Manalapan... Doo Doo, Da Doo Doo

The song has little to do with this post, but it's stuck in my head now, so it may as well be stuck in yours.

This post is about Manalapan, NJ, however, a town that's getting a bit quashy with the free speech rights of a blogger who deigned to criticize the municipality.

The blogger, writing as "daTruthSquad" on a site hosted on Google's Blogspot service, has criticized a controversial lawsuit filed by the township of Manalapan, as well as the officials who decided to pursue the case. The township subpoenaed Google for "daTruthSquad's" identity -- as well as for any emails, blog drafts, and other information Google has about the blogger -- claiming that the defendant in the case is actually writing the posts. The defendant, however, has already sworn under penalty of perjury that he is not "daTruthSquad."

"Bloggers, as well as everyone else, have a First Amendment right to speak anonymously," said [Electronic Frontier Foundation] Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. "Litigants don't get a blank check to pry into the private lives of critics when they say things the litigants don't like. The fact that it is the government trying to abuse the discovery process makes this attempted invasion of privacy all the more repugnant."

The underlying matter involves the township of Manalapan suing its former attorney Stuart Moskovitz for alleged misconduct.  As noted above, the town believes Moskovitz and daTruthSquad are one and the same (not that that empowers them to go poking around at dTS to prove it).

While Moskowitz affirms under penalty of perjury that he's not the blogger in question, you can see why the town might be suspicious of a connection.  daTruthSquad only contains 5 posts, all but one of which went up in the last two weeks.  The earliest post dates back to August, a couple months after the town filed its suit against Moskovitz.

The only reference to an older post I can find is this non-descript link from MoreMonmouthMusings dating back to March, but the target page is gone.

Whoever daTruthSquad is, I think I like him.

Information is an important part of everyday life. Without information, we have no true knowledge of actual events.

Case in point, da case of "Da Township of Manalapan v. Da Mosked Man (read: Moskovitz)." As you may have already read, there are numerous claims made by da multitude of law firms hired by da town and paid for with YOUR tax dollars against da Mosked man.
...
I'm surprised da Mosked man wasn't also charged with da Lindbergh baby kidnapping, or at da very least introducing Monica Lewinsky to Linda Tripp, who, by da way, was reportedly born and raised in New Jersey. Could it be that everything is going so wrong with da Mosked man in this case?

You stay classy, Manalapan.