Apparently you can be arrested for political speech in this country that someone finds offensive, if you get a judge that out of touch and senile enough. See more here from Popehat. This is just outrageous. I don’t think that Judge should ever be allowed to try a case, or sit on the bench again. Sometimes we have to beware of tyrants in robes just as much as tyrants in business suits. Perhaps even more so.
4 thoughts on “I Thought This Was America”
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Sometimes we have to beware of tyrants in robes just as much as tyrants in business suits. Perhaps even more so.
Given that tyrants in robes are often harder to get out of power unless you live in a state with judicial elections or retention elections and their violations of rights are often less publicized, I’d say it’s a much bigger problem than the guys in suits sent to the capitols and executive buildings.
This is why internet anonymity is so important. In England and other European countries, people are being sent to jail for months simply for using racial epithets on the internet. Not actual incitements to violence, not threats, but merely uttering non-PC words online. The line between “inciting” and protected speech is far too blurry.
The only way to truly protect speech on the internet is to put it outside the reach of government altogether. Legal protections alone will always be as meaningless as the paper they’re printed on – just as they always have been. Make it impossible, or at least very difficult for them to trace your activities online, even with a subpoena.
The day it becomes legally impossible to cover your tracks and maintain a wall of separation between the internet and the real world, is the day that freedom of speech dies as well.
Definitely true. I was very sloppy about my true identity when blogging, and now I’m wondering if I’m going to regret that at some point.
Big correction to the timeline and therefore what really happened (although it’s still outrageous):
On May 19th, 2 days after Aaron Worthing published his massive essay on his and his wife’s abuse by BK, BK ex parte (it was just him and the judge, no notice to Worthing) got another “peace order” (Marylandese for restraining order) against Worthing.
We’re pretty sure Worthing had no idea that BK had already gotten a warrant for his arrest just before the hearing someone had to attend, lest Worthing suffer a default judgment (which experience, like Sunday’s, show’s BK will abuse). Yesterday’s outrageous proceedings and decision won’t stand, but the criminal charge and arrest are entirely unrelated except in that they’re pertaining to the same peace order (unless of course it was the same judge who OKed the charge, which would have made yesterday proceedings … unsporting at best).
You might think Maryland has some really strange procedures WRT to their restraining orders and how easy it is to get someone arrested with them, but it’s been pointed out this all a part of divorce proceedings et. al., where the rule of law no longer holds in the US.