Posted on 01/14/2005 4:46:36 AM PST by Arthur Wildfire! March
"As far as the convention is concerned, we believe those people were properly arrested and charged," said D.A. spokeswoman Cathie Abookire. "Every case is unique; every case has its own set of facts." Abookire added, "We don't see [the "Outfest" case] as a freedom-of-speech issue at all."
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/10586941.htm?1c
"These people were demanding that they go to prison."
I've yet to see any of them shown wearing a "please send me to prison" tee shirt. Lacking that, your comment is as incoherent and offensive as blaming a rape victim because she "was asking for it."
How about the Washington Times?
Be cause it’s misleading. The WND knows that no one’s going to actually get 47 years, probably not 47 days, but makes it a headline. As Clinton said in his “apology” before the nation one evening, “Although my statements were technically accurate, I can see now how they may have been misleading.” When someone intentionally paints a false picture in other’s heads, technically accurate or not, it’s a lie. That’s why the testimonial oath is the truth, the whole truth and noting but the truth, rather that just “do you promise to tell the truth. Anything less is a lie.
Therefore, WND is lying here. “Invented” was being kind.
Also, I answered your second question in my fist post to this thread.
Only if the rape victim crashed the mosh pit of a gangster wrap concert while screaming insults with the N word and dong a naked erotic dance.
When I told Poohbah that they were “begging to be arrested”, I was speaking figuratively. They crashed a permitted gay protest, marched toward the stage, refused police instructions to go to their counter protest area and began chanting through bull horns. That’s begging to be arrested. They left the police zero alternative.
It would ruin the mantle of victimhood and martyrdom.
Whats new with Rush, Hannity and the GOP. After Christians came out in droves to elect the GOP they ignore us like the plague. The conservative party is starting to look better all the time. Eletists in DC are as bad as the tyrants in England in 1776.
I have been to many conservative protests where liberals do the same thing but worse and the police do nothing to the rabblerousers on the left. Give me a break this was nothing more than homos and their leftest paid off govt. officials wanting to send a message to America and Christians. The message is clear Philadelphia hates God, Christians and free speech. Please dont be so naive.
This used to be a free country, with sidewalks open to anyone.
Lets see. They were (1) speaking in public, (2) walking on a sidewalk, (3) refusing illegal police orders.
Golly, send 'em to ole sparky already and be done with it! Such vicious dangerous thugs! (/sarcasm)
I'll reserve my final opinion on this story until I've seen more facts but for now it appears that these people ignored a valid police order and now they want to to whine about being arrested. Everything beyond that seems to be spin in order to create sympathy for their defense.
Unless I see more evidence that changes my current opinion, the defendants wouldn't want me on their jury.
Many free speech cases involve genuine risk of only nominal punishment. Some involve no risk of real punishment at all. In almost every such case it is the unlikely maximum risk of punishment (what "could" happen) that is stressed by the opponents of the law or state action. Why? Because no one really knows beforehand what a particular jury or judge will decide by way of punishment on any particular or in any particular case. It is small comfort to reassure a defendant who has just received five years in prison for chanting a bible verse whie standing on a sidewalk, "Wow, dude. I never expected you to get more than a suspended six month sentence and community service. But at least I was right about you not receiving 47 years hard time."
The maximum punishment is stressed because it is real, not because it is likely. The real but unlikely has a chilling effect on free expression that is every bit as effective as the real but likely.
These people are being targeted for the political and faith-based content of their message, for publicly expressing disagreement with a powerful special interest group. That is abhorrent.
That depends on the statutes they violated.
You need to be very careful in the way that you attempt to create sympathy for the defendants. If the Judge that hears the case becomes aware of all the histrionics you're posting he may tend to make the sentences on the higher end of the scale.
My point exactly. Pack a jury with like-minded souls, allow them to further enflame one another's emotions in a locked jury room, and 47 years suddenly looks like a real possibility. Such juries love to send a message to the rest of society and loudly and as vigorously as they can send it. Forty seven years might not be long enough for such a jury. They might want blood.
It's your own brain power and the brain power of the protesters you need to be questioning. Freepers are not sheep that you can throw into a spin machine to get the result you desire.
She was eventually persuaded to leave, but I’m sure if she didn’t, she’d have been arrested. Otherwise someone would have even lost their cool with her and done something stupid. If it were a dozen guys trying to do what she did with bull horns, I don’t think they’d have walked away from our area. They’d have been stretched out.
I’m sure if that girl had been roughed up, some fanatics would claim that it was because she was a Democrat or a woman. She was also black, and I sometimes wonder if there was a video camera trained on her like these “Christians” had, just hoping that someone would overreact and make heros of in the eyes of a gullible contingent like some on this thread.
Protests are permitted in order to keep them from becoming blood baths, with no one being able to prove who started what. This arrest was no more religiously motivated than an arrest of that girl would have been a racially motivated.
Claiming these people were arrested for chanting Bible verses is as much a fraud as claiming the girl disrupting our protest almost got arrested for being black.
"You need to be very careful in the way that you attempt to create sympathy for the defendants. If the Judge that hears the case becomes aware of all the histrionics you're posting he may tend to make the sentences on the higher end of the scale."
That judge better worry about the backlash. The worse the sentence, the more he falls into a longterm pit of his own making. We will go over his head, and he can become the poster boy of liberal judges. I'm fed up with our baby-killing law. There's no need to draw a line in the sand. They've walked over it long ago.
"Claiming these people were arrested for chanting Bible verses is as much a fraud as claiming the girl disrupting our protest almost got arrested for being black."
So, when homosexuals crash a Christmas parade with French kissing, they will be treated exactly the same as Christians? You don't believe that, do you?
I HOLD THE LAW IN CONTEMPT.
I'm a Christian and if this moron and his crew show up on my street to "preach" with bullhorns I'll call the police and expect to see them hustled off for disturbing the peace, at the very least. Depending on the time of day I'd be inclined to set my dogs on them.
Street preaching and leafletting are perfectly legal.
Being an outright pain in the derriere is just being a pain in the derriere and to say that he is 'preaching' as opposed to terrorizing and just being a nuisance is nonsense.
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