Tel-Chai Nation

The Times-Picayune (via Jihad Watch) says that local legislators have followed in the footsteps of New York's, and provided measures to protect against the kind of problems Rachel Ehrenfeld had:

Within minutes Monday a legislative committee repudiated both Islamic and British law.

Neither, perhaps, represents an immediate threat to justice in Louisiana, but it was not entirely an alarmist and xenophobic stunt when the committee approved two bills by Rep. Ernest Wooton, R-Belle Chase. Mostly, but not entirely.

One of Wooton's bills, which provides that no foreign law shall be applied here if it violates a right guaranteed by the American Constitution, is by any rational measure superfluous. But it is not unknown for immigrant litigants to invoke the tenets of Sharia to which, the committee was told, the Maryland courts deferred in a child custody case.

The Louisiana Supreme Court has so far insisted that cases in America are settled according to American law, but the committee figured it was wise to commit future jurists to that sound principle. At least the bill does no harm.

Wooton's other bill may be largely symbolic too, although it is worth passing just in case. It does not single out the Limeys, but its refusal to enforce foreign defamation judgments that are "repugnant to the public policy of this state" is clearly aimed at them. Other states have passed, or are considering, similar legislation in response to a libel award rendered in London against the American writer Rachel Ehrenfeld.

It must be embarrassing for the British when American legislators lump them together with the avatars of medieval repression, but plenty of them are evidently aware it is fair, at least in the context of libel law. As a general election approaches, all three major parties in the UK promise to reform laws that have created "libel tourism" on the very island where John Milton wrote the book on press freedom, "Areopagitica." That was in 1644, so it's about time the government got the hang of it.

You can say that again. Now, maybe some book publishers should consider Louisiana a worthy place to set up business?

Labels: islam, londonistan, United States