"ZENGER'S NEWSMAGAZINE" DISTURBS SOME

Zengers Newsmagazine is the only community newspaper in San Diego that runs no display advertising; and dares to print unconventional stories that other news media won't touch. Find it at the Obelist Bookstore in Hillcrest!

Zenger's - which is distributed largely in Hillcrest, North Park and Ocean Beach - regularly prints exposes of politicans and other "leaders" who violate the public trust. It is also distributed in North County, San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles/West Hollywood, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Dallas/Ft. Worth and Minneapolis.

Published by pioneering editor Mark Conlan of North Park, the newspaper's name is taken from the colonial journalist John Peter Zenger of the early New York, well before it became a city. When he went after Gov. William Cosby of the colonial New York Colony, he was arrested and charged with sedition and libel.

Noted lawyer Alexander Hamilton defended Zenger and won in 1735, though many leading lawyers though the case was "unwinnable."

Hamilton succesfully tried a legal procedure that had never been used before. He challenged the legality of the criminal laws for which his client - Zenger - was being prosecuted. It was the first time in American jurisprudence that a lawyer challenged the laws, rather fight primarily for the innocence of his client.

The jurors were stunned and didn't know how to, or even if they were allowed to, address whether the law itself was illegal.

Today, that is a common procedure in some major criminal cases, and is called a "nullity." It is where the law can be declared illegal, usually on constitutional grounds, and therefore cannot be enforced.

Hamilton had also argued that the articles printed by Zenger could not be libelous because they were based on fact. And now today, truth is still a total defense to a charge of libel or slander under New York and California law.

As a result, Zenger's work as an investigative journalist was extremely important to the development of freedom-of-the-press in America, now enshrined in our First Amendment.

The Zenger decision helped clarify the fundimental beliefs of early Colonial life and laid the groundwork for the basic responsibilities of both the media and government in a functioning democracy.

It is to promote and follow those fundimental principals that Zenger's Newsmagazine is now published each month by Conlan !!!

In its October issue, now available; you will find dramatic, revealing stories including the following, among others:

(1) Why Stephen Whitburn is better than Todd Gloria for City Council,

(2) unusual finances of the Hillcrest Town Council (money kept in envelopes?),

(3) former lawyer Leo Wilson's disciplinary background,

(4) secrets of Tijuana jails/prisons (inside Sam Warren's startling book: "Tales from Tijuana Jails"),

(5) Animal-Rights Advocates molilize for Prop-2;

(6) Homeland Security's Reign-of-Terror

(7) "FAGS" militants on community-college campuses, and

Other stories on Zenger's website (http://zengersmag.blogspot.com/) include:

(1) Exposing Skeletons of the Hillcrest Business Association.

(2) the resurgance of the hated 301 University project.

(3) Temporary Closing of the famed IMAX Planetarium at the Fleet Science Center

(4) NBC Denies censoring Gay Olympic Diver.

Zenger's editor, Mark Conlan, can be reached at mgconlan@earthlink.net or call (619) 688-1886.
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Copyright by Leo E. Laurence, J.D. leopowerhere@msn.com or call (619) 757-4909