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The story you ran on Zupan's possibly losing their liquor license was one of the most absurd pieces of "journalism" I have ever read ["Zupan's Major Minor Problems," WW, Feb. 3, 1999]. First, if Zupan's repeatedly breaks the law, they have no business keeping the license. Second, how on earth can the "owner" claim to have no control over what employees do? He is, or should be, the boss, and people who work for him should do what he says...period. Is there a problem with their math skills? If they can't determine if a customer is old enough to buy liquor, I wonder what else they are doing wrong. As Zupan himself said, "It wouldn't close the store." Jerry Dawson Bob Young's cover story " Three Strikes and You're In" [WW, Jan. 27, 1999] incorrectly claimed that I, Lewis Marcus, was displeased with the Adidas America move to my North Portland community. I welcome Adidas to Overlook and look forward to the benefits that this good corporate citizen will bring to our community. My sole objection is to City Commissioner Francesconi leasing a portion of Madrona Park for a parking lot to serve the new Adidas facility. Shortly after the lease was signed, a crew began drilling for soil samples to evaluate this city park for a building foundation. Will Madrona Park be the next city park to be sold? Lewis Marcus The heck with zoning laws being affected by Justice Linde ["It's Free Speech, Stupid," WW, Feb. 3, 1999]. How about the travesty of justice that occurred under the Robertson case you wrote about? That poor woman was threatened if she didn't perform oral sex. I guess Linde ignored the rest of Article 1, Section 8 of the Oregon Constitution, "but every person shall be responsible for the abuse of this right." If threatening someone with an obscene photograph is not abuse of this right, what is? How does Linde respond to that? I think he should have to serve the jail time that Robertson should have served for attempted rape (oh sorry, oral sex isn't sex anymore). Linde and others like him--Willamette Week, ACLU et al.--seem to rationalize that the framers of the U.S. Constitution and the state constitution must have carefully planned and penned these documents so that above all else a pornographer, pedophile and pervert can profit from their deeds. Also, is your joy regarding the recent ruling on the "Nuremberg" Web page tempered by the likelihood that it will be overturned using the rulings of your hero? John Jagosh The reasoning that the Oregon Supreme Court used to conclude that our state constitution protects obscenity is flawed ["It's Free Speech, Stupid," WW, Feb. 3, 1999]. Article 1, Section 8 provides that no law shall restrict "the right of any person to speak, write or print freely on any subject whatever; but every person shall be responsible for the abuse of this right." Historically, this was understood to incorporate the common-law understanding
that certain speech, including libel and obscenity, was an abuse of
the right and such speech was In State v. Robertson, Linde interpreted the text to mean that all speech is protected unless it is covered by a "well established historical exception." Later, in State v. Henry, the Court overruled its prior obscenity decision and concluded that obscenity was not a well-established historical exception without seriously examining the historical record. Obscenity laws were well established throughout the United States at the time of Oregon's Constitutional Convention in 1857. By then, most of the 33 states, including Oregon, had enacted obscenity statutes, and other states prosecuted obscenity as a common law crime. Massachusetts had passed the first obscenity law in 1712. No constitutional challenge to state or federal obscenity laws had ever succeeded. Contemporary constitutional scholars uniformly agreed that obscenity was not protected. And during the debate about the "abuse clause" at Oregon's constitutional convention, the framers made it clear that they understood it to cover any speech that was already considered an abuse, including libel (and obscenity). Dan Barnhart
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