Ford "Hoopie" Harris Would Like To Thank Everyone For Their Support! It's Been One Heck Of A Ride!
March 20, 2005 -- We Would Sincerely Like To Thank All Who Came Out For "The Cruise With Hoopie" Day, Saturday, March 19, 2005. We Would Like To Thank All The Merchants For Their Kindness. And All Those Who Came And Put Their Wonderful Classic Cars On Display, It Was Simply Awesome! We Proved Yesterday That Together, We Can Make A Positive Difference In Our Wonderful City! Thanks!
April 06, 2005 -- This Website Will Be Going Down Soon Probably, As The People Have Spoken With Their Vote, And The Mayoral Race Is Over. We Would Like To Encourage You To Read About Our Nation's History, Our Nation's Forefathers, And Just Why Our Great Nation Was Formed In The First Place.
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This Website Was Built With Inspiration and Perspiration, It Did Not Cost One Cent To Put Together, It Was Built To Help Get Ford 'Hoopie' Harris's Message Out To You, The Citizens Of Carterville, In HOOPIE'S OWN WORDS, UNADULTERATED, WITHOUT ANY DISTORTIONS TO HIS MESSAGE WHATSOEVER. Certain Individuals Did Try To Harm This Website, The Evidence Is Below When The Shoutbox Was Flooded With Insults, Not Legitimate Input. This Site Will Remain Up For As Long As The Servers Decide To Keep It Up. I Designed This Site For Ford Hoopie Harris To Get His Message Out. The Election Is Over And It's Time We Moved Forward. Check Out My Website If You Want By Clicking Here . A Number Of People Have Asked Who Built Hoopie's Website?? Well, I Did, And Am Proud To Call Ford Hoopie Harris My Friend. Alot Of Things Were Said That Were Simply Not True, And I Would Gladly Love To See Any Proof Whatsoever That Ford 'Hoopie' Harris Ran A 'Nasty Campaign'. He Ran A Clean Campaign, Hoopie Is A Good Man. In The Whole Time I Was Around Hoopie, I Never Seen Any 'Underhanded Tactics' Take Place Whatsoever On Hoopie's Behalf, If I Would Have, I Would Have Walked Away From The Entire Campaign, Anybody That Knows Me, Knows That! On The Other Hand There Were Things Done To Harm Hoopie's Campaign Bid As Mayor, When Hoopie Feels Like Talking About It, I'm Sure He Will. To Further Set The Record/Rumors Straight, I Personally Stopped The People Trying To Flood The Shoutbox With Insults, And Posted The Proof Below, And One Individual Actually Posted An Email Address, Which I Removed For Fear That Person Would Get Spammed. We Had A Volunteer From Florida Shrink The Flyers Hoopie Made (so the page would load faster), That Says Alot, A Volunteer From Florida! One Of The Many Beautiful Happenings That Evolved From This Last Campaign, America Is Beautiful, And It Is Strong. So This Should Set The Record Straight As To Who Built This Website, And The Rumors Can Stop Now. Be Sure And Visit My Site By Clicking The Link Below. I Believe In Putting The Politics Behind The Well-Being Of The Citizens Of Carterville. It's Time To Move On. Stand Strong In Your Beliefs, And Be Your Own Person, Speak Your Own Words, And Help This Great City Grow. Thank You All For Everything. --Sincerely, James Vaughn
"No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man's permission when we ask him to obey it"--Theodore Roosevelt
----Intimidation
The crime of intimidation is defined as intending to cause another person to act a certain way by threatening the person by phone, by mail, or in person. The threats can include threatening to
* Hurt the person, another person, or property
* Physically confine or restrain the person
* Commit a crime or accuse the other person of committing a crime
* Expose the person to hatred or ridicule
* Cause a strike or boycott
In Illinois, intimidation is a felony.------Defamation and Libel Defined
Defamation
It is the unstated duty of newspapers and broadcasters to report the news, but they also have a legal obligation to not interfere with the rights of others. The law recognizes that each person has the right to have the esteem in which he or she stands in others’ opinions unaffected by false statements that discredit him. In the common law brought to America from England, protection of every individual from publication and dissemination of libelous/slanderous statements made to third persons was ingrained into society.
Before libel law became a part of civil law, it was referenced under criminal law. It was the theory of those in the judicial system that reasonable people, when they are defamed, were most likely to attack or kill accusers. At that time, the motive of publication was not the relevant issue; the issue was the damage inflicted.
Libel law has undergone the most significant changes during the past three decades. Many of these changes have come from the U.S. Supreme Court, which transformed the old common law to “constitutional” libel law.
Today, there are statutory references and constitutional guarantees against defamation. Libel law is now a part of the tort system and is concerned primarily with the fault in the publication and not in the truth or non-truth of the statement. However, the real motive for most individuals who sue is to provide restoration of reputations, thus, to establish “the truth.”
Defamation law has been divided into two branches: (1) slander and (2) libel. Slander consists of oral communication, whereas libel consists of printed or broadcast communication.
Libel
The most general definition of libel is that it consists of a false statement that is printed or broadcast about an individual which tends to bring that person into public ridicule, contempt, hatred or inflicts injury to his or her occupation or business.
There are two types of libel in the statutes: criminal libel and civil libel. Criminal libel, the more rare type, consists of disrupting the peace and can carry a punishment of fines and imprisonment. Civil libel is the most common for journalists to encounter. It consists of a cause of action by another individual for damages to reputation and regard. The one characteristic that unifies most types of libel is the potential injury inflicted to reputation.
Defamation laws vary in each state. The federal constitutional law prevents a state from imposing liability upon a publisher/broadcaster for defamation without showing the existence of falsity and some measure of fault. The states can determine what a plaintiff in libel suits must prove and what defenses are available to a publisher/broadcaster.
States can also determine whether the prosecution for criminal libel can exist. Differences among state libel laws make it virtually impossible to generalize about the law of libel, and the national media becomes subjected to 50 differing sets of libel laws. For example, more than 30 states have libel-retraction laws and almost all of them differ. 10 states have privacy laws that affect litigation against the media. Complicating all of this further are the wide differences among state statutes of limitations.
Generally, the elements of libel are the same. The elements are what the plaintiff, who has the burden of proof, must prove regardless of his status to win his defamation suit. The plaintiff, regardless of his status as public official, public figure or private individual must establish the following elements:
1. Publication - the statement was communicated to other individuals.
2. Identification - the statement was reasonably understood by people who knew the plaintiff as referring directly to the alleged libeled individual.
3. Falsity - individuals could reasonably understand that a specific false statement was made through the communication.
4. Damages - the statement caused provable “actual injury” in some form, i.e. damage of reputation, mental anguish or suffering, economic loss.
5. Fault - plaintiff’s status determines what should be proved and, thus, this usually becomes the most significant element.
In 1974, the Supreme Court decided that neither presumed or punitive damages are to be allowed unless the plaintiff proves that the publisher/broadcaster made the statement knowing that it was false or entertaining serious doubts to its truth.
Source: Illinois Press Association Guide to First Amendment & Illinois Access Laws (1995)
Do To The Abuse Of The Shoutbox, It Was Removed From This Site, Some Classic Examples Are Posted Below, This Is Just An Example Of How Certain People Operate In This City, Little Did They Know, They Were Being Monitored, And Their Stupidity Is Shown Below For All To See For As Long As This Website Shall Remain On The Web. The Shoutbox Was Designed For Citizens To Voice Their Concerns About This City, Good Points On Both Sides Were Made, Then The Good Ideas Of The People Were Flooded Into The Archives. In This Case Below, TWO Computers Using SEVERAL NAMES And INSULTS, NOT SUGGESTIONS, Flooded The HONEST OPINIONS Of Several Posts Into The Archives. We Will Not, And Did Not Stoop To The Level Of Certain Individuals! We Were Not Going To "Babysit" The Shoutbox, With The Childlike Insults As Posted Below! This Site Was Designed To Inform You Of What Ford "Hoopie" Harris Believes In, Not A Place For Fools To Gather And Play Idiotic Games As Shown Below. We Took This Election Very Seriously, As We Always Will Feel Our Great City Needs ALL Of Our Attention, ALL Elections Are A Very Serious Matter For ALL Of Us!
"When the government fears the people there is liberty;
when the people fear the government there is tyranny." Thomas Jefferson
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty
when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are
naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment
by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
-- Justice Louis D. Brandeis
US Supreme Court Judge
Source: Justice Louis D. Brandeis, dissenting, Olmstead v. United States,
277 US 479 (1928)
“Mystery (operating in secret) is the antagonist of truth. It is a flaw of human invention that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion.” -- Thomas Paine
"Be not intimidated... nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice..." -- John Adams
"Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech...." --Benjamin Franklin
"All power is originally vested in, and consequently derived from, the people. That government is instituted and ought to be exercised for the benefit of the people; which consists in the enjoyment of life and liberty and the right of acquiring property, and generally of pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. That the people have an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform or change their government whenever it be found adverse or inadequate to the purpose of its institution...." --James Madison
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance......" --Thomas Jefferson
"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters..." --Daniel Webster
"The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom...." --Justice William O. Douglas
"When even one American -- who has done nothing wrong -- is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril...." --Harry S. Truman
"Every generation needs a new revolution...."--Thomas Jefferson
"Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper...."--Thomas Jefferson
" Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence...."--John Adams
"The first duty of a newspaper is to be accurate. If it is accurate, it follows that it is fair...."--Herbert B Swope
"Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance...."--Confucius
"No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which one is true...."--Nathaniel Hawthorne
