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Online Call To Shoot President Ruled Free Speech
Hugh Pickens writes "USA Today reports that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed the conviction of a man who threatened to shoot President Obama, saying his Internet message board comments amounted to free speech and ruled that prosecutors 'failed to present sufficient evidence to establish beyond a reasonable doubt' that the man 'had the subjective intent to threaten a presidential candidate.' Walter Bagdasarian was found guilty two years ago of making threats against the presidential candidate in comments he posted on a Yahoo.com financial website after 1 am on Oct. 22, 2008, as Obama's impending victory in the race for the White House was becoming apparent. Bagdasarian told investigators he was drunk at the time. The observation that Obama 'will have a 50 cal in the head soon' and a call to 'shoot the [racist slur]' weren't violations of the law under which Bagdasarian was convicted because the statute doesn't criminalize 'predictions or exhortations to others to injure or kill the president,' said the majority opinion, written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEQOvyGbBtY
All I can say is "You did the right thing, judge(s)!".
If the US lauds itself as the freest (did I spell that right?) country of the world, as its founding fathers imagined, then it should be all right to say " Obama 'will have a 50 cal in the head soon'". In my books, such a line only amounts to a threat if there's a reasonable possibility of its execution.
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
He didn't kill anybody, but he's in prison for life because people believe he gave the command.
When someone says a sentence like that how do we know it isn't a command coming from a militia leader? Remember Hal Turner?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikram_Buddhi
Of course he's still going to be on every single government watch list for the rest of his life. And if he ever does anything you can bet they will throw the book at him.
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Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
Who actually says "Shoot the racist slur"? What a lame racist. A real racist would have called him a nigger. Nigger. Its ok to write it, its just a word. It is especially ok to write it, when quoting someone else who said it.
I mean do we really need to edit what a racist said to make it more genetic and palatable? I mean seriously.... of all the things to PC up....
I am sure he isn't embarrassed to be known as the guy who called Obama a nigger.. if thats even what he said...since he obviously wasn't quoted correctly.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I wouldn't say that. What the Tea Party is: a successful re-branding of the Republican Party. There is no "Tea Party." It's the Republican Party.We've allowed the Republican party to effectively change its name after being poisoned by the Bush years, without asking any questions of any kind about its democratic legitimacy (such as whether or not it is actually grassroots and not a magnificent example of astroturfing). It allows Fox News to continue to create the illusion that the Republican Party is a sufficient vehicle to channel the democratic impulses of the right-wing working class, and to keep people with actual libertarian or conservative impulses inside the Republican tent. In fact, the Republican Party is just as corporate as ever, and has no intent on working to shore up its relationship with the working-class in actual policy measures.
> The observation that Obama 'will have a 50 cal in the head soon' and a call to 'shoot the [racist slur]' weren't violations of the law [...]
That sentence alone implies that in the U.S. death threats are protected free speech, but you can't use the word "nigger". I love it.
This is completely wrong. The Republican Party is terrified of the Tea Party, which has repudiated Republicans such as John Boehner and Lindsey Graham. In fact, the Tea Party has threatened Republicans who have tried to make a deal with President Obama over raising the debt limit. Furthermore, the extreme positions of the Tea Party has undermined Republican efforts to reach out to the mainstream and independent voters. TP Michelle Bauchmann claiming that slavery was good for black families is not what the Republican Party needs at this juncture. There is probably nothing more the Republicans want at this point than to be separated from the Tea Party.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
even after the US government defaults this would also benefit the Tea Party.
Actually, it wouldn't. The problem with the Tea Party is that they're all morons. It's a party of angry, stupid, middle-age white people who don't know anything about running a country. Defaulting on our national debt would be a disaster that hurts the poor and middle class the most, and hence will hurt the Tea Party the most. They just don't realize it.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
If the USA can't get enough money to run you are all well and truly fucked - and if it means raising taxes to stop that then it's a hell of a lot better than the alternative which the USSR demonstrated when it fell apart. A lot of people need to wake up and understand that the 1950s are over and were never as good as remembered anyway.
TP Michelle Bauchmann claiming that slavery was good for black families is not what the Republican Party needs at this juncture.
What she said was tactless and foolish, but she didnt say what youre claiming she did.
In fact, she didnt actually say it at all, it was a pledge she signed, and the controversial language was
Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President
Which is to say, it was lamenting the state of family values, and trying to emphasize its point with hyperbole.
It would be much the same as if someone had said
Even under Hitler, people had more speech rights
A rational interpretation of that statement will not read an endorsement of the Nazi regime into it, but rather a gross and insensitive use of hyperbole to emphasize how bad you think things are NOW.
Although I suppose if the goal is to demonize your political opposition, it sure is convenient to simply call it racist, and to make the claim that republicans are hankering for the days of slavery again; and a fig to any reasonable attempt to use context and language skills.
It is probably very hard for the American public to understand the necessities of racial hatred and murder incitations speech laws. The root of such laws in Europe do not come from royalty slander, as some have postulated here. It comes from the shock of what happened during WW2. In most of Europe, then legal racial hatred speech have driven perfectly normal and decent people to act as monsters, inhuman, immoral mass behavior from the average Joe. That, was the definite proof that if you let some ideas prosper, some horrible things happen as a result. Call for murder of a human being should be illegal, being the president or not. Call for bullying trough violence elected bodies should also be illegal, as this is a shortcut for particular interests to force their political agenda against the will of the majority. If so many of your presidents got shot dead, it is also because so many speeches inviting to killing are aired, making it "ok" to kill. Finally, you do not need the freedom to call publicly for murder to excerpt control on your government. You can still call for a new constitutional assembly, which is exactly what you are talking about, and is free speech, even if you do not have the right to call for murder.
Didn't they arrest people who criticized Bush, outside of free-speech zones?