Below is my column in The Hill on the calls for hate crime and terrorism charges against James Fields and possibly others. The response is understandable, but the expansion of these laws raise serious free speech concerns that should be considered before prosecutors move beyond the current murder charge.
In a rare moment of unity in our country, leaders of both major parties joined in their call for investigations and prosecutions following the deadly protests in Charlottesville, Va. Officials have called for hate crime and terrorism charges against James Alex Fields Jr., 20, who is accused of mowing down counter-demonstrators and killing Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal.
It was a sickening act that came after a day of violence near the statue of Robert E. Lee. Fields is already charged with murder in Virginia, but Attorney General Jeff Sessions moved quickly to open an investigation for possible hate crime charges on the federal level. Such a charge could rekindle concerns over the expansion of both hate crime and terrorism laws, particularly in conflict with free speech principles.
Hate crime laws
The first challenge for a hate crime prosecution will be to determine if this was an act of specific hate from general rage. The hate crimes statute covers an attack that was motivated not by unfettered fury but particularized hatred of a victim’s race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. Fields may indeed have targeted people on that basis, but there would be serious questions over the applicability of the statute. There is no indication that he waited for particular people to enter the street, but mowed down everyone in his path.
While Fields is reportedly an admirer of Adolph Hitler and some of his victims were black, Heyer was white and the crowd was a mix of races and genders and religions. The Justice Department could argue that Heyer was killed in an act targeting blacks, but it will have to show that Fields was attacking counter-demonstrators generally. This is the long-standing objection of civil libertarians that hate crimes tend to be dangerously fluid and subjective — as opposed to the more concrete murder charges.
There is a more general provision under the Civil Rights Act of 1968 and Section 245 of Title 18 that makes it a federal crime to use force to willfully injure or intimidate any citizen “participating lawfully in speech or peaceful assembly” directed at opposing the denial of civil rights to other people. That provision, however, is more often directed at acts like the denial of voting rights. It has not been applied to a case like this.
There was violence on both sides of this demonstration with people showing up with shields, clubs and other weapons. Fields certainly seems to easily fulfill the hate aspect of a hate crime, but his prosecution could raise the question of whom or what he hated so much as to cause him to speed down a crowded street in Charlottesville.
Terrorism laws
National security adviser H.R. McMaster took the calls for prosecution into a different direction on ABC’s “This Week” and insisted that “anytime that you commit an attack against people to incite fear, it is terrorism.” As with the statement of Attorney General Sessions, the strong language from McMaster was commendable in assuring Americans that we will not stand for such acts of savagery in this nation. However, McMaster’s call to “extinguish” acts of hatred through terrorism laws triggers a predictable response for those of us in the civil liberties community.
While Fields cannot be charged with domestic terrorism under these facts, people, including CNN legal analyst Page Pate, have called for the expansion of the law. Lisa Monaco, President Obama’s homeland security adviser, echoed McMaster’s sentiments and said that “kind of violence, committed for seeming political ends, is the very definition of domestic terrorism.” The question again will be Fields’s “seeming political ends” in plowing his car into a crowd of people on a street.
Civil libertarians have objected for years over the expansion of terrorism laws after 9/11. Under the USA Patriot Act, a violation of federal or state criminal law qualifies as “domestic terrorism” if it is intended to coerce or intimidate a civilian population or to coerce the policy of the government. As with the hate crime provision, there are obvious concerns about the use of such a law in the context of a political demonstration.
The First Amendment sees no distinction based on viewpoints. They are all protesters and cloaked in the same constitutional protections — and subject to the same criminal laws for violence. Indeed, the demonstrators had recently succeeded in going to court to enjoin the denial of free speech by the Charlottesville City Council in refusing them a permit.
There are calls for the demonstration by white supremacists and nationalists to be investigated as part of the terroristic act (or under the Ku Klux Act). That raises the specter that violence by demonstrators would be subject to terrorism investigations more readily than the violence of counter-demonstrators. For example, the racist organizer of this event was assaulted the following day when trying to speak to the media. Was this terrorism by a person acting with “seeming political ends”?
Obviously, this is not the time when it is popular to raise such concerns. At a time of national rage, such constitutional concerns can appear precious or even disloyal. However, we have much to lose if we allow crimes like terrorism to expand dramatically into areas of unpopular but protected speech. What Fields allegedly did was not speech, it was murder. As we legitimately investigate a possible hate crime, we need to be careful not to lose that distinction.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can follow him o
Sadly, free speech is dead in America. Google, for example, is not going to stop at policing speech of its employees. With their power and Facebook’s, we’re doomed. Surprised they aren’t unmasking anonymous commenters like here and on Disqus. That will come.
No thread on the trump’s anti-american nazi rant? Comparing George Washington to the traitor robert e lee? Understand this site has sadly become a go to site for nazi’s, white supremacists, anti-semites, etc…. but, you’re kidding me? Possibly, the most embarrassing moment for any president in my lifetime (okay Nixon is right there – and Reagan’s dealing with Iranian terrorists should have been bigger) goes without comment? No other thoughts on significant amount of republican/conservative silence. For shame! Understand republicans are still yanking on their privates hoping to give tax cuts to the rich and transferring possibly hundreds of billions from the masses to the top 2%……………….but no universal condemnation from conservatives? OMFG!
btw – the thread topic is easy. if the killer is a muslim, it is guaranteed to be terrorism. That the killer was a trump supported, nazi piece of sh-t, the word terrorism will likely not ever be a formal charge.
btw 2 – is it true trump was considering pardoning the terrorist Fields? With dingbat donald one never knows which crazy rumor will have an actual basis in reality
Sorry Bill, you’re just a pawn falling in line.
Believe a similar line was spoken in Germany in the early 1930’s. How did that work out for them?
https://twitter.com/RealMuckmaker/status/897619057758928896
frankly, pretty simpleton logic you have there. I was expecting a better argument, or at least not a child’s argument. Geeez you guys are easy. I guess you feel good about your heroes like Lloyd Blankfein and the Merck CEO who urge everyone to “stand up to racism.” I hope you’re the first person to open up his wallet when TARP II comes back around. Bwahahaaaaaa!
Very simple…..The klan and the nazis should not be permitted to murder and maim.
frankly, Look at the poor dope in the photo. Do you really think they DIDN’T know this type of element would be set off when they authorities did NOT maintain order? They know all the relevant details of these things. Isn’t that what our massive government does? All you need now is a government building to be set on fire and you’ll let the government do whatever it wants to protect you from your “neonaazzzi” monsters. I guess maybe if so many people are but-hurt over free speech we may not deserve a democratic republic in the end. Time will tell. You still might want to get off your high, but simple horse and read TerBer below.
Lloyd must be the only Goldman guy Trump didn’t hire.
It’s a shame you can’t see that Trump is being marginalized every way he turns. He is a short timer. But you will be subject to the new laws of control rolled out for your protection just like everyone else. You may find your banter not to be acceptable in the near future, replaced by some other scenario manufactured by the state. But probably not. Your views are same as other waves in history. Just the vernacular is different. I don’t follow a side, I just ask hard questions. I don’t give anyone a pass.
Trump has marginalized himself. He had a chance but he has made some poor choices. I don’t seem him as a victim.
Trump is an outsider, and a dope. He’s down for the count and of no consequence to events going forward. Except for the people who have seen the vast government work to marginalize him from the outset and will remember. But he has pretty much shown himself not to be up to the task of changing anything. I think that’s pretty clear.
Trump is an outsider, and a dope.
It’s amazing the number of inconsquential people who fancy a man who spent four decades superintending a commmercial company with a five-digit workforce and 10-digit revenue stream is a ‘dope’.
To DSS, can go any deeper in the quote model in wordpress, but just because Trump is a highly successful business man doesn’t necessarily mean he’s automatically a great politician. Or astronaut, or whatever. He is boxing himself in pretty quickly, not the hallmark of a great politician. Tallyrand survived worse.
https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/897805288396509184
Mao’s Cultural Revolution, ISIS, the Taliban, and now the Soros led alt left are destroying statues, relics, and trying to rewrite history. In the Soros case, also they intend on destroying the Constitution. frankly is a paid Soros operative.
That is a bold faced lie.
frankly – that is exactly what you would say if you were a Soros paid hack. 😉
Nick wrote: “frankly is a paid Soros operative.”
What a preposterous assertion!
One doe not need to be paid to fight nazis. My family fought the nazis in the war.
As did mine, SWM. 7 uncles fought in both theaters. One spent 6 months in a UK hospital after the Battle of the Bulge. He carried shrapnel in his body for another 55 years. But, the psychological damage was much worse. They fought Nazi’s, but they all took an oath to PROTECT AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. Come on, you see the 1st Amendment under attack. Do you really think I support anything these Nazi’s stand for?? Like the ACLU, I support their 1ST AMENDMENT RIGHTS. Please be honest. I know from the past you are capable of that. You want Trump gone. I understand that. But are you and the alt left willing to shred the Constitution to achieve that goal?
SWM, If you say you are not paid by Soros, I will take you at your word. I sincerely apologize and will not repeat that again.
Nick, Your uncles bravely fought REAL Nazis. The Third Reich had the most powerful, well-disciplined Army the world had ever seen, able to unleash mass destruction throughout Europe. These American mutts are not Nazis. They are a rag-tag group of disenfranchised young males, unable to earn a decent living and trying to align with a powerful image to shore up their lackluster self-esteem. One of the “Nazi” marchers was identified yesterday and fired from his minimum wage, no insurance job at a hot dog stand in CA! And the guy who drove his car into the crowd worked for $8 an hour, and the police were called multiple times because he beat-up his own mother. I call him a “guy” because a man does not beat-up his mother. None of these losers would have even made it to PFC in the German Army of WWII. Virginia’s laws are more than adequate to deal with this guy on a murder charge. VA has the death penalty and they don’t hesitate to use it. I hate to see these low-lifes get the prominence they crave by being likened to Nazis and KKK when they don’t remotely have the power and influence, organization, discipline or money of those long-gone historical groups.
Fortunately, I am now able to donate money to fight the slime.
Wow, there you go frankly! Listen to the bankster folks! They will make sure you know what justice is! I guess when the one-way trains start running with “Democrat Party Train” themed graphics, you’ll be right on board! I just can’t believe this all would go down so easily. But I guess the deep state has the time and resources to figure out these things.
Yes, and you’re the one falling right into the plan. It’s so sad that so many can’t see this. My brother pointed out the other day that it was the educated class who really ushered in the Nazi movement. Just keep letting government make all the decisions about what is acceptable. I don’t see why people are so blind–other than they submit to their “team mentality.” “Democrats sayed it–must be reeeeeel gooood.”
My pops fought the Nazis in WWII. Don’t let Trump bring em back.
Ken, Trump will be long gone before long, it isn’t him who will bring them back. Read TerBer below.
My old man and 7 uncles fought in both WW2 theaters. When inducted they all took an oath to PROTECT AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. The 1st Amendment is the most precious. You and the alt left want to destroy the Constitution. The ACLU gets it. You and your ilk are too dimwitted to get it. You want to get rid of Trump by any means necessary and that means destroying the Constitution.
Good point Nick. Somewhere, the Constitution got lost in all this social justice BS.
Have you checked your blood pressure lately?
Hegel’s dialectic is the tool which manipulates us into a frenzied circular pattern of thought and action. Every time we fight for or defend against an ideology we are playing a necessary role in Marx and Engels’ grand design to advance humanity into a dictatorship of the proletariat. The synthetic Hegelian solution to all these conflicts can’t be introduced unless we all take a side that will advance the agenda. The Marxist’s global agenda is moving along at breakneck speed. The only way to completely stop the privacy invasions, expanding domestic police powers, land grabs, insane wars against inanimate objects (and transient verbs), covert actions, and outright assaults on individual liberty, is to step outside the dialectic. This releases us from the limitations of controlled and guided thought.
-Nikki Rampana 2005
This is very important. I urge everyone to step outside of the state-sponsored thought loop. Can’t people see this? Bait and switch–“your neighbors are evil, just look to the heads of pharmaceutical companies and banks as your source of values and direction.” Huh???? The complicit MSM should be ashamed painting their remarks all over their propaganda–I mean, reporting.The authorities seemed to let that unfortunate situation unfold, looking as if it was planned. And now the expected “expansion of government control.” Think nine were killed in Chicago over the weekend? Don’t play into the divide and conquer strategy.
Certainly the mayor and city council of Charlottesville bear some responsibility. They announced what they knew would be a controversial removal of the statue, giving a time and place, and even after they learned that people were coming from across the country to violently protest, they didn’t cancel the event. They did this to make political points without regard for the safety of the citizens and visitors. Compare that to Rockville, MD, a few hours north. They recently moved a confederate statue from the courthouse to private property quietly and with no public notice. Thus there were no demonstrations and nobody was injured. If I were an attorney representing one of the injured in Charlottesville, I would sure the city. Their actions were grossly irresponsible at worst; negligent at best.
TIN, regarding political points, I found this interview, in which Bellamy admits that significant monetary reparations were already given to the black community of C’ville to provide equity, in a bargain so that the council would not remove the statue. Bellamy and another councilor voted to proceed with statue removal anyway (because they decided they needed safe spaces in the town center), and persuaded a third councilor to vote with them.
The hate in the VICE video turns my stomach, and I don’t see a way out of the morass. Nobody is willing to just talk, all they want to do is throw punches or spray mace. TerBer has it right.
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/7/charlottesville_va_backs_reparations_fund_for
TIN – I am waiting for the class action against the city to be filed.
T rump hates John McCain. Not a hate crime.
Ken – I think I hated John McCain long before Trump did. Not sure where a hate crime would even come into it. I am not in favor of hate crimes. I think the regular crimes cover the map.
McCain has talents and virtues, but tends to go out of his way to step on toes. Bad temper, been known to call other members of Congress something that rhymes with ‘brother trucker’ in private settings.
Turley’s exemplifies a lawyer ‘rubbing one off’. If you take a gun to a robbery, it’s armed robbery and the sentence is different than if you didn’t, even if you didn’t intend to or would never have even used it. The guy is a white supremacist, drove his car into counter white supremacist protesters, it’s a hate crime, terrorism, whatever, but this sort of crime calls out to be treated more seriously. But, hey, lawyers get that wonderful full body experience when they explode their legal KY lubricated banter.
Issac, here’s a little idea, try applying logic to your reasoning.
The problem is hate crimes were designed to add extra punishment for comitting crimes against protected classes of people. The victim here is white. Sorta undoes the whole concept of protected classes.
So, Roscoe
If a bank robber shoots and kills a customer while aiming at a guard and the guard is shooting at the robber, then which is it: self defense, missed shot, manslaughter, murder…. Like I said, lawyers rubbing one off. The mutt is a white supremacist, nazi, with the history to go with it. He aimed at those standing up against racism, bigotry, etc. It is murder, with terrorism, with hate, regardless of how you want to stroke it. You can design your own logic; the nazis did.
Issac, the law proscribes punishment for murder. Trying to get some more flesh based on the intention of the perpetrator makes no more justice. You are conflating hate crimes and terrorism. i suggest you go back and reread the professors article.
prescribes please, not proscribes.
Sure it does. There are all sorts of murder. There’s Zimmerman murder, OJ murder, bank robbery murder, police murderers, murdering of police, nazi murderers, anti semite murderers, etc, etc, etc. They merge with manslaughter coming one way and terrorism going the other. This mutt murdered someone in a terrorist act due to pent up hatred. This animal designed his murder, so society can design his crime and punishment.
issac – Zimmermann was self-defense and OJ was found not guilty by a multi-racial jury. Nice try, though.
Paul
Like I said, all kinds of murder. Enter the lawyers and you take the bad with the good, and Zimmerman’s murder/manslaughter at the least becomes self defense and OJ walks because his side had better lawyers. That’s a result of incompetence on the side of the prosecutors. When a nazi drives his car into a group of left wingers, white or black, during a heated moment; that carries with it the legal tonality of hate and terror and should be prosecuted as such where designated. As much as Sessions is no more than a pimple on Trump’s a**, he called this one correctly.
issac – it is odd that that Nazi is being reported as an Obama supporter.
When Eric Holder was AG he stated that “hate crime” laws did not protect white people. I don’t know if Jeff Sessions has adopted that interpretation or not. But the problem with the guy driving his car into a crowd is that he had no idea who he was hitting. He was driving at a high rate of speed into a crowd of racially mixed people. I saw a photo of a black guy and a white guy both thrown into the air by the car’s impact. Under Holder’s interpretation, the black victim would be protected by federal law but the white victims would not.
“While Fields is reportedly an admirer of Adolph Hitler and some of his victims were black, Heyer was white and the crowd was a mix of races and genders and religions. ”
That is exactly what he was murdering…the actual ‘mixing’ of races. You can’t get a better example of White supremist twisted thinking>action as an example of pure hate. He would be more likely to be internally restrained if the crowd were all black….but a MIXED crowd? Unthinkable….unbearable…untolerable…where is his platform of superiority now? SNAP
Right on!
A blast from the past: 1992 LA riots
Koreans in KoreaTown, LA battle street gangs & gang bangers. Don’t mess with Korean store owners. An interview with David Joo. Joo stated, “the LAPD ran away when the shooting started”.
I believe the more applicable charge would be a state level for either vehicular homicide or murder. Now I recognize the feds like to become involved in such matters as a direct consequence of how much media attention is garnered by the alleged criminal act, but we need to look at Tile 18 U.S. Code § 249 – Hate crime acts
Hate Crime Acts
One needs to look at the intent of the law. If a state is diligently administering justice in this case, in my view the feds should stand down on the federal crime unless the particular state requests federal intervention.
On an international arena the International Criminal Court generally does not prosecute suspected war criminals if the member state provides a bona fide and credible criminal case against an accused within their country’s jurisdiction. The issue is referred to as “Complementarity”.
Here is an excerpt of the Rome Statute
A significant difference between the ICC and the US Government is that if the trial is legitimate at the member state level, and the accused is acquitted, the ICC will not prosecute the accused. Here in the US, if the outcome is unfavorable to the powers to be, we can almost expect a federal prosecution. Hence was seen with the defendants in the Rodney King assault case.
FWIW, Antifa and BLM Thugz with bats:
https://streamable.com/svxcr
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Ah…There it is…Those white sheets aren’t very flattering.
This is to “so what’s wrong with nazis?” Reporter
Fromm marches to the Nazi beat
Ken – you have to admit, the SS had the best looking uniforms ever, especially the officers. They have never been equaled.
They were Hugo Boss, weren’t they? Remember when Valkyrie came out, and Tom Cruise said the Wehrmacht uniforms were “amazing?” He was instantly labeled a Nazi sympathizer.
BTW, who wouldn’t have thought the government wouldn’t have used this last tragedy to increase its power and control? Duh. Humans are a silly lot. More like Lemmings. BTW, lots more were killed in Chicago over the weekend… Hmmmmm.
Just as an FYI For all: On a day that will live on in infamy, Trump reveals his true dark heart http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.807119
What is the responsibility of the Mayor and the Governor? They had months to put together an action plan that didn’t include, as happened here, allowing two hate groups to come in contact with each other. As a matter of law, the Alt Right people actually had a permit, while the counter demonstrators did not.
The police melted away instead of remaining in between the two armed groups. As it seems the Antifa’s struck first and didn’t have a legal right, permit, to be gathered on the street. They face an uphill battle to not get indicted themselves.
There is a something called “Laches”, or unclean hands. If the counter demonstrators were not legally entitled to be in the street, regardless of the correctness of their actions, they do not have “clean hands. This could not only bar them, including the woman who was killed, family, from going after the killer for damages, the defense is sure to claim they lost control of the car, “and “but for” the woman and other demonstrators illegal presence in the street, no one would have been injured, cause they wouldn’t be in the street to be injured.
The state can convict him of murder, or at least attempted murder, but because she had no legal right to be marching in the street, she may not have a legal leg to stand on.
Unless they can show Trump said something in particular about the marchers, which could rise to the level of incitement, I don’t see how a case can be made it is in anyway, his fault. Besides, like with the collusion charge, which isn’t a legal term either, even if he is guilty of some crime, you can’t convict a sitting President, and although it has never been done, even Turley would say he can probably pardon himself and everyone working on his campaign before he leave office or even if he is impeached – which doesn’t mean convicted, impeached means just that, accused.
The same law that allows drug dealers to get our of jail, Wall street Bankers avoid prison on a technicality, et al, allows Trump many possible trap (trump) doors to avoid prosecution and prison.
As another President said – “Elections have consequences” President Obama.
Nice law degree you have there. Pro tip: documents obtained from a novelty shop aren’t authentic.
This is to “esquire” ronnie
Trump mentioned in the press conference yesterday that only one side had permits, so we know they are looking into local and state officials and possible 1A violations among others. Plus, the governor had declared a state of emergency. Lots for DOJ to look at here.
It would be agreeable if the Governor, the Mayor, the city manager, the police chief, and the commander of the National Guard were prosecuted and jailed. Until the courts make public officials pay through the nose for playing these s**** little games, they will continue. One hopes with an indictment, the police chief and the National Guard commander turn state’s evidence against the others.
Thanks for the thoughts–but I will only note this: A President has to be the President for all (no matter whether what…)…..
The law distinguishing speech and conduct is slightly fuzzy in some areas, but that fuzziness won’t be corrected by any statutory remedy. Rather, it’s inherent in the tension between the overarching vitality of the First Amendment and the latest hysterical “do something” attempts of legislatures to respond to the latest headlines. In reality, the current laws sufficiently criminalize the act or acts at issue. intentionally running into a pedestrian with a 4,000 pound weapon is still murder, no matter how it’s cut. Intentionally hitting someone on the head with a stick is still some form of aggravated assault, no matter what the motivation is. I’m definitely not in favor of “motivation” enhancements; punish the act, not the thought.
Mark M. – for the first time I agree with you.
Mark M, I agree with you on this but I do have a question. Aren’t the degrees of murder based on the thought? The only first hand murder I personally know is a friends sister. Her boyfriend drowned her in a hot tub. He was charged for 1st degree murder because drowning apparently is considered not a crime of passion since you have time to stop what you are doing. If he had just shot her, he wouldn’t have necessarily been charged with 1st degree.
Depends on the state. The questions at hand in New York are as follows:
1. was the act premeditated?;
2. if not, did it demonstrate depraved indifference to human life?;
3. was the act committed in the course of one of the following menu of felonies (robbery, burglary, rape &c)?;
4. was the act committed in a state of extreme emotional distress?; was the act committed in an effort to injure someone?
5. if not demonstrating intent, was the act committed recklessly (i.e. disregarding a risk a reasonable person would have understood)?; i
6. if not reckless, was the act committed with criminal negligence (i.e. in the course of failing to perceive a risk a reasonable person would have perceived)?
There are some additional counts for vehicular manslaughter and indulgence of suicide as well.
None of these address the semantic content of the perpetrator’s thoughts (other than forming the intent to do something causing the death of another person).
This is a very interesting point, but as a poster below has said, differs greatly by state. Where I’m at, Texas, the Penal code lists capital murder, murder, manslaughter, or criminally negligent homicide as the different degrees of criminal homicide. Each have distinct elements, some with different mens rea, i.e., intentional or knowing, recklessness, or criminal negligence.
Your example illustrates some form of “sudden passion” defense, which doesn’t absolve one of the crime, but can allow one a reduction in severity of the punishment.
This is to jim22
Mark M.,
I have to somewhat disagree, but only based on a lack of supporting evidence. I tend to look at charges that can be proven. (You know, that whole innocent until proven guilty thing.) While involuntary manslaughter is pretty easy to assert at this point, and the driver’s ability to back up and attempt to leave after the crash is a good indicator of voluntary manslaughter, do we have sufficient evidence to support murder charges?
I see the State went with 2nd degree murder charges. At this point, can that be supported by evidence? Are all the elements met with sufficient supporting evidence?
The level of criminal intent may be proven by the actors words or actions. Juries do it every day. Based on the video footage, I don’t envision much difficulty for the prosecution in proving intentional or knowing conduct. While I’m not intimately familiar with the Virginia elements of murder, most state statutes are based on the Model Penal Code, which doesn’t absolutely require specific intent to murder, just the intent to commit an act clearly dangerous to human life which does in fact cause death (loosely translated). The actions shown by the video are sufficient to meet that burden.
This is to jack
I hear you on this one but it cuts both ways. I have seen what “intervention” does to ppl. My brother in laws brother was charged with “terrorism” for saying at 16 yo so n so should be shot. We used to say “they ought to be shot” of course ppl never really thot that….it just meant what an idiot….shut up. But zero tolerance took it literally and instead of what we the ppl mean by it. Long story short he was expelled and riuned not for harassment or what have you but ” terroristic threat” …..that was in a state a decade ago.
what could have been a great contributor to society was destroyed….by irrational exuberance to mainstream a “crime” of terrorism in a unit of zero tolerznce…
Sent via the Samsung Galaxy Note® 3, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone
You can’t criminalize emotions like hate anymore than you can criminalize lust or envy. You criminalize actions they engender like murder, rape and theft. How many times do we have to relearn these truths.
mespo – can you imagine Jimmy Carter being arrested and tried for having “lusted in his heart”. 😉
Mespo, how’s the mood in your 20? You’re about 70 miles away right?
Well Roscoe, we aren’t jumping for joy here. We’re about 60 miles from Ground Stupid and the consensus seems to be that the city is fairly divided on the issue. Richmond has a young, inexperienced mayor trying to deal with the monument issue. Richmond is internationally known for Monument Avenue and the mayor wants to add “perspective” as he calls it. Most white citizens see it as pandering except the crowd around The downtown VCU campus composed of the whispy, goteed radicals and black yoga panted liberal coeds who love blocking Broad Street when the fancy suits them. A lot of folks blame the governor and the Charlottesville mayor for woeful illpreparedness like sending his officers to a riot in shirt-sleeves when the nuts showed up in shields and bats. More controversial is why the state police allowed two of its own to died in a chopper that had already crashed once 10 years ago and sustained structural damage. As for my lawyer friends in Charlottesville, they say the city blames outsiders and they’re partially correct. Also, they noted a busy day yesterday signing up new personal injury cases among those injured in the Shields’ car melee as uninsured motorist claims for the victims are coming down the pipe. All in all, it’s Virginia. We don’t get too worked up. To steal an old lyric, we “just keep moving along.”
Thanks for the perspective Mespo. I just took my son to college in NC this weekend, hoping to get away from the sillyness and distraction of all this so he could get a proper education. Still hoping his engineering school holds to it’s principles and keeps their students focused on the job at hand. I was troubled to see some of the type you describe making trouble in Durham. Drove up 29 through Cville on Sunday, and it looked very busy, so it was good to see commerce continued.
mespo, Thanks for the local perspective and the tort claim info. That mayor in Charlottesville was not incompetent. The new game plan that has been in place is Dem mayors and governors tell cops to stand down when right wing groups march peacefully and Soros sends in his goons, Then, the MSM wrings its hands about “ALT RIGHT..ALT RIGHT!” This is Mao’s Cultural Revolution coming to a city near you, along w/ a touch of Taliban destroying statues. I’m sure they’re loading up on C4 to take down Stone Mountain.
Nick – honestly I don’t know which side I am on about Stone Mountain. The rest I agree about.
Nick, I totally agree with your statement on cops standing down and why. I really hope you’re wrong about Stone Mountain, as it is a beautiful example of classical bas-relief, and by a happy coincidence, I have a distant family association with the sculptor who started the carving in 1964 (Walker Hancock). My sister lives in Hotlanta, and she’s awash in white guilt, so I’ve read an eyeful about how all the Confederate sculptures (traitors, traitors!!) should come down, as well as Stone Mountain being removed (geez, how much would that cost the taxpayers???).
Never worry about that, we’re Virginia, Inc!
Jonathan Turley, I agree. This is a crime in the state of Virginia.
SJ Reidhead – my understanding is that he was supposedly on meds. Whether he was taking them or not is another matter. I think he is going to end up like the guy who shot our Congresswoman in Arizona. He will be hospitalized for some time.
Doubt it. Jared Loughner was (aside from the violence) a classic schizophrenic and had not a coherent thought in his head by 2010 and this was manifest to just about everyone who came into casual contact with him at the local community college. He was fixated on Gabrielle Giffords because he’d asked her a question at a public meeting and she’d given him the brush off. (The question was, “what is government when words have no meaning?”).
Should everyone on the “nationalist” side be charged with murder too? Since one of their own murdered? Yet we didn”t do that at nuremberg…we paper clipped. What we are asking for with terror charges is inverse guilt by association. Even tho the protesters didn’t know hin or what he wld do….we call what he did because of the others “terrorism” …that is illogical it was a 20 yo immature mind whipped up on psych drugs….it would be like holding hillary liable for the property damage the resistance caused.
Hate crime – crimes in which the value of the victim, because of his or her ethnic background, religious views, sexual preferences, _________, is greater than the value of you.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
— George Orwell, 1984
Exactly…..and how far does the deleting go? Almost 20 years ago I had a black general…his name was x. At an officers call white captain stood up with a question…his last name was x too. General roasted “ohhh some of your ppl used to own my people”…. laugh all around….it was clear there was no white “supremecy”…or nationalist. Yet before my eyes I witness this break down….my southern neighbor now 70 had black bffs….he said years ago obama ruined it. Indeed we were almost there…now ruined and ruins….and to erase history I believe is to ensure its mistakes.
“We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
That’s a good one! Hard to beat Hegel!
Spot on!
What part of the man’s mental illness enters into this? He allegedly repeated assaulted his mother, yet apparently, from what I’ve read, was never held accountable. This is a train wreck that should have been stopped ages ago. This leads to a question: Had adequate psych therapy been available for the man, would this incident have occurred?
You suppose we should have gulagged him in third grade?
He also couldn’t hack it in the service, so they kicked him out.