Here's mean ex-JUDGE ROBERT K. MATHIS' latest angry comment, on the St. Johns County School Board's SLAPP lawsuit against Open Records requester Jeff Gray:
olddog 01/31/16 - 10:16 am 21"Journalist" Not
This guy is no journalist. I would love to know what his training and education in journalism might be. This type of gadfly is the reason the legislature is going to change the public records law to make the people who file these nuisance lawsuits pay attorney fees to the public agencies who are the victims. I have dealt with many legitimate public records requests from legitimate news sources and never had a problem with them. The journalist would normally first call and find out who the custodian of records might be, then file their request, we would find the records, tell them the cost of copying and redacting the exempt material, then answer the request.
If Gray was actually interested in obtaining the records, he would follow the rules and procedures, he obviously is more interested in finding a basis for a lawsuit and making a nuisance of himself. Hopefully, the Judge will see through his actions and issue an injunction against him.
Here's mendacious ex-JUDGE ROBERT KEITH. MATHIS' earlier comment, last month, on the St. Johns County School Board's SLAPP lawsuit against Open Records requester Jeff Gray:
olddog 12/27/15 5:53 pm
His real interest...
His real interest is obviously getting videos for his pathetic website and trying to setup some government entity to bring a lawsuit to try to get an award of attorney fees that he can split with his attorney. The public records law serves a valuable purpose, but is easily and frequently abused. If he really wanted these records, for a legitimate purpose, he would request them, in a reasonable manner, so that the custodian would have the chance to find them, insure that any sensitive exempt material was expunged, and then furnish them, after the ministerial costs involved were paid. He's just like the shysters who set up business owners to create lawsuits over handicap access issues, solely for the purpose of obtaining attorney fees.
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So Nixonian ex-Judge ROBERT KEITH MATHIS, the son of a segregationist judge, ex-Judge CHARLES MATHIS, thinks he has the right to pass judgment on journalistic credentials and training, which our Founders never mentioned in the First Amendment and which is not a prerequisite to protection from SLAPP suits or invoking Open Records laws under Article I, Section 24 of our Florida Constitution. He predicts legislative action and invites judicial misconduct. He ululates "The public records law serves a valuable purpose, but is easily and frequently abused." Glad he's not deciding Open Records cases. Glad he was "outed" by the Record when it revealed the names of all of its commenters, some of them vicious non-subscriber KKK-style commenters, for a year.
A Nixon appointee hearing his first case on the bench (The Pentagon Papers), United States District Court Judge Murray Gurfein rebutted Nixonian arguments: "The security of the Nation is not at the ramparts alone. Security also lies in the value of our free institutions. A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, an ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know." United States v. N.Y. Times Co., 328 F. Supp. 324, 331 (S.D.N.Y. 1971).
Writing as "old dog" on The St. Augustine Record website on Easter Sunday 2014, Nixonian second-generation ex-Judge ROBERT KEITH MATHIS falsely claimed the FBI had no jurisdiction over the Michelle O'Connell case. The FBI is investigating now. (Maladroit BOB MATHIS was head of homicide prosecutions for State's Attorney RALPH JOSEPH LARIZZA when it refused to prosecute St. Johns County Sheriff's JEREMY BANKS over the Michelle O'Connell shooting, never obtaining the water use record for the house where the shooting occurred, which could have disproved BANKS' claim he had no shower after the shooting of his girlfriend, who was leaving him. LARIZZA belatedly recused himself when his investigators believed that BANKS may have shot Michelle O'Connell.)
I'm reminded of the song; "Teach Your Children Well" while reading today's front page story about this in St. Augustine Record. The School Board has a unique view of the First Amendment. In the article they say; "It is unclear how he (Gray) gets from 'newsgathering', which is conduct to the 'constitutional right to free speech' criterion listed in the statue". I can only assume that the School Board's very unique interpretation of the First Amendment is also explained to the kiddies. Did someone give the School Board a "First Amendment" that's different from the one in the US Constitution?
ReplyDeletePlease cite examples of R. Mathis being a bigot...any memorable rulings come to mind?
ReplyDeleteThe quality of the convesation has taken a nose dive when "media" stoops to guilt by association and discusses a father's sins in relation to the son and fails to offer a single shred of evidence that the son behaves and acts like dad. Its yellow journalism when a GOP 'er does it and it is yellow journalism when a Demo does it.
Mathis may be the biggest a-hole in town ( don't know) but we request that when discussing an individual's wrong doing that the media just stick with the facts and the individual at hand vs. straying into the highly unethical sensationalsim of examining the entire family tree. It was wrong when Mccarthy did it and it is wrong when this blog does it.
Albert Goering personally saved many Jews from the death camps - he used his family name and position as the brother of Herman Goering to undermine Nazism.
Guilt by association? Unamerican slander!
Are you Judge MATHIS or his son?
ReplyDeleteDid I say ROBERT KEITH MATHIS was a "bigot?"
Clearly, his years of comments on the Record website show naked free-floating prejudices of all kinds against people and groups, including hateful comments about persons engaged in First Amendment protected activity. He was a Circuit Court judge, not an appellate judge, and thus his opinions were not published. Nor were they well covered by the St. Augustine Record.
Not slander, not libel -- my opinions, protected activity under the First Amendment.