Secret Service investigating university student Options

[latinprep12]

Twenty-one-year-old Phillip Bailey is being investigated for suggesting President Bush being shot.

Bailey is chairman of the University of Louisville Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee.

He says he posted a message on a Web site in response to someone else who suggested that looters in New Orleans should be shot. Bailey wrote that many people were simply trying to find necessities to stay alive. His posting called for shooting -- in his words --"every cop, national guard and politician who stands in your way, including George W. Bush if need be."'

The Secret Service says it'll be up to the U-S attorney's office to decide if Bailey is charged with making threats against the president. That offense can carry a five-year prison term.

The Link I looked this info up and well i hope you understand...well tell me what do you think

[artislife90]

thats so stupid. National security is become so annoyingly dumb, they might as well just use the bill of rights for a napkin and get on with the dictatorship since free-speech is completely gone, even if you say its there. Its gone.


hmmm, will calling Bush future dictator get me in trouble?


um.... heh....

Bush is good...I love bush...um....viva bush?



umm...AHH!!!!!! *hides in Canada*

[*mipadi*]

thats so stupid. National security is become so annoyingly dumb, they might as well just use the bill of rights for a napkin and get on with the dictatorship since free-speech is completely gone, even if you say its there. Its gone.

Making threats of violence against a person is not protected speech, and never was.

[*disco infiltrator*]

He wasn't threatening. He simply said he should be shot, not that he would shoot Bush himself.

[artislife90]

Making threats of violence against a person is not protected speech, and never was.

he didn't make a violent threat. He said no one should stand in the way of getting food for their dying child who is chest deep in toxic water...

right to peruse happiness perhaps? hmm idk, if it where me, I would totally be doing whatever I could to get food for someone who needed it.

I guess in a way, its a threat, but really, someone uses exaggeration to make a point and poof 5 years.

[mai_z]

curious, what exactly is the topic of debate here? there isn't much to be argued.

[b0st0ngrl]

curious, what exactly is the topic of debate here? there isn't much to be argued.

I guess if what he said was a threat or not?

But yah, that's pretty stupid about the secret service investigating it. It's not like he wrote "Hey guys, I think I'll go shoot Bush sometime this year."

[latinprep12]

I guess if what he said was a threat or not?

But yah, that's pretty stupid about the secret service investigating it. It's not like he wrote "Hey guys, I think I'll go shoot Bush sometime this year."

thats what im saying and i wanna know why is he getting a court case to see if he does 5 years in jail a funny thing is this part i found

Bailey is chairman of the University of Louisville Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee.

why is a guy thats in a non-violent group gonna shoot the president

[*RiC3xBoy*]

How is it even a threat? In his statement, the word "I" wasn't even used.

[*mipadi*]

You have to look at it from the both points of view. Perhaps Mr. Bailey meant nothing by his statement, but keep in mind that the US Secret Service is tasked with protecting the president. They take any threat seriously, because not doing so can have dire consequences in regards to their mission. So if they find out that someone is suggesting the president be shot, they have to take the threat, even if it's a figure of speech, seriously.

Bailey may not have used the express words "I am going to shoot the President", but it's undeniable that he suggested that shooting the president would be appropriate. This constitutes a threat, and is one that the Secret Service must take seriously.

I'm an advocate of free speech. I think it's one of the most important rights guaranteed in the US Constitution. But there are limits of responsibility on free speech. I can't go into a crowded movie theatre and yell "Fire!", for example; and I can't advocate violence against a public figure without being investigated. It's not a matter of free speech, in my opinion; no one is contesting that Bailey has a right to criticize the response of the federal government and the actions of the President in regards to the disaster in Louisiana. It's a matter of the responsibility of doing so, and how one should go about doing it. There would not be a problem if Bailey had said something like, "I can understand why there's looting and violence in New Orleans--you'd be desperate, too, if your home had been destroyed, and the federal government and the President failed to react quickly to the crisis." But saying that people should be shot borders on the irresponsible, especially in today's age. (It's also an overly simplistic and unremarkable way of expressing a thought, but that's not the point of my argument right now.)

I don't think this is a matter of free speech. Even free speech has limits, and saying that it's inappropriate to make threats against the president is not trampling on a person's Constitutional rights. It's a matter of prudence.

[ComradeRed]

It doesn't constitute a threat to support a point of view. "I think social security should be privatized" for example, doesn't mean I'm going to actually devote myself to privatizing social security. Or "I think it's good for people to join the army", doesn't mean "I'm going to get all my friends to join the army".

He was expressing an opinion (Bush should be shot), not actually saying that he or someone else was going to take an action.

Furthermore, not only is this far from a threat, but even a threat itself is protected by the Constitution in many circumstances. See Black v. Virginia, which upheld the right of a person to burn a cross in a threatening manner, or the litany of defenses of hate speech, etc, which are far more direct than expressing an opinion ("blacks should be lynched", which is racist but not-threatening, vs. "I'm going to get some friends together and we're going to go lynch blacks", which is a threat). Bailey clearly had a right to express his opinion.

Speech can only be limited if it directly incites harm or violates confidentiality (advertising being an exception under commercial speech definitions), not just if it's "irresponsible" or "threatening". The First Amendment doesn't require that people be diplomatic about their ideas. And even if it indirectly causes harm (remember the Pentagon Papers case), the government still does not and should not have the authority to suppress it.

Not to mention, Mipadi, even if you're right, it still remains that it's unconstitutional for the Federal government to prosecute this: since the Constitution only grants the Federal government authority to punish treason, piracy, and counterfeiting. A case like this should be handled by the State of his citizenship, if at all.

[*mipadi*]

Not to mention, Mipadi, even if you're right, it still remains that it's unconstitutional for the Federal government to prosecute this: since the Constitution only grants the Federal government authority to punish treason, piracy, and counterfeiting. A case like this should be handled by the State of his citizenship, if at all.

Crimes perpetrated over the Internet fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government.

But that's a minor point. Actually, it's probably best to just ignore my earlier point. I wasn't approaching the issue from an actual legal perspective, because a) I'm not a lawyer, nor do I have an interest in being one; b) I'm not an expert in US state and federal law; and c) I have enough homework to do that I don't really have the time to troll the Internet for facts about US case law. I was approaching the question from more of a moral-philosophical view ("Should it be legal?" rather than "Is it legal?") and I guess I'm not on the same page as everyone else.

[ComradeRed]

And it should perfectly be legal. It's just expressing an opinion. If you say that saying "Bush should be shot" should be illegal, so should saying things like "We should invade a country". In an invasion, people die and property is destroyed. But once again, just because someone says they think it's a good idea to invade a country, doesn't mean he's going to raise a private militia and start killing and causing mayhem.

We can see the result that prosecuting him would have, just as in Britain, Parliament is debating a law with a good chance of passing that would criminalize voicing support for the terrorists, or even publishing articles that justify terrorism (i.e. it would be illegal in Britain to write an article that says the root cause of terrorism is bad foreign policy, a perfectly valid political position, just because it might be "threatening" to national security). Threats against the government are perfectly valid ways of ensuring the checks and balances system stays intact. To use a historical example, the South Carolina Nullification Crisis ultimately forced a compromise that prevented Northern mercantile interests from imposing an unduly high tariff on the South. Or to use a more modern example, people threaten their local governments every day with the prospect of "moving with their feet" if local governments do not change their policies. We can see that, a criminalization of threats against the government would turn very broad and scale and lead to the loss of self-government in favor of a majoritarian tyranny.

Nor was I trolling the Internet for case law. Black v. Virginia was a big case, that is fairly well-known, not some obscure one that I would have had to look up.

[*mipadi*]

I can certainly see your point about the necessity of freedom of speech to protect against tyranny; as I said, I personally feel that freedom of speech is one of the most important parts of the Constitution. My concerns about the use of threatening language (such as what Mr. Bailey posted) comes because, to me, it doesn't seem to be useful language; Mr. Bailey's post was hardly eloquent, and as I noted above, his critique could have been phrased in a more pro-active manner. I can certainly see the need for a group with a mission similar to that of the Secret Service to have the ability to at least investigate matters such as this; I can see a need for a balance between freedom of speech and protection of a political leader.

Naturally, of course, any limitation on freedom of speech can be abused, as you noted, which is why limitations are a sensitive issue.

I think the issue I would bring up here is a statements against the government (as are the examples you pointed out) vs. statements against a person. Arguably, statements against a political leader can figuratively be said to be statements against the government; in Mr. Bailey's case, this seems to be the case. But clearly there are other times when a person threatens the leader specifically, regardless of politics, and that seems to be a time when certain language could at least cause the speaker to come under investigation.

[ComradeRed]

Investigation, okay. Prosecution, no.

Being tactless isn't a crime, and neither is suggesting that a person ought to be harmed, although if a person makes that suggestion, the "threatened" person does have the right to protect himself within reasonable bounds (by doing a private investigation to make sure the threat isn't serious, etc.)