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Ex-Marine Detained For Facebook Posts Deemed "Terrorist in Nature"
colinneagle writes with news of a marine turned conspiracy theorist who was detained for psychological evaluation after posting rants on Facebook. He has since been ordered to remain in a mental facility for at least 30 days. From the article: "There are conspiracy theorists who believe 9/11 was an inside job. I don't really follow that news, but can people be arrested after saying so online, exercising their First Amendment right to Freedom of Speech? On August 16, the FBI, Secret Service and the Chesterfield Police arrested a decorated former U.S. Marine for 'airing his critical views of the U.S. government on Facebook.' On Facebook, Raub talked about the Illuminati, a shadow organization in which 'some of the leaders were involved with the bombing of the twin towers' and the 'great amount of evil perpetrated by the American Government.' He said people may think he was going crazy, but a 'civil war,' the 'Revolution' is coming. 'I'm starting the Revolution. I'm done waiting.' On July 24, he said he was at a 'great crossroads. As if a storm of destiny is about to pick me up and take me to fight a great battle.' On August 9 he talked about severing heads and told the generals he was coming for them. On August 13, he wrote, 'Sharpen up my axe; I'm here to sever heads.' On August 14, Raub wrote, 'The Revolution will come for me. Men will be at my door soon to pick me up to lead it.'"
I suspect being a former marine and threatening to decapitate military officials might have had something to do with this (communicating specific threats?). But then again, his Facebook page was reportedly private, and according to the AP newswire: "The big concern, Whitehead said, is whether government officials are monitoring citizens' private Facebook pages and detaining people with whom they disagree."
He should know that.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
and you can't threaten people and say a lot of other things
free speech is about speaking normal grievances against the government and using the political process to change them
This is a mentally unstable trained killer making death threats. Next.
You have now just validated what this paranoid individual has been saying to his mentally unstable friends. Good job!
i am so very tired....
Just quoting lyrics: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/swollenmembers/bringmedown.html
I'm extremely pro-privacy but even this is ridiculous. I don't care who you are or who your friends might be - if one of them starts talking some crazy conspiracy, murderous shit and he's an ex-marine (and probably either has or has access to several weapons), please please please seriously call the police about it.
They didn't just get him for exercising free speech, they got him for revealing government secrets.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Indeed. Your lords and masters prefer it when you don't talk about anything freedom related; you're all slaves, you will never be free, why can't you accept that?
So fantasizing about chopping peoples' heads off is "talking about anything freedom related" now?
So we stop a professionally trained killer in his tracks after indicating that he might be a mentally imbalanced homicidal maniac, and that makes us "slaves"?
I think people like you need to learn the definition of words like "slave" that you throw around so easily.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
You're obviously trolling, but I'll bite
If you don't like the 1st amendment, then call a convention and repeal the goddamn thing. But do it legally. But while it remains on the books, you are obligated to enforce it exactly as written without exception. And nowhere in the constitution are there any exceptions.
Now, do the police have a right to investigate? Absolutely. Do they have any right to detain the man? Absolutely not. Unless they find something during a legal investigation. If that sounds like nuttery to you, then I would say your the nut.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I know everyone thinks that this is a punitive move, but at least on the face of it, the psych detention is for diagnostic purposes. We put people in this situation routinely when they are 1) an danger to themselves or others (likely the rationale here) or 2) gravely disabled (think sitting in the middle of the freeway).
From the limited info presented, it may well be the most reasonable thing to do. Perhaps he's just blowing off steam. Perhaps he is having a bad day.
Or perhaps he has a couple of fully auto M-16s, a couple thousand rounds of ammo, a couple of grenades and maybe some other souvenirs of the Middle East. It's a difficult balance between letting people do what they feel is right and allowing mass murder, even if it's justified to some people's minds.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
You're the one who said Facebook Page with a capital p, the quote didn't. The original sentence could refer to anywhere on Facebook's site. Now if the government was doing anything illegal, you wouldn't expect them to be blatant about it would you? They'd of course have some sort of excuse, some sort of explanation as to where the lead came from. We already know Facebook monitors all "private" communication, they've admitted as much when identifying a guy trying to groom girls. Of course that probably means a ton of other conversations gets flagged and looked at, without you ever knowing. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Facebook also has an agreement to look for possible terrorists, drug deals and whatever else the government might have an interest in knowing. Nothing you say there should be treated as private, ever.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Businessmen are always trying to make military analogies. Makes them feel macho and in charge, I suppose. There is, however, a clear difference between some coke addled suit and an ex-marine with a bunch of weapons.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
And if they had done nothing and we had a few dead generals, I predict people would have shouted "how come no one saw the signs and intervened?"
There's clearly a blurry line here trying to distinguish crazed ranting from actual threats. I'm definitely opposed to the idea of "thoughtcrime", but if someone is making real threats that they're in a position to carry out (and I'm guessing an ex-Marine is more qualified than most to do so) it makes sense to step in before real harm is done. But that's also contingent on us being able to actually make a realistic distinction between blowing off steam and actually planning violence. We tend to be overcautious here, but that's societal trends at work.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
To be fair, "heads will roll" in the context of "We're going to fire the people responsible" and "heads will roll" in the context of "... off the end of this battleax I'm sharpening as it turns red with their blood" are two completely different kinds of posts. The former isn't so bad (bad for the people losing their jobs, but not grossly illegal in and of itself). The latter is scary and bears looking into. If the person turns out to not only have the know how (ex-marine) but also the mindset (conspiracy theorist far down the rabbit hole) to carry out his statements, then his statements should be taken as serious threats of violence.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Reading comprehension my good man, try it some time. The 1969 case overturned the original case, but not all implications of it. Speech is still illegal if it passes the "Brandenburg test" which is if the speaker intends to cause imminent lawlessness. That is precisely the case when yelling fire in a theater, and the Wikipedia article even says this about the concurring opinion (written by justice Douglas): "Finally, Douglas dealt with the classic example of a man "falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic." In order to explain why someone could be legitimately prosecuted for this, Douglas called it an example in which "speech is brigaded with action." In the view of Douglas and Black, this was probably the only sort of case in which a person could be prosecuted for speech."
This link was presented on a message board I frequent: Update: Former Marine Arrested by FBI for Facebook Posts!!
The "threatening to decapitate military officials" in the summary seems, as far as I can tell, to be a conflation of two separate Facebook posts he made: 1) "Sharpen up my axe; I'm here to sever heads" (which are apparently lyrics from a song) and 2) "This is part where I tell the Federal Government to go fuck itself. This is the part where I tell Generals, training our young med to fight Americans, I am coming for you. The Veterans will be with me."
The latter is probably what caught the government's attention.
As to "his Facebook page was reportedly private", also from the summary, a number of his posts were shared by people on his Friends list. If it's true that his page was private, it's very likely that the word got out through this sharing.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
Fine, you can't call in a false bomb threat then. Plenty of present-day examples for that.
You probably can't falsely shout fire in a crowded theater either. I don't believe it's been tested. The decision in which the phrase originated was later overturned, but that not because shouting fire in a theater is okay.
The original decision said that protesting the draft was akin to shouting fire in a theater, since it would cause harm to the nation. The glaringly obvious flaw in that reasoning is the question of who decides that protesting the draft is harmful? But when it comes to inciting a stampede in a crowded place, it is obviously harmful.
"Off with their heads!" - the Red Queen, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
That's from 1865. Doesn't sound very freedom related to me, so the whole "freedom" thing must be new. OTOH, C L Dodgson didn't get thrown in jail for what he wrote.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
With many mass shootings, it turns out people knew the perpetrator had mental issues, but nothing was done about it. Now that somebody is doing something about it, that's not right either. shaking my head
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
And he did say those things. No one physically prevented his free speech. He's being held after the fact for psychological evaluation. On the other hand they could have held him on criminal charges as most states have laws against credible threats of violence.
The courts do not have a lot of historical precedent for freedom of speech clause of the US constitution until after WWI. Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes has the quote most relevant to this situation: "The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent." I think this legal basis is still mostly current, so law enforcement would need to only prove a "clear and present danger" even if the person is deemed to be sane.
There's also the issue of what if the person is insane. I don't know the legal history here but certainly there has been a long history of of forced hospital commitments and evaluations for those who are judged to be insane, as they are said to be a danger to themselves and others, and very often the only evidence of mental illness is what the patient says. Is this a free speech issue or not?
Facts? You are joking, Right? Remember, this is /.
Why is it that most of the people that I encounter seem to have been shat from the Sphincter of Mediocrity?
Indeed. Your lords and masters prefer it when you don't talk about anything freedom related; you're all slaves, you will never be free, why can't you accept that?
So fantasizing about chopping peoples' heads off is "talking about anything freedom related" now?
As long as it's just fantasizing it is talk only .
Have any other actions to confirm a crime? Then arrest and charge for the crime (ah, right, I forgot: linking to locations on internet may be a crime in US, not need for a real-life action against somebody).
Have other signs of mental imbalance? Then see how you can offer medical treatment (oh, right, I forgot... universal medical care in US is seen as the most evil thing there can be...God forbids that even veterans, who lost their health for their country, are to benefit of medical care free of charge).
Rate me flamebait, but here's my sincere opinion: this is coming from the dystopian saga of the "Weird Planet America"... beat me if I can rationally understand it
(or am I batshit crazy? Will one come to arrest me for it?)
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
p>
Now, do the police have a right to investigate? Absolutely. Do they have any right to detain the man? Absolutely not.
Actually, detention of suspects at the onset, during and after an investigation is common and not unconstitutional within limits. From TFS, this sounds like a pretty routine psych detention. I've had a friend detained on at least 2 occasions for psych evaluations, though in fairness he was committing trespassing crimes both times.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Nope, Government doesn't have to pay; they search and scour on their own:
http://eccentricintelligenceagency.info/wp-content/uploads/visitors1.png
http://eccentricintelligenceagency.info/wp-content/uploads/visitors2.png | This visitor showed up right before my youtube account was terminated with no prior warning or violations. Just terminated, period. Then they nixed my gmail account shortly after.
That's a small sample of the visitors I've had at my own website. Some are bots (AI), and some are not. But they are very busy, no doubt.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Not as big a deal as you'd think. Even years after being out of the US Army, i get phone calls asking about my mental well-being. They seem to take good care of their own, as if the government still feels possessive or responsible for an in-active veteran. It's terrible if a civilian goes batshit insane and kills people. If a Marine goes batshit insane it becomes an event that books are written about.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
Facebook *does* monitor "private" communications (probably with automated keyword searching and the like) and will proactively contact law enforcement if it's deemed appropriate... The following story broke locally about a week ago -- http://www.cjob.com/news/winnipeg/story.aspx?ID=1757654 (tl;dr - Local PD got a call from FB about the sexual assault of a 13 year old by a 25 yo.)
It is entirely possible that something similar happened here, no matter how private his postings were.
~/terrorist/fucked up|scary/gi
Home of the brave... It's time to give back your land to the actual Braves you took them from, or change the damn anthem: "Land of the Paranoid, and the Home of the Terrified"
If he takes out a few congresspeople, a couple of senators, and maybe a president, and a few thousand lawyers, I don't think they'd be missed at all. He is right. A revolution is coming. Our government grows more corrupt every year. When people get fed up that we live in a country run by money that only caters to major corporations at the expense of everyone else, it'll happen. It may or may not be violent and bloody. But the people at the top will most certainly meet a horrendous fall. They are correct to be scared. History has demonstrated this over and over again: no matter how good the intentions a governing body when it is first constructed, eventually absolute corruption occurs, and at that point it needs to be burned away to keep the body alive, much like you would cauterize a severe wound. And then, a newly formed, and temporarily corruption-free head will grow to take its place, until the people get complacent and lazy and look the other way. And then a few hundred years later, the story will repeat itself (up to a few thousand if the cancer is allowed to mature and turn into a brutal dictatorship).
I think people like you need to learn the definition of words like "slave" that you throw around so easily.
There is actually a silver lining to this story.
Threatening to chop off the heads of generals on a private Facebook page seems to be much more effective at getting yourself mental health services than telling everyone who would listen that you're just going to kill yourself.
"'The Revolution will come for me. Men will be at my door soon to pick me up to lead it.'"
It seems to me like he was wildly optimistic in his paranoia. Most paranoids would have just said: "The government is coming for me. Men will be a my door soon to pick me up to take me away. "
You can run around saying "nigger" all you want and the cops legally can't do anything about it. However, that doesn't mean that a little "social pressure" won't be applied if you say it in front of the wrong people.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
There didn't need to be any monitoring, his wall was left for anyone to read.
http://www.facebook.com/brandon.raub?sk=wall
FB bots already troll for illegal content and if something is spotted, it's forwarded to "the man."
There was something about this here not too long ago, but I can't be arsed to look it up.
1. Don't be stupid and post potentially illegal/threatening stuff to your FB page, whether you think it's private or not. It's not. Read your privacy policy. Act as if FB is some weird version of usenet and you'll be fine. Also, if you are bent on revolution, no revolution ever really got started by doing the organizing in public. At least not at first.
Thus sayeth the FB privacy policy:
https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=+322194465300
2. See 1. And if you still don't understand it, keep reading 1 until you do.
--
BMO
Maybe I'm hanging out with the wrong crowd, but this page looks pretty normal to me. 9/11 truth and chemtrails and so fourth. If they were going to lock up everyone with a page like this, it would be tens or hundreds of thousands of people. I don't see a good reason to believe he is mentally disturbed, or that he is going to act out. His detention is alarming, to say the least. Can the Feds now use mental instability as a excuse to lock up anyone they want?
" Then see how you can offer medical treatment "
That's what they were doing. He wasn't arrested, he was detained for psychiatric treatment. In the U.K. there's a handy verbified noun for this - 'sectioned'. I dunno if there's something equivalent in U.S. English. I think most jurisdictions allow for the forcible confinement of people who clearly have dangerous mental problems but refuse to be treated voluntarily - there's a demonstrated need for this, after all.
Not so unusual - as earlier posters mentioned, axe-fighting is part of Army Basic Training.
Please refer to Army Operations manual FM-17, section 2.3.9 - Providing Fair Notice of Initiation of New American Revolution, and section 5.70.7 - Decapitating Superior Officers with Lumberjack Implements.
This is a mental health issue. He wasn't arrested, he was detained because he is crazy. In America, you can get someone locked up as insane. He doesn't need a trial. It is a serious problem.
... that the person (i) has a mental illness and that there exists a substantial likelihood that, as a result of mental illness, the person will, in the near future, (a) cause serious physical harm to himself or others as evidenced by recent behavior causing, attempting, or threatening harm and other relevant information, if any, or (b) suffer serious harm due to his lack of capacity to protect himself from harm or to provide for his basic human needs, (ii) is in need of hospitalization or treatment, and (iii) is unwilling to volunteer or incapable of volunteering for hospitalization or treatment."
This has long been a problem in the western world. In Europe, if someone seemed crazy, in the 1800s it was a popular way to get rid of him if he was the only person in line ahead of you for inheritance (see for example, Prince Ludwig of Bavaria). In America, we had asylums with power to keep anyone who was deemed to be crazy. The administrators had a lot of power in these places, and eventually it was shown that doctors were incompetent at distinguishing sane people from insane people. A lot of hospitals got closed at that point.
In case anyone cares, here is the law that will allow him to be locked up, in case any lawyer wants to comment:
a mental health professional can decide to issue a temporary detention order if "it appears
He threatened harm, the law lets him be locked up.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
And if they did nothing, and the guy wound up shooting up a movie theater, people would be crying "Why did no one do anything? The signs were CLEAR!"
Crazy people. WTF ya gonna do with 'em?
Maybe law enforcement here will amaze us all and actually get the guy some help.
Oh, *nearly* typed that with a straight face!
So is charging into a showing of The Dark Knight Rises with smoke bombs and guns. Especially with soldiers who have seen combat, there is a real and very unfortunate risk that they will come unhinged and start killing people randomly. It happens in wartime scenarios all the time, and it has been known to happen afterwards as well.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
I don't know what to say about this. As cool as that would be if it were true, it still seems awfully impractical. Besides, wouldn't fair notice need to be in the form of some kind of new declaration of independence? I doubt a Facebook status update would be formal enough (maybe in a few years, but a tweet would be more appropriate in that case).
For example, I've never made anything remotely close to a threat or in any way indicated foul plots or intentions. I have merely ridiculed that which seems so flagrantly absurd that without a voice of contrast, blindness would prevail. Yet their attentions have surely been captured:
http://eccentricintelligenceagency.info/wp-content/uploads/visitors1.png [image]
http://eccentricintelligenceagency.info/wp-content/uploads/visitors2.png [image] | This visitor showed up hours before my youtube account was terminated with no prior warnings or violations - Just terminated, period. Then they nixed my Google (gmail, webmaster, etc.) account shortly after.
That's a slim example of the "attention" I've had at my own website. Some are bots, and some are not, but between fusion-centers and other profilers, a lot more has their attention than one would (or should) reasonably expect. The new security bureaucracy is Big Business and there just aren't enough angry brown people with bombs to justify the affronts to our liberties otherwise. Where the enemy is not, the enemy will be created. Just look at all the post 9-11 terror plots "foiled" by the FBI; they've been primarily cultivated from sub-stupid imbeciles hand-picked from the pinnacles of ineptitude.
We need security. People will continue going berserk. There are dangers. But it is NOT security we're getting. They ( Authoritaria) behave as if their sole passion is to protect society and make people cozy and safe, yet they think not twice before scooping human fodder for strange wars, , employing sock puppets, defiling education, tainting the media, feeding horrendous penal institutions, and severely tampering with things like foreign nations and our own economy.
It's just fine to have faith in government. But hold their feet to the fire and scrutinize the hell out of them, lest faith become dogma. It would appear -- in recent handling of transparency -- that government currently has a strong preference for the latter.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Quite a few: about 1800 during the 2004 Republican convention, for example. Many of those were cases where the cops arrested people and dropped the charges a few days later because they had no evidence whatsoever of any sort of crime, but others were charged and jailed. The Bush years also saw the introduction of sonic weapons, Total Information Awareness, and lots of other repression tactics. And yes, the Obama administration has done much the same thing in going after Occupy protesters.
Basically, when it comes to civil liberties, neither the Bush nor the Obama administration have much if any regard for them, and both had the full support of their respective parties' congressional delegation. If you want to support civil liberties, you should support organizations like the ACLU and vote for a candidate that actually supports civil liberties, like Gary Johnson (L) or Jill Stein (G).
I am officially gone from
Ok, now...1.....2.....3....
Duh?
Does anyone out there think they haven't been doing this for awhile? Who in their right mind doesn't think posts on FB are monitored, logged and evaluated?
Excuse me...someone is knocking at my door kind late....err......NO CARRIER
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Good job. You are right. We can't legally prosecute you for being a douchbag, but even if we can't prosecute you for the speech itself, If you yell fire in a crowded theater with the intent of harming others, you can still be tried for reckless endangerment and, should the worst happen, voluntary manslaughter or murder.
You've managed to completely overlook what a fire in a crowded theater actually meant at the time that the phrase was coined. Let's just say that we have these things called "fire exits" in theaters now because theater fires used to be so gruesome. Holmes' 1919 opinion was written a mere 16 year after 600 people died in the Iroquis theater fire, and six years after 73 people died in Calumet, Michigan due to exactly the conduct you advocate. At the time, yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater was a guaranteed way play on popular fears and to ensure that large numbers of people died. Congrats on holding the moral low ground.
In addition, you've utter neglected the fact that people packed in tightly do not behave in the same way as people packed loosely, irrespective of their intentions. If you have a hundred tightly packed people in a narrow hallway so much as casually lean forward all at one time, the people in the front are going to be under immense force. (If you think that the inevitable trampling someone to death is any one person's fault, you are an idiot and a bastard.) That this principle is still true today is evident in the 2003 Station Nightclub Fire in West Warwick, Rhode Island.
You have as much as admitted that people are predictable, and if you think that hurting people to emphasize that fact is acceptable, you deserve no better.
Lets start refering to The War Against Terror by it's initials. . .
There was a butt bomber about 3 stalls down from me in the shit house last week. He ran in and rendered the entire shit house uninhabitable for several hours. I'm sure it was a weapon of mass destruction he used. Not sure what was with the screaming though....perhaps trying to intimidate.
Can the Feds now use mental instability as a excuse to lock up anyone they want?
Although the practice gained infamy by it's use in the USSR and Warsaw Pact countries against dissidents, it's nothing new in the US either, though not nearly so widespread, blatant, or partisan. There have been recent efforts in the US to hugely broaden the definition of what constitutes a "mental illness or disorder" that prohibits ownership/possession of firearms by opponents of individual gun rights, particularly since the recent shootings.
It would not surprise me in the least to learn that such tactics are increasingly being used by the US government to suppress dissent in recent years. History teaches us that abuses like this always happen when a government becomes too powerful.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
If I pay somebody to kill my wife, all I did was "utter some words" but I am certainly guilty of conspiracy to commit murder. In the eyes of the law it is always about intent. Yelling fire cannot serve any purpose but to cause harm.
That's beside the point. Here you have a trained killer threatening to severe heads with an axe.
Threatening?
"Sharpen up my axe and I am back, I'm here to sever heads"
-- Swollen Member, "Bring Me Down"
Song lyrics to also avoid posting on Facebook;:
"Run to the bedroom in the suitcase on the left
You'll find my favorite axe
Don't look so frightened
This is just a passing phase, one of my bad days"
"We are the small axe
Sharpened to cut you down,
Ready to cut you down."
"Me and my axe will leave your neck a bloody fountain
Everybody, everybody, everybody run
Murdering, murdering, murdering fun
Swing swing swing, chop chop chop,
swing swing swing, chop chop chop
My axe is my buddy, we right the planet's wrongs
Me and my axe leave bigots dead on richie lawns"
Not to mention http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oai-6GpkSkc
You pick the headline you prefer;
Ex-Marine Forcibly Held for Psychiatric Evaluation
or
Officials Knew of Ex-Marine's Mental Instability Before Killing Spree and Did Nothing
Personally, I prefer the former. At worst a sane ex-marine goes through a few days of evaluation and is released. At best an ex-marine spiralling down into a psychotic episode gets the help he needs and recovers.
What the fuck man its like you don't even read the Wikipedia articles that you cite yourself. Italian Hall disaster in 1913, 73 dead. Give it up, you are wrong about the legal facts of the situation and your opinions are misguided to say the least.
Can I credit you with The Count of Monte Cristo?
Admittedly, I only read TFS, not TFA, but TFS says that his wall was private. If that's true, maybe one of his friends turned him in.
I guess an interesting test would be to create a small group of fake FB accounts (from different IPs), friend them all with each other, then start posting a bunch of crazy conspiracy stuff and threats to assassinate various political figures. For the "person" making the real threats, set their address to be one of your neighbors. Since no real people (only your fake sock poppets) can see any of this stuff, if you see a SWAT team show up at your neighbors' house, then we can surmise that Facebook does indeed allow the government to monitor private communications there.
So fantasizing about chopping peoples' heads off is "talking about anything freedom related" now?
Yes. It is. Fantasizing about doing anything is permitted by freedom of thought; fantasizing verbally is permitted by freedom of speech. These freedoms exist to protect the thought and speech we're uncomfortable with, not the thought and speech we're comfortable with; the latter needs no protection.
Man I'm glad I don't live next door to you. Wait... is that you Steve?
It's amused me that one's right to free speech is limited by the need to protect the safety of others, but the right to own weapons is considered inviolable. Tell me, which of these two rights is more important in a democracy?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationale_for_the_Iraq_War#Weapons_of_mass_destruction
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
The flaw in your argument is that he wasn't just "arrested, detained, forced to undergo psychological treatment."
He was arrested, detained, and forced to undergo a psychological evaluation. Psychological treatment is pending the results of the psychological evaluation. It's not like some beat cop or FBI agent is permitted to perform the psychological evaluation. If we permitted law enforcement agents to declare people insane, I would have a serious problem with that. But that's not what's happening. He's being evaluated by a professional, and despite my disdain for psychologists, at least it's someone who has a clear responsibility and training to remain as objective as possible. If the shrink the cops take this guy to claims he needs psychological treatment, then he should probably be forced to undergo it.
Insanity is a tough issue, especially concerning cases where it conflicts with one's liberties, but I'm not cynical enough to think law enforcement acted improperly in this case.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
It should also be noted that he doesn't own any guns, which doesn't seem to follow the pattern of a psychopath about to commit mass murder.
But does he own an axe?
Actually Veterans do have free access to Veteran Administration hospitals and clinics to receive free care to treat any conditions that result from their service. You can get pretty much any condition treated, except dental unless service connected, and they will happily bill your insurance, if you have any. If you don't then you will end up paying a copay, at the least. If you are indigent, and the standards are pretty loose on that, you don't have to even pay that, even for medications. Psychiatric conditions are a priority in my experience both as a patient and sometime employee.
Other than that, I am not comfortable with what I have seen so far, either in the media or looking at his Facebook page. I've seen far more disturbing scribbles on the 'net (even before we had the World-Wide Web) and no one has lifted a finger to detain those people. I'm not exactly restrained in my speech about what my government is doing either here in the US of A or elsewhere in the world. I've been talking about the need for a revolution for far longer and, yep, politicians and lawyers are really high on my services no longer required list. I know for a fact I'm far more dangerous and they know it. [I am not joking.] Be interesting if I get someone knocking on my door.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
They told me if I voted for McCain, the government would be perusing facebook posts and throwing those they don't like in mental institutions... and they were right!
These rights are both limited when they harm others. You cannot cause physical harm to others with your speech (yelling fire in a movie theater, making specific threats of physical violence) just like you cannot cause harm to others with a gun.
Owning a gun and using a gun to shoot someone are two very different things, just as speech and speech which incites violence are two different things.
I see no contradiction or conflict here.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
We have a right to own guns, not to use them in a way that threatens the rights of others. We have a right to free speech, but not to use it dangerously. I see no problem here.
Businessmen are always trying to make military analogies. Makes them feel macho and in charge, I suppose. There is, however, a clear difference between some coke addled suit and an ex-marine with a bunch of weapons.
One is likely a psychopath, the other is a veteran exercising a right he swore to uphold.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Yeah, nothing like the loonies over here...
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Well, as an ex-Marine he's had better training in wreaking havoc
I'm very afraid. But not of him. I'm afraid of people who will use ability as an argument or justification to trample first amendment rights.
The guy was detained for psychological evaluation, which implies that there's a possible danger to others, but also to the guy himself. Also, based on some of the posts above, the content is still viewable by the public, so I don't see the breach in the First Amendment here. No-one's stopping him saying what he wants to say, they just want to make sure he's not going to do anything stupid.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
On August 9 he talked about severing heads and told the generals he was coming for them. On August 13, he wrote, 'Sharpen up my axe; I'm here to sever heads.' On August 14, Raub wrote, 'The Revolution will come for me. Men will be at my door soon to pick me up to lead it.'"
His knowledge in weapons and demolition is not the worry, his repeated calls for violence coupled with the testimony of one of his friends who brought his behavior to light is the reason he is being evaluated. If Jared Loughner had posted his crazy rantings on facebook, called multiple time for violence, and his friends reported his strange and dangerous behavior to the authorities and nothing was done, the people that ignored it would and should be held accountable. The crazy tin foil shit has nothing to do with why he was detained the violent rants do. You infrastructure knowledge and any tinfoil hat ideas you might have will not put you on watch, when blowing up bridges becomes a recurring theme in your rants and people close to you start to think you are serious and report it you will get a visit from the authorities.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
I miss the old slashdot of years gone by. Yeah, we still had loonies back then -- and they were the real, frothing, batshit insane type, too. The kind that were fun to read -- but at least back then, most of them had been driven over the edge by trying to read sendmail.cf (If you haven't done it, I wouldn't recommend it. It's a lot like Lovecraft's Necronomicon, with line-noise icing) .
Run around saying the word and find out.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
"they just want to make sure he's not going to do anything stupid."
Except the law isn't supposed to be applied until after physical action has happened. Preventive detention is basically a civil rights issue and proof that the 1st amendment/bill of rights is in the toilet. He hasn't harmed anyone and having a big mouth isn't illegal otherwise most politicians, executives, talking heads, etc. would have been put to death by now.
How long till it becomes "we noticed you disagreed with policy so we're locking you up so you don't do anything stupid. Oh and don't worry about those wires running to your temples from the HV power supply. It's just for your safety." is normal.
Unfortunately much of the quoted has already happened.
-- Rendition program under Bush
-- arrests for photographing police in operation
-- free speech zones
-- preventive detention
-- etc.
-- etc.
-- etc.