twitter, etc. for defamation. 

Imagine the Founding Fathers laughing their asses off.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com