We have previously discussed the increasing trend toward monitoring and disciplining private and public employees for comments on social media. These cases raise difficult questions of free speech in our society. The most recent such case involves Leslie Anderson, a law clerk for a New Jersey judge who resigned after being suspended after she made comments on Facebook criticizing a state trooper who was killed in a crash with a deer. While some praised 24-year-old Anthony Raspa (left) as a hero, Anderson also expressed sympathy for the dead animal, saying “I agree that it is sad and heart-wrenching for the family members left to suffer the consequences of the trooper’s recklessness—especially for the deer family who lost a mommy or daddy or baby deer.”
It is not clear how Anderson viewed the trooper as reckless in the accident since such accidents can occur without any fault of the driver on many roads. Raspa and partner Gene Hong were patrolling on I-195 when their Ford Crown Victoria struck the deer early Saturday. The car careened off the road and hit a tree.
Anderson, a law clerk for Middlesex County Superior Court Judge Travis L. Francis was without question over-the-top in her Facebook posting: “Not that sad, and certainly not ‘tragic,’ Troopers were probably traveling at a dangerously high speed as per usual. Totally preventable. At least they didn’t take any of the citizens they were sworn to serve and protect with them.” She later added that the praise Raspa was receiving by other commenters for his service as “absurd” and “nonsensical” :
“The ‘victim’s’ employment as a state trooper is irrelevant to the circumstances, other than the fact that he injured a fellow trooper and destroyed state property as a result of his recklessness. He wasn’t running into a burning building or otherwise acting within the course of his employment at the time of the accident. The outcry and ‘thank yous’ are absurd, nonsensical, and completely unwarranted. There are people in this country and around the world dying for much less. There is nothing ‘tragic’ about this. Get over yourselves and your sense of entitlement, people . . .
Nonetheless, I agree that it is sad and heart wrenching for the family members left to suffer the consequences of the Trooper’s recklessness — especially for the deer family who lost a mommy or daddy or baby deer.”
The question is not whether these comments are wrong or offensive but the right of someone to engage in such a public debate without fear of retaliation.
I have previously written about concerns that public employees are increasingly being disciplined for actions in their private lives or views or associations outside of work. We have previously seen teachers (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here) students (here, here and here) and other public employees (here and here and here) fired for their private speech or conduct, including school employees fired for posing in magazines (here), appearing on television shows in bikinis (here), or having a prior career in the adult entertainment industry (here).
The question for me is whether she used her court association, which does not appear to be the case. If Anderson was simply engaging in a public discourse, I am concerned that she would be punished for it. She was initially put on a paid suspension before she ultimately resigned under fire from the police association and others. President Chris Burgos insisted that the comments showed that Anderson couldn’t be impartial, but she was merely a law clerk, not the judge.
What do you think?
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebephilia
OK, Paul, I stand corrected. Hastert is a hebephiliac. Such a stickler you are.
I doubt Denny will be marrying anyone of his sex anytime soon, he would need to divorce his female wife first, poor lady. One has to feel sorry for this Hastert’s family, they are victims of his duplicity too.
Pogo:
I have never done any statistical studies of “the left’s practice” of anything, and I doubt that you have either. I also doubt that trooperyork has done any analyses to support his conclusion that “cop haters are a majority on this blog.” Nevertheless both of you self-righteously, and gratuitously, have labeled as “cop haters” a handful of people who are occasional weekend contributors to this blog.
As you undoubtedly know by now, I am as close to a First Amendment absolutist as you are likely to find. I don’t care about identity politics and people are welcome to whatever views they wish to express on gay marriage or anything else. And I typically refrain from responding to the nonsense that frequently passes for informed commentary here. But I will not stand by as individuals like the two of you use vile epithets to describe a handful of people whom neither of you know, all the while lurking in the shadows of anonymity, like a couple of snot-nosed kids who throw rocks at a neighbor’s window and then run away.
I bet they will even force a baker to bake Denny a cake.
It is only a matter of time.
Denny Hastert is just a man ahead of his times. Soon enough the Social Justice Warriors will agitate for legalization of his behavior. And marriage for that matter. It is just a matter of time.
Those goal posts have to move.
Annie,
When did the GOP establishment discover Hastert’s alleged pedophilia? And which member of the GOP has come out in support of the alleged abuse?
Rick, I only brought him up because Trooper York was discussing Nambla and the “Gay Mafia”. I suspect every time some right wing loon brings up Nambla or the Gay Mafia someone will bring up Hastert for years to come.
Inga – both NAMBLA and the Gay Mafia exist. Do you deny their existence?
That should be I am NOT defending.
Denny Hastert would be a hero to the Social Justice Warriors if he were a Democrat. He could run for Congress in Massachusetts and be a valued member of their caucus just like Barney Frank and Gerry Studds. This is just the next spot on the field that they will want to move the goal posts.
He missed a bet by being a Rhino Republican. You see he really should have been a Democrat. Then none of this would have happened because the FBI would look the other way.
Meanwhile Annie’s still carping on Hastert.
Any thoughts on Ted Kennedy or Robert Byrd? They prove more about the left than Hastert does about the right since they were returned to office even after their acts were known.
It’s kind of sad seeing people whose only purpose is to spread hate.
I’m curious what criteria the ABA Journal uses when deciding which blogs to include in their “Top 100 Blog in Legal Theory” because it certainly cannot be based on the threads.
@Mike Appleton
Trooper’s use of the suffix “-hater” is wholly consistent with the left’s practice of calling all those who disagree with them “haters” and “phobes” (the latter which has also come to mean ‘hater’, denying its Greek origin.
I’d like to see a response to this. I think both usages are out of line. But in many thousands of interactions I have never once seen a liberal or leftist criticize such use from the left.
Not once.
BamBam, Mike Appleton is hardly an uneducated man. He is quite brilliant and I suspect he could think circles around many people here.
This circumstance is too much, but it’s hardly atypical. The key is to ensure any effort to reduce consequences for unpopular speech includes reducing consequences for speech the left doesn’t support. this is their program [the personal is political, By Any Means Necessary] and they should have to bear the consequences for it as long as we do.
@Mike Appleton
Trooper’s use of the suffix “-hater” is wholly consistent with the left’s practice of calling all those who disagree with them “haters” and “phobes” (the latter which has also come to mean ‘hater’, denying its Greek origin.
See any of the gay marriage posts on this blog.
If that practice is “insulting and irresponsible”, it must be condemned for all such uses.
As it stands, your rejection of the term here seems to be more for identity politics than any serious disapprobation.
Well, read the article, not the Scouts but something called the Explorers. Camping trips and sex with underage boys as young as 14 or 15 in those dark tents. He molested this teen from freshman to senior year.
“It is the goal of the gay mafia to have NAMBLA members become Scout leaders. Haven’t you been paying attention.”
*****************
When the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert is a probable pedophile, who belongs to a Party known as the Family Values Party, we have true irony. I sure hope Hastert wasn’t a Scout leader as well as a wrestling coach back in the day of having molesting teen boys. Here’s another victim of Denny.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/exclusive-alleged-dennis-hastert-sex-abuse-victim-named/story?id=31530828
Inga – pedophile is an actual age range. Hastert doesn’t fit in that range. And making the whole GOP responsible for Hastert is like making all of the Democrats responsible for Ted Kennedy killing that young lady. You paint with too broad a brush.
Age 14 is underage Paul. This kid was molested from freshman year to senior year. But keep right on defending this pedophile.
Inga – 13 is usually the cut-off age for pedophiles. I am defending. I am defining terms. That is what I learned from the Jesuits. Sadly, you did not learn that at Marquette.
“It’s all about corporatizing America, narrowing allowable speech to a single uniform (albeit volatile) code of permissible speech that communicates almost nothing.”
I’m with Pogo on this one.
I wonder what would pass as a definition for cop-hater? Expressing sympathy for a dead deer and not for a dead police officer who died in a tragic car accident while on duty? How about minimizing and degrading the the status of police officers and the debt owed to them by society for risking their lives on a daily basis? Maybe it’s assuming fault, on the part of the dead officer for his own untimely death, by spouting theories of reckless driving, when no such evidence has been presented?
Yeah, some people on here just don’t get it. Pogo, this schmuck only wishes he had a fraction of your training, education and common sense. The reference to your medical degree is a desperate attempt to insult you, yet it merely reveals a jealous and envious individual, obviously lacking in your judgment, education and intelligence. Both you and trooperyork are the voices of reason on this site.
The cop haters are a majority on this blog. They come out of the wood work on every post that is put out to whip up a frenzy against the police. You can see it illustrated in their own words and actions.
The ultimate fruition of this approach is currently on display in Baltimore. When the cop haters and the criminal lobby push back against effective policing the crime rate spirals out of control. These cop haters wanted the cops out of their neighborhoods because the real danger to the community is police misconduct. Get the cops out of the mix and then everything will be great. Right?
How is that working out for them?
Pogo:
The cavalier use of a phrase as despicable as “cop-hater” to describe a small group of identified persons about whom one knows nothing is insulting and irresponsible. That is something one ought to know even without a medical degree.