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Saturday, June 13, 2015 - 6:18amSanction this postReply
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Before we all get carried away with our emotions, I would like to open with a reminder of the Fighting Words Doctrine.  You do not have unlimited freedom of speech.  Words that threaten physical harm are an assault.  If someone says that they are going to kill you - given the context - you have the right to kill them back first.  That's the law.

 

In a post for Bloomberg View, former Reason editor Virginia Postrel wrote: "Los Angeles legal blogger Ken White has obtained a grand jury subpoena issued to Reason.com, the online home of the libertarian magazine I edited throughout the 1990s. The subpoena seeks information about commenters who posted in response to an article by the site’s editor Nick Gillespie about the letter that Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht wrote to Judge Katherine B. Forrest before she sentenced him to life in prison without parole."

 

I was not clear on how a "legal blogger" could obtain a subpoena.  It sounded as if the blogger, as a lawyer, knew how to do something most citizens do not.  In fact, Ken White blogs as Popehat and he obtained a copy of the subpoena.  He posted it to his WordPress content archive and you can get it here:

http://popehat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Revised-Grand-Jury-Subpoena.pdf

 

The prosecutor's job is what it is.  He does not make the laws; he just enforces them.  That said, he has been an aggressive prosecutor of business executives.

His office has prosecuted people worldwide and has prosecuted nearly 100 Wall Street executives. His office reached historic settlements with the three largest banks in the US and has brought down many City and State politicians including the speaker of New York State Assembly. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preet_Bharara

 

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 6/13, 6:26am)



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Saturday, June 13, 2015 - 7:29amSanction this postReply
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The prosecutor's job is what it is.  He does not make the laws; he just enforces them.  That said, he has been an aggressive prosecutor of business executives.

Conveniently selective and expedient in his aggression.



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Saturday, June 13, 2015 - 10:14amSanction this postReply
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Quite right, Luke.

The prosecutor's job is what it is.  He does not make the laws; he just enforces them.  That said, he has been an aggressive prosecutor of business executives.

If he is being selective in his prosecution, then he violates his duty (and does so in a cowardly fashion).

----------------------------------------------------------

 Marotta wrote:

...I would like to open with a reminder of the Fighting Words Doctrine.  You do not have unlimited freedom of speech.  Words that threaten physical harm are an assault.  If someone says that they are going to kill you - given the context - you have the right to kill them back first.  That's the law.

I'm not sure what the law is - it may vary from state to state.  And I'm sure that Supreme Court decisions have set some guidelines for courts.  But we should always start with moral rights, then go to constitutional rights and only get to statutory after that.  

 

We do have a moral right to unlimited freedom of speech.  When someone says they are going to kill you (given a context where it is believable) then it is the threat to initiate force that is a violation of the victim's individual rights - not the speech.  To be a violation of an individual right it has to prevent choice.  That can only be done by the initiation of physical force, the threat to initiate physical force, theft or fraud.  Words from someones mouth (or words on a paper or text on a screen), alone, cannot prevent us from acting on our own choices.  It requires that a reasonable person would believe that an initiation of physical force has been threatened and that the threat is believable.  The fact that states or courts may write laws in ways that fail to reflect the underlying moral rights is to be expected given the philosophical ignorance extant.

 

Those of us who are not philosophically ignorant should always remember the difference between legal and moral rights, that the former must always derived from the latter, and that the only way to violate a right requires the initiation of force, threat to initiate force, fraud or theft. And in this case, the freedom of speech IS unlimited.  It takes more than speech to make a threat to initiate force and it is the threat that should be targeted, not the words - they are only a chosen delivery vehicle for the threat.  



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Saturday, June 13, 2015 - 11:13amSanction this postReply
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Specifically about the "Fighting words" doctrine:

 

In 1942 a man named Chaplinsky was arrested for disturbing the peace and called one of the arresting officers a "damn fascist and a racketeer" and for that he was charged with, and convicted of, using offensive language in public under a New Hampshire law that stated, it is illegal for anyone to address "any offensive, derisive or annoying word to anyone who is lawfully in any street or public place ... or to call him by an offensive or derisive name." He appealed his conviction and it went to the Supreme court who upheld the conviction.  

 

(Before going any further, let me ask if any reasonable person wouldn't see this law, a law that makes the utterance of any "annoying word to anyone" illegal, as unconstitutional?)

 

[ From Wikipedia: Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942) ]

 

The Supreme Court delivered a 9 to 0 ruling that claimed there were 'two tiers of speech', and that one 'tier' falls outside of the protection of the First Amendment protection. And that the other 'tier' is the one that is all protected speech.

 

Justice Murphy wrote:

There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or "fighting" words those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.

Notice the following:
- There is nothing in the constitution, nor in the Declaration of Independence, nor in the Federalist or Anti-Federalist papers, nor in any other founding documents that this would arise from.

- Instead, this decision's justification was based upon a philosophical position that we can see in these words: "...such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality."   Words that are arranged in sentences that are minimally coherent ARE ideas - whether good or bad, right or wrong, logically sustainable or not. To claim that someone is a facist and racketeer is to make an understandable predication of an identifiable subject - that's enough to be an idea.

- That statement by Justice Murphy tells us that he doesn't mind creating what suits him as a new standard for judging where and how to interpret the constitution - not as a strict limit on the power of the government - not as intended by the founding fathers - but as a tool for achieveing "order and morality" in society. And the Justice has decided that anything he considers lewd, obscene, profane, libelous, or insulting are not in his made-up "protected class".

- Further, he believes that the very utterance of these words "inflict injury or tends to incite an immediate breach of the peace."

 

Seriously?

---------------

 

[Note: Murphy was one of the 8 different Justices appointed by FDR during a rather progressive period of American politics.]



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