Letters to the Editor
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It's a wonder more people's homes don't spontaneously explode
Should those chemicals be tracked by the federal government?
-- Aycharaych
I'd worry more about this if I were you: The knucklehead who wanted to restrict sales of Baking soda because it's used to make crack cocaine. That went no place. For the most part, Americans are pretty reasonable people.
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/119518.html
It's the people at Reason Magazine I sometimes worry about.
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Kitt..
Hey, shitwad, I got busted for intention to distribute. Aka, growing it. I got four months home detention. I was growing "more than an ounce".
And of course, all states are as lenient as your own on dope dealers, eh?
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Don’t believe it can’t happen to you
I have been protesting with and helping two citizens who on May 6, 2007, held up a sign that Bush and Cheney should be impeached and put the American flag upside down as a sign of distress. Because three sheriff deputies and a states attorney didn’t like their free speech message, they were arrested with trumped up charges and the case is still ongoing to this date. Read these excerpts from The Progressive magazine, 12-6-07, and tell me why it can’t happen to you whether you live in Canada or America.
Jeff Zurawski and Sarah Hartfield had never even gone to a political demonstration before this year. But because they were outraged by Bush’s war, they went to Washington a couple of times and to Camp Casey once.
When they returned to their homes in DuPage County, Illinois, this spring, they decided to try to wake up their fellow citizens.
And so on May 6th, they went out onto the bridge over the North-South Highway and held a banner that said, “IMPEACH Bush and Cheney—LIARS.” They also displayed a flag upside down.
“If I had the money to buy a billboard, I would but I don’t,” says Zurawski, a home inspector. “So that’s what I came up with.”
They were there for about an hour and a half when a state trooper pulled up.
“He said he understood our message, but he was concerned about traffic safety and asked us to take the sign and flag down,” says Hartfield, a medical assistant. “We respectfully did so.”
They started to leave when three deputy sheriffs showed up.
One was irate, they said.
“He was clenching his teeth, and his veins were bulging out, and he was red-faced,” recalls Zurawski. The deputy accused them of throwing things off the bridge.
“Almost simultaneously, Sarah and I said we didn’t throw anything,” Zurawski says. “Then he asked us what our sign said, and demanded to see it. And he was shaking his head back and forth.”
He also told them the upside down flag was “disrespectful to the troops,” adding: “I’m a vet, and I’ve got a kid fighting in Afghanistan,” he said, according to Zurawski and Hartfield, who tried to explain to him that they weren’t being disrespectful to the troops but that they were distressed that Bush was exploiting the troops.
“The cop didn’t hear us,” says Zurawski. “He said, ‘We can’t have this here. This is mayhem.’ ”
The other two deputies took down their personal information and checked it on the computers in their squad cars, but found nothing on them.
So the irate officer told them they could go but warned them that he would put a call into the state’s attorney, and he hoped to see us soon, says Zurawski.
Soon came in three weeks, when another DuPage County deputy walked up to Zurawski’s home with a warrant for his arrest.
Zurawski spent several hours in jail before being released on $100 bail
At first, they were charged with “disorderly conduct.” Then the prosecutors added two others: “reckless conduct” and “unauthorized display of sign.” The latter two were each punishable by up to a year in jail and $2,500 in fines.
The prosecutors then offered them a plea bargain, dropping the two extra charges if they’d plead guilty to the first.
Zurawski and Hartfield declined.
“We had an opportunity to get out of it with a gentle wrist slap, with just 90 days court supervision, but it meant admitting to something that we didn’t do,” says Zurawski. ”And Sarah and I refused because of that.”
The prosecutors dropped the extra charges anyway, but then tacked on an additional disorderly conduct charge, alleging that Zurawski and Hartfield had made a throwing motion toward the vehicles.
http://tinyurl.com/29fqhs
The overpass that they supposedly were throwing or threatening to throw objects from was totally screened in so that objects could not be thrown from it. Ask yourself, why in America did I have to get up early on Dec 10 and stand in frigid weather with Jeff and others at 8 AM in front of the court house where Jeff later had one more continuance of his case?
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Proximity Warning
“One has to feel a little sorry for the prosaic functionary though, who obviously has no idea.”
Don’t feel sorry for the prosaic functionary. Prosaicism is her ally and the underpinning for her function. I'm also sure she's paid well.
No doubt, she’s one of the double-digit IQ people, earning triple-digit income, George Carlin had in mind. Ideas are not essential to her job. That’s why the foolishness of the expectation that putting a government condom on the expression of some ideas will eliminate or control the mentality prompting those ideas, probably escapes her grasp.
The more grievous, and unseen, participants here are those who came up with the government speech condom “idea” and the bureaucracy for “investigating violations”.
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LWM
For the most part, Americans are pretty reasonable people.
They sent GW Bush to the White House for a second term.
Does that sound "pretty reasonable" to you?
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This is the thing that floors me...
Just like Bush followers who bizarrely think that the limitless presidential powers they're cheering on will only be wielded by political leaders they like, many hate speech proponents convince themselves that such laws will only be used to punish speech they dislike. That is never how tyrannical government power works.
-- Glenn Greenwald
History makes very clear that tyranny will afflict all but the rulers (They might get theirs in the end too), yet so many are willing to sign on to the oppression of others. Too little reason and way too much ideology.