Paul Trummel, the aging gadfly who has been in jail for months for refusing to take down a Web site with names and addresses of nursing home administrators (and possibly residents) he is "investigating" despite any clear evidence he's a working journalist, has been freed from jail. He has until Friday to remove the content from his Web site or he'll probably be jailed again.

Trummel's actions are unattractive by just about anyone's measures, and given the strong response to his imprisonment, those happy to see him locked up are shouting as loud as he can that he's not a writer, not a journalist, and has been actually harassing people. This may be true, and the court can hold him accountable for that, but all the court has done so far is evict him from the home (and not even directly -- by issuing a restraining order preventing him from coming within 500 ft of it) and order him to take down publicly-accessible names and addresses of the nursing home administrators.

The court's ruling linked above makes Trummel sound pretty bad, but as a First Amendment attorney told Politech today, there is no precedent that lets the government curb your speech because it might violate an individual's privacy -- only hold you responsible after the fact, and there's been no trial here. Trummel wasn't even allowed counsel before he was imprisoned.

The restrictions here are not content-neutral, they don't serve a compelling government interest, and no court has the right to keep you from publishing someone's name just because he doesn't want it published. Trust me. The court also seems to think Washington state statutes trump the US Constitution, a silly notion.

Trummel's speech may be offensive to some, but he has the right to be offensive. He can be held liable for it after a trial, but apparently his "victims" are just too afraid he has no money to pay damages with, so they want him imprisoned until he stops talking about them. That's just not how the US is supposed to work -- in 49 states, at least.