A #judge Thursday dismissed a #libel suit brought by an Iranian-born scholar and foreign policy expert who says he was wrongly accused of being part of a "subversive and illegal Iranian lobby."

But for all the apparent digging and bickering, Bates noted, Parsi and the National Iranian American Council members "have for the most part failed to identify which statements they perceive as defamatory and to put forth specific evidence of actual malice relating to those statements."

In a decision worth reading for its careful delineating of what was written about Parsi and why it falls short of showing actual malice, Bates added:

"(Daioleslam) was often sloppy in his reporting, either omitting ellipses, slightly misquoting the underlying source, or failing to put a citation in the appropriate place. But none of the errors misrepresent the substance of the source material or mislead the reader. As many courts considering public figure defamation cases have concluded, sloppiness is not evidence of actual malice."