It would be very painful, no question about it. Perhaps they could pay current employees some compensation to make it less painful - anything to avoid open-ended liability forever and ever.

The high caliber of these stories demonstrates the value, to journalists, of public records laws as tools for reporting.

One has to be concerned with not impeding on two constitutional rights: the right to petition the government, and the other, of course, is free speech. If you make it too difficult, too onerous, for people to express their views, you've gone too far.

If it is inconceivable that a suit could be brought, they shouldn't be talking about it in closed session. They shouldn't be talking about it at all.

Words spoken in that context are privileged and could only be the basis for a libel suit in the most extreme circumstances.

Many of the laws that pornography runs afoul of need to be tested, as they are often written broadly enough that they can affect other expressions that we do care about.