Thoughtcrime comes to America, 23 years behind schedule.
So much for the First Amendment.
” Student who wrote violent story loses appeal “
I’m guessing that he wasn’t all that appealing to start with....
Good position to take....beats putting up "gun free zone" signs.
Even a stopped clock is "correct" twice a day.
Are we to suspect the 11th Circuit got something right? I'd have the see the details of the case to confirm this.
Either we trash the First Amendment or we get rid of the government schools. I vote for getting rid of the government schools.
Government schools are compulsory. This means threat of police force. ( real bullets in those guns on the hip)
Once in the school the child is told to shut up for nearly all of the day. Their right ( and the right of the parents) to freely choose with whom they will associate is trashed. The child is subjected to a curriculum and school policies that can NEVER be religiously neutral in content or consequences.
If the child or parents refuse to cooperate with the government school Gestapo they face police, court, and foster care action, and possibly prison. They are cases of police actually killing parents who have resisted government action.
If a citizen refuses to support the government school abomination, the government will send armed sheriffs to sell his home and business at auction. If the citizen is sufficiently resistant he too may be sent to prison. If sufficiently resistant armed police may kill him.
All of the above is true. This is what government schools are.
I see that our courts have adopted Iranian jurisprudence: a dream in a work of fiction constitutes a threat. The same sort of ‘reasoning’ applied in the fatwa against Salman Rushdie—the delusions of a fictional character constitute blasphemy.
I hope the SCOTUS takes the appeal as an opportunity to clarify the true-threat doctrine, and to uphold the First Amendment.
“The First Amendment doesn’t protect your right to make death threats....”
However, the student’s literary work was clearly stated as being a fiction. Thus, not a genuine death threat. This is just another example of a kid drawing a gun and a re-educational warden deciding that a picture of a gun was the same as a real gun.
Odd, this is from the 11th. They tend to be more rational.
Official incompetence and malice induced by a faddish social hysteria of the current educational and prosecutorial cohort, in this case such adult malice towards young students stinks especially pungently given the overwrought reaction to the Virginia Tech shootings.
In my opinion, schools are overdoing it as far as punishing alleged “threats”.
When I was in high school, I once told another student I was going to kill him in a voice that was clearly meant to be joking. In response, I was sent to the office, the police were called (I wasn’t arrested, but I was Mirandized), my parents were called, and I was given ten days Alternative School as punishment.
What really pissed me off about the whole incident was the fact that when the class was asked if they felt threatened by my words, only one said yes (one out of a class of almost thirty students), and I’m willing to bet it was a student I had butted heads with before, yet they still gave me the punishment.
I can understand schools being cautious, but surely when twenty-nine out of thirty students felt I was joking, it’s reason enough to believe I was.