Ex-Marine Detained Under Operation Vigilant Eagle For His Political Views Sues

stry_cat writes "You may remember the story of Brandon Raub, who was detained without due process over some Facebook posts he made. Now with the help of the Rutherford Institute, he is suing his captors. According to his complaint [PDF], his detention was part of a federal government program code-named 'Operation Vigilant Eagle,' which monitors military veterans with certain political views."

Comments

Re:not so simple... Re:I should hope so

[GryMor]

This is where the "Do something" crowd falls down a pit of bias. We've seen similar rhetoric from politicians and tv 'personalities'. As rhetoric it's protected speech, as straight statements of non metaphorical intent, it's an imminent threat. The metaphoric rhetoric almost certainly far out masses the straight statements of non metaphorical intent, so just seeing the above is not a proper signal of a threat, though if sufficient resources exist, it may warrant some spot checks to see if there are other signals, on it's own, it shouldn't be sufficient to detain anyone. If, on it's own, that is sufficient to detain someone, then large swaths of society are arbitrarily detainable; not necessarily for those specific views, but for rhetoric of that style. At that point, certain Jefferson quotes may in fact, need to come into play. I hope that point is not imminent, that the trial turns up proper non rhetorical, non protected, signals that fully justify the detention and aren't nigh universally and arbitrarily applicable to most citizens.