The Alarming Case of Justin Carter, Facebook “Terrorist”

[…]  When speech is a crime, thought is a crime, because when punishing speech the authorities are actually punishing what they think — or want jurors to think — was meant by the speech. Even when acting in good faith, people misinterpret. Since no one reads minds, it is a good thing the First Amendment protects our speech.

Unfortunately the First Amendment, like the rest of the Constitution, has been under siege recently. Otherwise any speech that does not represent a clear and present danger to other people’s safety would be protected.

Punishable speech is one area where liberty skates on thin of ice. Despite the obvious need for security, “terroristic threat” is another:

According to the indictment, Carter’s statement met two of the necessities required by state law: His words were uttered “with the intent to place the public or a substantial group of the public in fear of serious bodily injury,” or uttered “with the intent to cause impairment or interruption of public communications, public transportation, public water, gas, or power supply or other public service.”

Too bad Justin couldn’t have loaned the authorities his sense of humor, because that would never pass the laugh test.  (read the entire article)

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(Via Breitbart) […]  According to Fox News, de Blasio’s proposed plan to increase the minimum wage is getting as negative a reception as the plan to fund universal pre-K. Author Barnini Chakraborty notes that the latter has run into significant problems as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed a state-wide universal pre-K plan that would make de Blasio’s tax hike unnecessary–something de Blasio flatly rejected.

Fox News notes that Cuomo called the idea of making rich neighborhoods fund themselves separately from the rest of the state “repugnant.”

The minimum wage plan might meet a similar fate in Albany.

In his State of the City address, de Blasio’s minimum wage increase plan featured prominently along the universal pre-K idea and new proposition to give government identification to illegal immigrants, which would allow them to open bank accounts and access other resources in the city. (more…)

(Via MediaIte)  CNN legal analyst Paul Callan noted the issue here is whether the shooting was premeditated or if it was a last-minute decision. Lemon took note of all the people pointing out online how angry he’s been over the case, saying, “I know people are saying Don Lemon is pissed on Twitter. Yes, I am pissed! I am absolutely pissed!”

He continued, “I think there needs to be a Mind Your Business law that goes along with the Stand Your Ground law.”  (link)

Common theme of #MichaelDunn & #GeorgeZimmerman > 2 interfering busy-bodies who if they'd minded their damn business wouldn't have killed.

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) February 16, 2014

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“No my friend, you don’t sell this stuff to me.  You sell this to the people who don’t have self-respect and self-determination,  and they are weak,  and they love to be subjugated and to be dependent on the government.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbEV5xcoZiA

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A recent review of another Washington Post article discussing Attorney General Eric Holder’s goal to reinstate voting rights of convicted felons shows an odd progressive disconnect. 

Essentially, the post article outlines the goal is really to get black Democrats their right to vote in key swing states.    {Insert a generically obtuse “DUH” sound here}   But what strikes as odd is the unspoken reality:

Holy smokes more than 20% of black people have committed felonies ?

(Washington Post)  Reason Why Holder Suddenly Wants Felons To Vote: More Than 20% of Blacks In Swing States Can’t Vote Because They’ve Been Convicted of a Felony.

In Florida, more than one in five black adults can’t vote. Not because they lack citizenship or haven’t registered, but because they have, at some point, been convicted of a felony.

The Sunshine State’s not alone. As in Florida, more than 20 percent of black adults have lost their right to vote in Kentucky and Virginia, too, according to the Sentencing Project, a group that advocates for reforms to sentencing policy that reduces racial disparities. (more…)

The Curious Case of Ms. Rahinah Ibrahim

The story around the detention of Rahinah Ibrahim is so astounding a person of normal cognitive capacity might be unable to actually comprehend it.    She was stopped, detained, searched, hand-cuffed and then placed on a no-fly list back in 2005.   She sued the U.S. government to find out why:

After seven years of litigation, two trips to a federal appeals court and $3.8 million worth of lawyer time, the public has finally learned why a wheelchair-bound Stanford University scholar was cuffed, detained and denied a flight from San Francisco to Hawaii: FBI human error. (link)

The Error:  An FBI agent/investigator named Kevin Kelly was investigating Muslims in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2004 when he mistakenly checked the wrong box on a terrorism form, erroneously placing Rahinah Ibrahim on the no-fly list.   Kelly simply checked the wrong box on a generic administrative form.

What followed is almost nine years of *EXTREME* governmental denial, by some of the biggest well known names in DOJ, NSA, and Homeland Security.   They, on behalf of the U.S. government, used every national security avoidance argument, all of it, all.of.it, simply to cover-up a simple clerical mistake. (more…)

D’oh – Even after President Milli Vanilli has been shown to lip-sync (teleprompter needed) in an effort to make appearance of actual intellect, the band brand management continues to maintain the ruse of competency.

(Daily Caller) White House officials have quietly changed an official transcript to hide President Barack Obama’s embarrassing historical error during his international press conference with French President Francois Hollande.

Obama’s error came when he misnamed Alexis de Tocqueville, a clear-eyed Frenchman who explained the subtle miracle of American culture and democracy in the 1830s. His book is a classic, partly because his insights about Americans’ social equality and civic society have become commonplace among centrists and conservatives.

But Obama called him “Alex” in front of the French and U.S. press, and while facing banks of TV cameras. (more…)

(Via Newsbusters) Fifty years to the day after The Beatles’ first concert in the United States, NBC’s Shawna Thomas could have been mistaken for one of the screaming fan girls at the Washington Coliseum. But instead of idolizing the rock and roll band, the network’s White House producer shouted for joy over Michelle Obama’s gown, which the First Lady wore to Tuesday’s state dinner for French President Francois Hollande.

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Don’t hold your breath and wait for the national media to report the story, it doesn’t fit their desired narrative….

NEW ORLEANS – Jurors deliberated for just six and a half hours.  Although he faced 21 charges involving a complex cast of characters and schemes, most of them revolved around a single question: Did Ray Nagin believe the jury knew the things of value he was getting were meant to influence him.

As Judge Berrigan’s instructions to the jury showed, a bribe has been committed if the public official taking the thing of value does so knowing that the giver wants something in return. The jurors in this case clearly did not believe that Nagin did not know what was going on.

Count 1: Conspiracy – Guilty

The charge: Creating, through a variety of bribes and kickbacks, “a scheme and artifice to defraud” the residents of New Orleans of his honest services as a public official. Many of the individual elements of this scheme make up the other 20 crimes with which Nagin was charged. Maximum prison term: 5 years (more…)

Apparently all of the random non-corrupt smidgens were identical…. Identically opposite to progressives.   What are the odds?   Go figure..

WASHINGTON DC – A Republican House committee chairman said the Internal Revenue Service targeted tax-exempt conservative groups for audits, widening the scope of GOP ire over the agency’s oversight of political activities.

House Democrats pushed back, saying Republicans were seeking to use the IRS controversy to score political points with their conservative base in an election year.

The IRS has been under scrutiny since an inspector general’s report last May found that the agency had targeted conservative groups for lengthy and heavy-handed review of their applications to become tax-exempt organizations under section 501(c) 4 of the tax code. The controversy led to significant management shakeups at the IRS and generated a slew of congressional investigations, some of which are still going on. (more…)