[SoFloFreeper]

Free speech won. A damn shame the captain, who was expressing his own opinion on his own web page, had to take it that far.

Also a shame his "union brothers" who would protest a 1% cut in pay, were silent in the face of the urban thugs.

Another shame is that the mayor took the side of the thugs.

[GP100]

Good for him. Free speech won this time but we need to stay vigilant. Nobody wants to hear the truth and they will do what they can to suppress alternative viewpoints.

[Sir_Humphrey]

This is what happens when you post on Facebook. Thank God free speech won this time but it came down the fact the firefighter was fortunate enough to get a judge who respected the first amendment.

I never was and never will be on Facebook because it's would only be a matter of time before things like this could happen to me.

[Norm Lenhart]

A lot of the right gets indignant about it, but we HAVE to sue early and often. It’s the only way short of armed revolution we have a chance at holding back the communist horde that now runs America,

[House Atreides]

How dare this Fire Captain post the truth!

[SoFloFreeper]

Florida news ping.

[upchuck]

A blogger published the post, which sparked protest in Miami's African-American community.

I can't imagine why. The blogger just posted the truth. Too brutal for some folks I guess. Maybe hit a little too close to home.

[FunkyZero]

Although some jobs require that you give up a certain level of latitude when it comes to publicly displaying your thoughts on things like this, I just don't think we are being honest with ourselves by asking employees to pretend that they don't have opinions. But at what level should there be restrictions and who should decide what those thresholds are? Should this be an all or none situation? I mean, would we support him if he were on facebook pumping out some very extreme left wing garbage? We have to be willing to accept it all. Should private employers be forced to tolerate an executive publicly denouncing or supporting something highly political? There can be serious and non-recoverable damages, both monetary and otherwise. When it comes to public service employees, there can be backlash from the citizenry, lost of trust and/or confidence, it can attract the retaliation of politicians and the folks approving your budgets, etc...

I hate to admit it, but I'm riding the fence on this one. I may agree with the statement he made, but the facts remain: half the citizenry have lost their damn minds and want Zimmerman hung from the highest tree. It sucks, but we live with those people. We may not have to give a damn what they think, but they still do a lot of damage that we have to clean up... and they aren't going away any time soon

[Arm_Bears]

Too bad there also wasn’t a large financial award to the Captain for his trouble.

A couple of multi-million dollar judgments would likely slow-down this nonsense.