Better watch what you say these days. This man said that God might speak to the world through a burning Bush and ended up sentenced to 37 months in prison. Oh, and I was told this past weekend that no one can EVER take away your freedom as long as you live in America. Thanks to the Constitution, you will always have that. Yeah, uh, right. Freedom of speech doesn’t seem to be such a free thing any more. [via Charles]
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Don’t Diss the Man…
8 replies on “Don’t Diss the Man…”
(Pssst. That link doesn’t work.)
It’s going to be hard to prove, freedom of speech does not extend to threats against the president. Always has been a crime to threaten the president. Depending on exactly what he said and the context of it, he may have run afoul of that law.
Hmmm… odd the link didn’t work at first – but I replaced it with the one there at the story so it should now.
Yes, it’s a crime to threaten the President – but a smartass comment shouldn’t land you 37 months jail time.
Going to be VERY hard to prove … especially if he never said he was going to nor did he condone anybody else doing harm to potus.
The government is chipping away at our freedoms bit by bit. “Those who give up liberty for the sake of security deserve neither,” according to Ben Franklin.
But if he was sentenced to 37 months, a jury obviously thought he was threatening the president, so yes, it’s a crime, nothing new about that.
Threatening the President, in ANY way, is against the law. If you even JOKE about it, it’s LEGAL to lock you up whenever the President comes to town. I remember seeing a list of people with their mugshots whenever I had to do a Presidential security detail… and that list of people were the ones that used to be locked up in the past, but have made no NEW threats in a few years.
You can say what you want in this country; you just can’t threaten the President. For that matter, if I started a site for the sole purpose of saying “I am going to kill women,” I wonder how long it would stay up, and how long it would take before the cops came to my door. Freedom of speech does not extend to threats against people. That’s a law I remember, too. I arrested many a person for “threatening” people, and many said, “This is America! I can say what I want!” Well, I would tell them, “You’re not allowed to tell them that you’re going to gut them with a garden shovel.” Then, it was silver bracelets, and a night at a cool set of bars…
Just my three and a half cents, of course.
“…what’d you say, boy??”
“uh… I said.. ‘Rabbits eat lettuce'”
“..oh…”
[-South Park reference-]
Actually, I should say OBSCURE South Park reference… 😀