| abstract
| - On March 7, 2007, John Sharpe was temporarily relieved of duty pending a Navy inquiry into allegations that he was involved in supremacist activities. In 2008, the Catholic University of America canceled a lecture series in which Sharpe was to speak after the Southern Poverty Law Center claimed Sharpe is anti-Semitic, though no review of his written opinion had occurred. Sharpe later filed suit against Landmark Communications, claiming defamation in a news story. The suit sought $5 million in compensatory damages and $350,000 in punitive damages. In April 2009, Norfolk Circuit Court judge Norman A. Thomas issued his opinion. In it, Thomas grants a summary judgment to the defendants on the major issues of the case, conclusing that Sharpe’s writings "do espouse anti-Semitic and racist views...No reasonable person can read Sharpe’s individual writings and conclude that he espouses anything other than a deep, abiding and pervasive suspicion of and hostility toward Jews, whether considered as a collective people, religion, nation or ethnic group."
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