RE: Justice Department served subpoenas to Nick Gillespie’s Reason Magazine over comments left on their web site by anonymous readers.
Hmmm... I wonder if FR will be the next one...
The irony of this happening to Reason is not lost on us.....
I have a fake Facebook account from which I comment on these types of sites.
I vote for stupid.
I disagree.
Isn’t Reason magazine a leftist tome?
True, but as the author reported, the "threat" in question was a suggestion that the target be fed in to a wood chipper, and that is not the same thing as saying "I am going to feed [target of vitriol] in to a wood chipper."
Does anyone know what “Silk Road” is?
H! represents a larger threat to the US than some internet trolls. So does an open border. Heck, the current constitution of much of the Judiciary represents a larger threat.
If someone posts a threat towards another person, that’s definitely asking for trouble. I don’t really have a problem with anonymous account info being released so long as probable cause exists and a warrant has been issued listing the specific information desired in relation to the issue—no fishing trips and no releases of information beyond what’s in the warrant.
I also agree that these types of comments i.e. threats, add absolutely nothing to the conversation. Actually, they detract from reasonable discourse and should be banned. Fortunately, FreeRepublic has rules against such comments.
If they think that's bad, they should read the Religion forum here.
Another “free speech for me, but not for thee” commentary.
I was born in a country that fought its way into existence through armed, open rebellion against its political rulers. In that country it was seen as healthy for members of the three branches of government to be regularly reminded that the murder of tyrants was always an option. Judges, legislators and members of the executive branch could feel confident only when acting constitutionally and would live in fear when they didn’t.
That was a great country. I wish I could live there again.
A site I used to frequent allowed both liberals and conservatives to “go at it” with virtually no language filters. The ratio was about 10% conservative and the rest liberals. Although conservatives would sometimes do it too, the MO of the liberals was ad-hominem attack.
Then an interesting thing happened. They stopped allowing fowl language. A lot of liberals ended up getting “temp banned” for a week or a month. The ratio became more like 20% conservative and the rest liberal.
Then the hammer came down. They stopped allowing ad-hominem attacks. You should have seen the complaints. Liberals said things like, “how else are you supposed to respond to the stupid remarks of conservatives”. They were intellectually lazy and felt that “their people” would do what they did: pile on via ad hominem.
But one by one they were temp banned and some permabanned. They could not defend themselves when they actually had to make a lucid argument. It became fun for me. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. But more and more of them just disappeared. The result? The site became about 60% conservative and the rest liberal. And us conservatives were getting “respectfully” cocky about it. We (most of us) knew how to argue. We knew our facts. They didn’t have a chance. They posted less and less.
The site is now gone.
The same “justice” department that allowed the IRS to get away with its crimes and refused to prosecute the black panthers who blocked access to voting sites.
There is not, and has not been, free speech in the USA for 20 years.
So? She is a judge. That does not make her immune to criticism or even over the top rhetoric. In fact this is the very reason freedom of speech is listed in the bill of rights. To criticize judges and other political animals.
If the comments were as presented then they do not, according to the police in any city I have lived in, constitute a threat.
Threatening to feed somebody into a wood chipper isn’t free speech.
"She should be fed into a wood chipper" is different then "I am going to feed her into a wood chipper".
One is a threat, one is free speech.
If you can not tell the difference then you need to go back to journalism school.
Stasi.
Nasty stuff, indeed. To put it mildly, comments such as these are hardly valuable contributions to public discourse. But if federal prosecutors investigated every similar anonymous comment on the internet, we could probably devote the entire federal budget to hunting down these types of blogosphere trolls, and still not find them all.
...
Jazz left out the worst comment.
I think perhaps the commenter got it wrong procedure wise.
the course seen in the movies its to take her out back, shoot her, put her in a freezer and then put her through the wood chipper.
less mess and a more perfect grind