I think this is an example of using slow trials as a nonjudicial weapon. The defendant did not break the law and isn't likely to be convicted (at least not on appeal), but they can hold him in jail for months because they got mad at his Facebook post.
That should be where the right to a speedy trial comes into play. If he is held in jail because he isn't released on bail, the best thing to do is repeatedly file motions for the speedy trial.
A speedy trial is much slower than you’d probably think. I can’t find specific guidelines for Tennessee beyond having the right to one. The federal guidelines are generally 30 days to make a specific charge, and 70 days from then to appear before a judge. That also doesn’t ensure the case goes to trial, just that you’ve had a hearing.
Ie you can spend over 3 months in jail before an hearing and still be considered to have had a speedy trial. He’d have to wait til after that period to even file a motion for dismissal on speedy trial grounds, and then wait for the hearing on that to happen.
This is part of why plea deals are so common. Even if he were somehow to be convicted, his sentence would probably be less than the speedy trial window. At a certain point, the prosecution will offer to bump it down to some kind of misdemeanor with jail time less than he’s already done so it’s time served. He may as well plead guilty to that because otherwise he’ll keep sitting in jail waiting on a trial and do more time for no reason.
There’s no realistic route where he gets compensated for being wrongly prosecuted, even if he goes to trial and is found not guilty.
The justice system is deeply, deeply flawed and unjust.
At the state level, if a defendant does not waive their right to a speedy trial, the time from being charged (arraignment) to trial is limited by law. It ranges from 30 days for misdemeanors to 6 months for felonies. .
In California, the clock for a misdemeanor is 30 days if a defendant is taken into custody, or 45 days if not in custody. For a felony, it's 60 days from arraignment. If the defendant remains in custody after arrest, arraignment must occur within 48 hours of arrest, or on the first business day after the 48-hour period expires if it ends on a weekend or court holiday. If the defendant is freed from custody prior to arraignment, then arraignment can occur at a later date.
In NY and most red states, the clock is approximately 6 months for felonies. Due to the longer clock, in many of these states the clock begins when the defendant is taken into custody (or the state has a shorter timeframe for trial for defendants in custody). Florida just changed its laws to make the clock start on arraignment, lengthened the time required for arraignment to 30 days for defendants in custody, and made the speedy trial right an affirmative right that the defendant must specifically assert. Unlike pretty much every other state, the clock also restarts if the prosecutor withdraws and re-files the same charges (in almost every other state, the clock is only started anew for new charges.) FL also made the consequences for violation of these rights a mere dismissal without prejudice. (TLDR: don't get arrested in Florida.)
Most defense lawyers will advise clients to waive their speedy trial rights. This is for the lawyer's benefit, not the client's. It allows the lawyer to preserve their negotiating relationship with the prosecutor for future clients. In California, due to the shortened time frames, 99% of the time it is advisable to assert speedy trial rights (especially in felonies, but even in misdemeanors) because the prosecution usually can't get its act together in time. Some forensics can't even be completed in the 60 day window. The defense win rate in proceedings where the defendant asserts their speedy trial rights is so high that prosecutors will always offer a sweetheart plea deal to avoid going to trial.
(Of course the obvious solution is for the prosecutors to just wait until they have an actual complete case before filing charges. But if they did that we wouldn't need speedy trial laws in the first place.)
I think if there's a major constitutional right to be invoked here, it's the Eighth Amendment "excessive bail shall not be required". Two million dollars?! For a 61-year-old posting on Facebook? What kind of risk does he pose exactly?
Regardless of bail, IMO you are almost always better off staying in jail if at all possible and forcing the state to a speedy trial.
I watched a close family member go through the process after getting out on bail. The charge was effectively a he-said she-said situation, at a time when that was going especially poorly for the he involved.
He bailed out and took his lawyer's advice to wait the state out. That turned into a 4 year delay for what was technically a misdemeanor charge with a 1-year max charge. The trial was a joke and they offered effectively no evidence beyond one testimony contradicted by another witness directly in the room at the time.
Who knows what would have happened in a speedy trial. If nothing else, a 1-year sentence would have been completed 3 years earlier than the trial he had even happened.
>Regardless of bail, IMO you are almost always better off staying in jail if at all possible and forcing the state to a speedy trial.
I'm guessing that you have the means to pay your bills for years before having to worry about losing your income and your home. Most folks don't.
If you're in jail, you can't work. If you don't go to work, you'll lose your job. If you lose your job and you're like most people in the US, within a few months, you can't pay your mortgage or rent, so you'll lose your home as well as any belongings in that home.
Which are the biggest reasons why high/no bail forces folks to accept plea deals. "Speedy Trial" laws generally don't even enter into it.
> I'm guessing that you have the means to pay your bills for years before having to worry about losing your income and your home. Most folks don't.
That's a pretty big assumption that also happens to be wrong. I specifically said "if at all possible" because I'm well aware that plenty of people can't put everything on hold for 30-60 days and have to potentially start over after that's done.
If someone can in any way afford it, though, I would always recommend that approach. As soon as one is embroiled in the legal system its terrible no matter what the end result is. Either way the outcome is bad, if you can expedite the process you are better off.
I don't know anyone except the retired, who can afford to put everything on hold for 30-60 days (which in most cases will mean losing one's job). A small number of us have the savings to do that.
Do you mean that literally? You know noone less than 30-60 days of bankruptcy or ruin?
The fact that many, if not most, people are that close is the problem. We shouldn't be days or weeks away from ruin, and should the time come that one has to stand for their rights into the court of law they should be able to afford that fight on the order of a month or two. How can we keep our government in check if we can't afford to fight it for more than a few weeks?
>That's a pretty big assumption that also happens to be wrong. I specifically said "if at all possible" because I'm well aware that plenty of people can't put everything on hold for 30-60 days and have to potentially start over after that's done.
Okay. I've been wrong before, am wrong with this and will certainly be wrong again. My apologies. As such, I hope you never end up in a position where you'll need to consider taking your own advice.
But that doesn't change the overall point -- that sitting in jail for weeks or months, perhaps even years pre-trial will likely destroy most folks' life and livelihood.
Are sheriff, DA and judge directly electable positions then? I thought they were appointed by the Council or Senate (no, I don't live in the US nor do I have any desire to).
In some places in the states, yes, all three can be elected.
Typically the sheriff is always elected, the DA almost always elected, and for the judges it depends, but if they aren’t elected they are appointed by elected officials.
The other thing to remember is that the US judicial system varies tremendously by state. No two states are the same so there is no easy way to summarize it.
And that's why there should be serious consequences for everyone involved in this prosecution and prosecutions like it. If the case is as described here, there should be jail time involved for kidnapping and false imprisonment. But any justice system always protects their own.
I think you have a lot of faith in democratic processes at this point, despite widespread evidence such as this very article that they are being clearly undermined.
> "numerous…teachers, parents and students" somehow interpreted Bushart's meme—with its citation in fine print about a previous school shooting at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa—as a threat to carry out a similar shooting at nearby Perry County High School.
Wouldn’t matter. Those elected would likely be re elected. This wasn’t Trump advising some federal agency to bully someone he doesn’t like. It was the community organizing. This is the will of the people.
> Wouldn’t matter. Those elected would likely be re elected
This is just rationalising laziness and nihilism. They may get re-elected. That doesn't mean you can't create a lot of chaos and cost for them along the way.
Like, I wish my adversaries would preëmptively conclude that even attempting to oppose me is not worth it.
You are 100% correct. Just recently a single website that linked some e-mail addresses destroyed the EU Plans for chat control. Apathy and Cynicism would've led it happen but just the act of making one website and posting it at the right places, something everyone here could easily do, changed the course of law dramatically.
>With that we can determine who above them is elected
"This country is for people like me, I want people not like me punished severely" is very much a mainstream opinion in the US. This is how people win elections, not lose them.
People outside the U.S. should care about this because so much social media is based in the U.S..
i.e. If you post an anti-MAGA meme to Facebook or reddit from an identifiable account you could be charged as this man was. Perhaps the U.S. will try to extradite you. (I would hope most nations have sensible checks and balances to prevent extradition over this sort of thing, but it would still be a PITA.) However, the U.S. might also choose to wait and then arrest you if you ever travel to or through the U.S..
The U.S.'s slide away from freedom of speech could have a huge global impact on people who might think it doesn't effect them. We are far too reliant on American social media.
Canada, the E.U., etc. should be looking at protections to prevent social media companies operating servers in their jurisdictions from sharing information with the U.S. government. It's no longer a hypothetical situation. There is a real threat that is clearly evident now.
Which developing countries? I thought that many of those countries were either tied up with 'real', physical crime or just wouldn't care about internet stuff all that much. Lots of sketchy websites (like lots of piracy-related stuff) are hosted in countries where legal consequences are unlikely, even if it's illegal on paper. I can see how the more authoritarian countries can be going after social media posts based on grudges, but I'm wondering about which ones actively practice it - I don't know much about it.
> I would hope most nations have sensible checks and balances to prevent extradition over this sort of thing, but it would still be a PITA.
EDIT: If you're an emigrant:
More than just a PITA, you could still fail; see [1].
Also - I can't find the source right now - I remember hearing about Russian emigrants in Europe being charged with serious crimes in absentia over criticism of the war, and they were slated for deportation because the bureaucracy still considered all such Russian warrants as valid. The US would probably be harder to excise in this regard.
> Perhaps the U.S. will try to extradite you. (I would hope most nations have sensible checks and balances to prevent extradition over this sort of thing, but it would still be a PITA.)
I don't think there's any countries that allow extradition for actions that aren't crimes in their own country. Extradition treaties, as far as I know, aren't straightforward conveyor belts that let any countries hoover up anyone inconvenient for them, the requested countries don't want to let go of their own people for no reason, and can deny these requests as they see fit.
Being held up at an entry point to the US is a real worry, but at this stage I feel like they're not quite psychotic enough to be causing international drama over a Facebook post, so actions like these will probably remain domestic for a while.
The location where these websites are hosted probably doesn't matter - if you posted something the US doesn't like and you end up in a situation where they can get to you, no one would care about where exactly you posted it. All bets are off.
Yes many countries will decide to extradite for actions which are legal in said country.
I am French, and we recently convinced Scotland to extradite a French man who was denying the existence of the Holocaust and gaz chamber, which is something you could do in Scotland if you do it without violence.
So indeed it’s possible.
But I don’t think it’s the same as extraditing for a meme.
That's surprising, I hadn't heard about that. I had assumed that this was a blanket rule that generally applied to these treaties. I wonder how the UK justified it...
Also, one other differentiator here is that the man, as you described him, was a French citizen. The post up above implies extraditing foreigners from their countries of residence to the US, which is on a whole other level of insanity. Imagine what would've happened if France tried to extradite a Scottish man from within the UK for online posts.
Amazingly even this post is a reflection of the discourse around Kirk. There are replies equating any criticism of Kirk to celebrating his death and glossing over his past nasty behavior. All seems to detached from reality.
It doesn't matter. Charlie Kirk could have been the greatest saint of our generation, and it would still be unjust to imprison someone for posting a meme saying that they don't care about his death.
Woke right. That actually makes sense. Same form of madness.
It will be interesting to see the eventually empowered Left use reflective (identical) tactics to seal the coffin of the Second Amendment. And one could almost pity the... 'woke' Right for not seeing it coming.
I lean right. But I'm getting vertigo.
I think China must have put prions in our Tupperware a long time ago. We're a dead fuckin ringer for hopeless.
This entire story is a culmination of this effect. If 'celebrating someone's death' was a crime in the US, there's no doubt they would've used that to accuse that man. But since that's not actually illegal, they had to bend it out of shape until his milquetoast barely-criticism could somehow be interpreted as an active threat against some random high school. It would be funny if this wasn't completely acceptable behavior now.
Right, I despised what he stood for and his death has no impact on my life in reality. Doesn't mean I wanted him harmed in any fashion, I just didn't like him or his platform. I'm not sure why people are such simpletons that they can't distinguish the difference between that and wishing someone harm, especially on a site like HN where people should in general be aware of nuance and separation of concerns.
It's a cudgel. It doesn't matter if it makes sense, it fits in your hand and you can whack your perceived enemies. As always, logic doesn't matter, only owning the libs matters.
Kirk, among many other right wing figures, have absolutely made light of past violence against Democrats. The discourse around Paul Pelosi was utterly vile and despicable. Nobody ever threatened his first amendment right to say horrendous things.
Not an American so I don't have a horse in the race. Didnt Kirk also describe Biden as a "tyrant" and that he should be given the death penalty [0]. Calling for the (then sitting) president to be put to death seems pretty extreme to me.
The demarcation is that my side celebrating someone's death is reasonable, level-headed criticism that reflects the will of the people and how dire the situation is - you've just gotta consider what we're saying and think that both sides have valid points. On the other hand, your side not showing Kim Jong Il funeral levels of grieving towards my figurehead is extremist violent rhetoric that has no place anywhere in our society, it has to be punished; the deranged, crazed, murder-hungry perpetrators must be suppressed and removed before they kill someone. The demarcation is that I'm stronger than you. Rules and logical consistency don't matter when you have power.
I only tried to be mildly cynical here, because I actually can't come up with any other justifications here. I don't think there's anything non-inflammatory that can justify this outside of ideological reasons. If anything can think of any, let me know.
> think Kirk probably wouldn't be proud of his own behaviour there
He had years to apologise. It could have meaningfully altered the temperature of our discourse, particularly among young men. He never did. Kirk gets no credit for amends he never made.
"Mere weeks before his death, Kirk reveled in Trump's deployment of federal troops to DC. 'Shock and awe. Force,' he wrote. 'We're taking our country back from these cockroaches.'"
Cockroaches! Literally language of the Rwandan genocide. And it's a Christian saying this about other human beings? The man never changed.
(Obviously, he should not have been shot. But his sanctification is repulsive.)
> Twenty-five years ago this month, all hell broke loose in my country, which is tucked away in the Great Lakes region of Africa. Hordes of members of the Hutu ethnic majority, armed with machetes, spears, nail-studded clubs, and other rudimentary weapons, moved house to house in villages, hunting for Tutsis, the second largest of Rwanda’s three ethnic groups. The radio station RTLM, allied with leaders of the government, had been inciting Hutus against the Tutsi minority, repeatedly describing the latter as inyenzi, or “cockroaches,” and as inzoka, or “snakes.” The station, unfortunately, had many listeners.
> The promoters of genocide used other metaphors to turn people against their neighbors. Hutus, by reputation, are shorter than Tutsis; radio broadcasters also urged Hutus to “cut down the tall trees.”
> In urban centers, government soldiers and well-armed members of the Interahamwe militia affiliated with the ruling party set up roadblocks filtering out Tutsis and killing them by the roadside. It was an easy task to pick them out. Ever since independence from Belgium in 1962, national identification cards specified ethnicity.
> Within 100 days, an estimated 1 million people, the overwhelming majority of whom were Tutsis, lay dead. The worst kind of hatred had been unleashed. What began with dehumanizing words ended in bloodshed.
NARRATOR: he was, in fact, proud of his behavior there, plainly visible by comparing such behavior to hundreds of other publicly recorded instances of such behavior for which he was also quite proud
But that’s not true - it was uncharacteristic. There are many instances where he was kind to someone being openly aggressive towards him and one where he made fun of Paul Pelosi.
kind to people....who he was speaking to directly in person? or making social media references while they were not present (or adding them to dox lists so they could be harassed for years with death threats [1]) ? This is the key difference of course. It's also a really basic technique of horrible people to come off as very empathetic and friendly in person under specific circumstances so people are fooled in exactly this way, giving them full leeway to do horrible things elsewhere (such as maintaining dox lists to terrorize people into submission, or referring to women of color as having lesser "brain processing power" - e.g. unfiltered racism [2]....oh or insisting that children should be forced to watch executions [3]).
Due to Tennessee law, he has to come up with $210,000 himself to get bail from a bondsmen. And he loses $10,000 of that permanently. TN law is designed to keep non-rich folks in jail. He likely won't get his trial for months in TN. Also by design.
Nothing in the law [1] requires he come up with that sum himself. (The qualifier implies e.g. a legal defence fund or even family member couldn't help.)
That seems kind of pedantic. From what the original commenter said, my immediate interpretation of it was that the obligation to procure the money and pay up is on his side, not that the $200k must be 'his' in some other way. It doesn't matter what source he gets it from, but the bill is on him to pay.
For what its worth I thought the same thing -- that he had to get it himself -- as I already assumed to get a bail bond you still had to pay a percent first. I guess I have been desensitized enough towards absurd laws being from Texas that the idea of TN (or other southern/red states) passing something like that would not be shocking. I do appreciate the clarification/explanation.
> my immediate interpretation of it was that the obligation to procure the money and pay up is on his side, not that the $200k must be 'his' in some other way
I suppose. I honestly read it as suggesting he, personally, had to come up with that money. The law is cruel. But as positioned, it seems like you'd just have an industry of secondary lenders.
If this is accurate, this whole thing is beyond hysterical. Irrespective of political beliefs, this is an insane thing to have happen in the U.S. (this example is innocuous speech protected under the 1st amendment).
Spooky shit as it sets precedence for anyone to go after anyone for a social media post on any grounds. That's psychotic.
I wish people would stop pretending that this has nothing to do with politics. Belief that the rules should punish anyone you don't like and protect those you do is incredibly popular, and the dominant ideology of this administration and its supporters. It is a political belief, and nobody is seriously combatting it. Still we act as though there are two sides with a shared goal of creating a better world, and differing ideas of how to accomplish that. It's been pretty clearly demonstrated that the goal of this incarnation of the Republican party is an authoritarian police state dedicated to punishing and eradicating whomever they deem an "enemy within". And a lot of voters are ok with this, so long as it doesn't apply to them personally, so long as they're a favored party.
The apparent hypocrisy is naked and insulting. They'll cry "cancel culture" and censorship over companies deciding not to platform bigots while cheering when the police kidnap protestors or outspoken political opponents. I say "apparent" because this all makes perfect sense when you realize that they never cared about free speech or anything else they claimed to. It was always about "good guys" getting to do whatever they want, and "bad guys" getting hurt. The friend-enemy distinction. No policy goals, no principled stance on issues, just a convenient facade.
A common theme in these comments is justifying retribution against the left as if everyone in the country is for or against one team or the other- when in reality many of us are in the middle and think injustice remains evil no matter who does it.
You should, it’s pretty clear MAGA are completely out of their minds… if you’re equating anything that happens in your country to whatever happened under Biden or Obama before that, you’re delusional. The government is speed running fascism, and the apathy of the opposition should be terrifying.
I used to think that, then the last decade happened. The conspiracy theorists are in the halls of power now and their followers are frothing at the mouth for revenge against perceived enemies. The uncomfortable uncle at Thanksgiving is now driving national health policy and funding.
exactly, clicking on most bluecheck accounts on any politically active post on twitter and you will likely find a bot posting 24/7 about politics, usually as a right wing troll, been quite a while since I spotted a leftist one, but I have seen a few.
What did people expect to happen? Nobody seems to ask the question why military is being deployed to US cities. What would be your assumption if the same happens in Africa or South America? Seriously, how stupid can people be ...
I have many friends who already left the US or prepared to leave at a moments notice. None of them are actually political, but they are aware that 1984 is already fully implemented and at any point in time it could get very, very ugly very quickly.
This is a distinction without a difference. "Regressive", "reactionary", and "conservative" are three words that refer to the exact same people and mean the exact same thing.
No, the words mean different things. When used to refer to a group, those meanings confer connotations. The point is that we need to stop referring to people destroying our society as "conservative".
Sure, and so has "democratic" - eg DPRK. That doesn't mean we shouldn't call out abuse of the term when it's used for something decidedly anti-democratic. And "democratic" is at least a purely political word, whereas "conservative" has a strong meaning outside of politics.
why do we need to do that? Which of the two political parties in the US is known as "conservative"? What does that party look like now? What policies are being pursued by that party's elected officials, and how much do they differ in concept from what that same party was doing ten years ago, twenty years ago, fifty years ago? The Southern Strategy, Reagan's speech at Neshoba county fair, "Starve the Beast", "Brownie you're doing a heckuva job", you can draw a straight line all the way through to today.
we're living in the utter pinnacle of unfettered conservatism today.
Try painting with a less broad brush. I agree that we're experiencing the endgame of the Republican political operatives scorched-earth divisive tactics, but to insist on tying all their latent supporters to that is a grave mistake.
Imagine for a minute, if you will, that there are reasonable people who believe in some conservative values, but don't examine the rest of the party platform (or its results) all too hard. Now imagine that by pointing out where Trump falls short or is even directly opposed to those values (eg 2nd amendment), you might actually make them come around to seeing that we need to oust this autocratic child-raping anti-American scumbag. That would be a good thing, right?
I do get that Trump is just the tip of the Party's spear, and the whole pantheon of corrupt congresscritters / supreme council members / corporate backers really needs to go down with the ship. But that didn't work for 2024, and I'd say at this point we're losing our society and our country faster at a faster rate that those enablers' reputations are being damaged, so that seems like a terrible strategy. First and foremost, we need to stop the hemorrhaging.
i live in a town full of Republicans. Some are more soft spoken than others, but to claim that any of them are not MAGA (which would mean they actually did not vote for Trump) is simply ridiculous. the "non-MAGA republican" is basically a few hundred famous podcast hosts who were ejected from the power they had under the Bush regime. That's pretty much it.
> (which would mean they actually did not vote for Trump)
There is a difference between these two things, no? I've talked to people who voted for Trump subsequently regretted it after they saw what he is actually doing. Low. Information. Voters.
Our goal should be to leverage this difference. It's self-defeating to simply assume everyone that voted for Trump in 2024 continues to support cozying up to middle eastern autocrats, covering up the Epstein case, bully pulpit led cryptocurrency fraud, middle of the night raids on entire apartment buildings, deploying National Guards to occupy American cities and attack protestors, deliberately inhumane treatment of deportees while mostly letting businesses continue on as usual, etc. Or even that they support things that Trump did in his first term, like attacking the second amendment (eg his leadership around Kenneth Walker / Breonna Taylor).
Of course some of these topics are more subtle and lend themselves to propaganda bubbles. Like dwelling on the concentration camps probably isn't the best idea, since it's so easy to shut off one's empathy. But these are the angles of engagement we need to be looking for - unless we're just going to watch our Constitutional Republic being destroyed for four years, while hoping there might be some pieces left to pick up at the end.
Reactionary movements can be paradoxically revolutionary in their means, aspirations and intended outcomes, and sticking to the academic definition of conservatism, the word doesn't accurately describe all of them.
But yes, in general, I agree with your point, in a colloquial sense, the Venn diagram is usually a circle.
> Self-identified "conservatives" are pushing this wave of censorship and autocracy
Yes, exactly! They are lying to themselves, and as a group. They're not conserving our society, but rather throwing it away. I'm not doing a rhetorical trick - they are doing a rhetorical trick, and I am calling it out.
Yes. I keep saying - we need to stop doing this. "Conservative" makes it sound like what they are doing is gradual, measured, and familiar. Maybe not in narrow progressive circles where "conservative" has gathered strong negative connotations, but still in the wider general world. Using "conservative" as a synonym for Republicans/reactionaries/fascists is helping to support their movement.
You’re the one who made the claim that “self-identified ‘conservatives’ are pushing this wave of censorship and autocracy.” Isn’t the burden of proof on you?
In any case, we have polling around non-MAGA Republicans [1]. And contrasting Trump 1 and 2 seems to show how having non-MAGA Republicans, many of whom identified as conservative and didn’t endorse the 2020 coup attempt, makes a difference.
> Here's one example of the MAGA crowd self-identifying as conservative
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply no conservatives are MAGA. Just that I would be surprised if a majority of self-identifying conservatives identify with MAGA. (I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of former conservatives were now MAGA.)
The difference is meaningful, because by unifying MAGA and conservatives one loses resolution on a powerful breakaway faction. (The main reason we had a free and fair election in 2020 is because some Republicans upheld their oaths to the Constitution.)
> the National Socialist Party of Germany in the 1930s is not actually Socialist
Good comparison. One of the victims of the Night of the Long Knives were the Strasserists [1][2]. It’s absolutely legitimate to point out when the German Socialist movement was coöpted by Hitler.
You’re really going to reduce a historical event to platitudes?
What people call themselves matters. It may not be strictly correct. But it’s an identity, and that predicts how they’ll align in a crisis or movement.
I know. A platitude is a trite and obvious remark.
Whether the Nazis are true socialists is a red herring. The point is the people who called themselves socialist before the Nazis were systematically purged by the Nazis once they coöpted their party. It would be incorrect to say self-identified socialists were responsible for everything the Nazis did; it would be correct to say they enabled them to rise to power.
Most importantly, however, would be observing that right before the Nazis consolidated power, it was the former socialists who could have been peeled away, potentially to huge consequence.
I looked at the pictures, and even with no context, it was obvious that he was pointing out the hypocrisy of Trump with that meme.
Ain't no way people looked at the picture, and genuinely thought "Is he threatening to shoot up the school?". But then again, there are some incredibly stupid people out there.
To me, it mostly seems like manufactured outrage. Someone saw him posting edgy memes, got offended, and called to the cops that the guy was posting about doing a school shooting.
He is being punished for his speech. His persecutors aren't bold enough yet to publicly proclaim their violation of his constitutional rights, hence the verbal gymnastics.
> Someone saw him posting edgy memes, got offended, and called to the cops that the guy was posting about doing a school shooting.
I don't think even that happened. Most likely some law enforcement officials sat down at a table for a brainstorming session trying to figure out a pretext to jail this guy.
Without context, it seems like somebody obviously just sharing some tasteless memes, but the context is precisely what makes things not so clear. This is a former police officer (in other words: armed) who was obviously rather unhinged, a political extremist, lived near a Perry High School, and then posts an image that shows Trump saying "We have to get over it." with the subtext being "Donald Trump, on the Perry High School mass shooting, one day after." All under the title, "This seems relevant today..."
It's very easy to see how people could genuinely interpret that as a credible threat of imminent violence. Imagine somebody similar in your area did the exact same thing except with your local high school's name. So this is going to be a very interesting case, because what it's going to come down to is the prosecution arguing that he was aware that it would be interpreted as a threat on the nearby Perry High School, while the defense will claim he shared the meme without understanding the perceived threat it might cause and assumed people would understand he was referencing a previous shooting that occurred at a different Perry High School.
Normal people don't post 'memes' with images of dying people in them. If you don't understand this imagine a 'meme' that showed that terrifying image of the dying Iryna Zarutska in it, murderer right behind her, and posted some edgelord caption below it. You only do this sort of stuff if you're completely screwed in the head, generally caused by political extremism.
This is just crazy! Just look at the actual post: https://x.com/aaronterr1/status/1970272191884468241. There is no way this can be interpreted as "Threats of Mass Violence on School Property and Activities". How should anyone trust law enforcement and the judicial system when they fabricate cases like this?
Once more, it demonstrates that MAGA only cares about free speech as long as it serves their own interest. This is almost comical when you think about J.D. Vance' speech in Munich.
Thanks to reason.com for strongly calling out the BS!
> Bushart did not elaborate, but the context seems clear: Why should I care about this shooting, when the sitting president said I should "get over" this other shooting?
From one perspective, this is clearly bad governance. He's using his free speech rights that generations of us died for, to point out hypocrisy.
I'm going to say it, and we'll see if I get arrested for it. Charlie Kirk was one of the useful idiots groomed from high school to push conservative propaganda. One of his assignments was to minimize the cultural impact of school shootings. He died in front of thousands in a school shooting.
Maybe that irony is something and maybe it is nothing. But the essence of conservative propaganda, that will survive any individual propaganda and any individual regime, is the central idea that some of us have rights and freedoms and some of us don't. So any deviation from that idea must be punished very severely.
There's a large group of people saying that anyone who doesn't accept a guy from a couple thousand years ago into a primary organ in their chest area, that not only do they deserve to die, they will, and then be damned for eternity.
Others openly suggest capital punishment for nonviolent crimes. E.g. narco boaters, repeat offenders, homeless (see: Killmeade), drugs etc. In fact, we have no sanctions on Singapore, a land where one can indeed be killed for fussing with drugs. There are of course, many other similar examples.
Both the left, right and many between recommend death for many people, in a manner having nothing to do with self defense, response to murder or in alignment with current law. Ouch.
We have a LOT OF PEOPLE TO ARREST! I expect hypocrisy to complicate the process a bit though.
Edit: I should say, by the speed of the dvotes, I'll be on the hitlist too. And upholding the First Amendment and the rest of our Constitution is well worth it.
There's a group that plays with Guilt by Association. It's fun. Until someone else does it. But the frenzy comes when everybody does it. And some just can't see that coming.
Edit: what your type tends to be highly obtuse to, is the impending reality of blowback, where your warping of law is turned upon you. But it feels so good now, it must be worth it.
i don't like this administration — at all — and I believe we're definitionally in a fascist state now.
the lives of many of my friends & family have been devastated by drugs. 80k+ americans die every year from overdose. i understand why you may disagree with me with and i'm not going to dismiss your concerns out-of-hand but multinational illegal drug enterprises are absolutely an assault on this country in my view. i'm talking about organized criminal enterprises, not dudes pitching eight balls in nightclub bathrooms.
Sometimes time clarifies some things. I think I should have either mentioned or only mentioned the following:
The heavyhanded, cavalier fancies of this administration may seem fun and well deserved. Whether or not, they set a precedent as they go. I can't predict, but it seems probable that the next administration will turn left. If it does, it will have amassed excuses along with a well rehearsed methodology of spending them. The divisive shitstick of now will become the polar end of the divisive shitstick of tomorrow.
The notion that this shit can be gotten away with is ludicrous. Every breach of integrity that occurs with the present regime sets a citable example for the next to exploit. Anyone not eating ambian by the ton is aware of the unprecedented levels of tension and hostility between the right and left. It's simply predictable what will happen.
We'd be wise to arrange for a slightly smoother transition. Brazen disregard for law will not help. And any attempt to justify it with dubious ideology will come with a serious hangover.
Preface: I'm not interested in debating this topic here. Therefore I'll be concise, abridged and probably glib.
Your term "assault", can legally, imply a prelude to battery. Maybe that's a stupid point.
And I do not wish to dismiss your concerns either.
However, if you endeavor to qualify the transport of potentially fatal materials as violence, such would be a highly abstract interpretation requiring an unprecedented overhaul of the present system.
If someone is caught planning a violent act, e.g. performing internet search queries for "how to do terrible x and accomplish terrible y, the rule of law doesn't permit immediately executing the individual. Traditionally, a trial ensues where possibilities of error and other critical considerations are made in order to ensure greater probabilities of a just outcome, hence Justice. An immediate threat and remote hypothetical threat are treated differently. If Bob knows you plan to kill him on Friday, but he finds you while you're doing laundry and kills you Thursday, while tactically legit, it doesn't work legally. Extrajudicial is what we might call this. But regular folks wouldn't earn the term.
But that's barely the surface. If transport qualifies as violence, then the users that contribute or essentially enable the entire cycle must be included. So now we are killing foreign boaters in the Caribbean and e.g. Hunter Biden on his jetski as he swirls around the Florida Keys high on fentanyl. We'll need to kill his hooker friend too, because she directly supports these transporters.
It gets much sillier from here, all the way until you kill Bill because he spent money at the same pizza parlor as the guy who sold the baggy that overdosed your friend.
And then comes the strange dynamics where you need to kill me because my self-righteous doctor won't prescribe me pain management for my cancer because xyz and I'm looking on the streets for some kind of relief.
But we needn't go that far. We can go back to the top and kill the growers. And their children which might aid and abet them. And certainly a few chemists here and there.
It gets way messier. If you fail to kill me, I might have a grudge. Because I was not trying to hurt anyone. I'm in pain and just want help.
While this all takes place, other artistically inclined persons superimpose their own values upon the law.
But really, a few guys steering a boat full of drugs is not violence. Certainly not an imminent threat especially after they've been identified. It's the potential for violence, but so is our trusty old proverbial hammer.
Obviously an interesting test case for the US, especially in light of Vance, Musk, and Farage attacking the UK (especially) and the EU for apparently lacking free speech.
Grand juries have for years been entirely useless. They should be filtering aggressively, not only for this case, but for all such bozo cases. I don't know why it is they act the way they do. Given the data I have seen, certainly I would not have been in favor of indicting him.
The Reason article said there was no reason to interpret this as a threat and that it was entirely just political. The article made it seem like the memes were held completely out of context. It mentioned there happens to be a nearby Perry High School just by chance but the nearby Perry High School is the central reason why this was interpreted as a threat. This was posted in a group that was organizing an event at the high school. I could see how someone might construe this as a threat more clearly from the tennessean article if they were being overly cautious. Also the sheriff mentioned the arrest was not done for legal speech content but more for the coincidental possibility this was a threat. Reason didn't elaborate on this.
The Reason article is making this seem like it's entirely political and unreasonable. I don't think an arrest should have been made, that is too far. This seems like an unfortunate coincidence but someone looked at all this and reported it as a threat. The fact Perry High School's name is highly relevant here was not included.
> The Reason article said there was no reason to interpret this as a threat and that it was entirely just political. The article made it seem like the memes were held completely out of context. It mentioned there happens to be a nearby Perry High School just by chance but the nearby Perry High School is the central reason why this was interpreted as a threat. This was posted in a group that was organizing an event at the high school. I could see how someone might construe this as a threat more clearly from the tennessean article if they were being overly cautious. Also the sheriff mentioned the arrest was not done for legal speech content but more for the coincidental possibility this was a threat. Reason didn't elaborate on this.
> The Reason article is making this seem like it's entirely political and unreasonable. I don't think an arrest should have been made, that is too far. This seems like an unfortunate coincidence but someone looked at all this and reported it as a threat. The fact Perry High School's name is highly relevant here was not included.
All of this was in the first article. With far fewer intrusive ads.
They totally de-emphasized the point about the name of the high school like it was just the sheriff going out of their way to find memes they were offended by. They mentioned the name as if it didn't matter to the case at all when it clearly did. I couldn't understand why someone reported this as a threat based on the Reason article. I can kind of see why someone might be concerned now but as I said the cops shouldn't have arrested the guy when no threat exists. This whole thread is filled up with people who now think there is a police force looking for offensive memes forgetting that someone reported this based on the name. If you don't think that then go FOIA the sheriff and prove this is corruption. If you don't think the Reason article was trying to portray this as out of control police trying to politically enforce memes and it's totally unbiased whatever, I'm done.
As someone who grew up in a small town with a not so moral local law enforcement, I almost guarantee this sheriff has a political agenda against someone who dared post a meme about their favorite podcaster who was just assassinated.
I think this is a pretty stark example of how the rule of law has already failed the populace in general.
Historically, bad things happen when its generally recognized that non-violent conflict resolution mechanisms are no long available, and that false claims to the contrary are false claims.
The primary purpose of a rule of law is so conflict resolution can take place non-violently. When that's no longer working, you can expect everything to go off the rails in chaotic and unpredictable ways.
You either have a functioning "rule of law" or you have a "rule by law" where arbitrary violence can be expected. This is basic foundational social contract theory going back to the 16-1700s.
Its amazing how so many delusional people are just coming out of the woodwork now, and creating abuses on innocent people. We have constitutional rights because the founders of the country understood what not having them meant. Seems we are coming full circle now where evil complacent people are left to run wild; and the innocent are jailed/harassed/or worse.
I remember when the far right claimed they were for free speech and against “cancel culture.”
I’m curious. Have any of the people who actually bought into that been falling away? Has the 180 degree flip away from free speech actually popped the bubble for anyone?
> Has the 180 degree flip away from free speech actually popped the bubble for anyone
Absolutely not. Right here on HN, you see the "moderates" and "center right" people: completely ignore what's going on, never call him out by name, blame both sides, or pretend it's just lefties being hyperbolic again.
The Kirk assassination was awful, as well as the plainly false things said about his life by some parts of the media. But nobody is obligated to have a particular political opinion and Kirk himself would have pointed out that civil disagreement is this man's right as an American.
Kirks career literally started with organised harasment of what they perceived as leftists professors. Kirk himself was pretty atrocious verbally to people he looked down at. And he wink wink condoned violence against husband of democrat.
His murder was wrong. It is not true that he would be some kind of universal "civil disagreement" advocate.
Murdering bad people is probably wrong, up to certain limits. Arresting someone for saying that the victim was also a bad person is definitely unequivocally wrong.
Do you want to post an example? Kirk would defend students being harassed for unrelated political matters - eg the most recent case on his channel was an Agriculture major who had to take some kind of 'equity in agriculture' class and was being bothered by her professor for not being left leaning.
Kirk on the attack against Pelosi husband: “Why has he not been bailed out? [] By the way, if some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out,..." That was about attacker by the way. Like common, the start if Kirks career was making a list of "leftists professors" and promoting their harassment. Kirk literally intentionally created and promoted toxic culture we have now. That is who he was.
Yeah, he would defend right winger or bigot. He would attack anyone not right wing. The rights of people who were not white conservatives did not concerned kirk. He was literally against civil rights, openly. Blacks are all stupid and trans are all groomers. They all should be fired.
I have no idea about what happened between that "left leaning professor" and student. But there is about zero reason to believe what right wing activist like Kirk says about the issue. As far as he was concerned, left need not exist and need to be punished for existing.
The silly thing about criticising a public speaker for saying things they didn’t is there are ample videos of them speaking about the topic.
No. He pointed out correctly that black Americans were poorer now than they were in 1950, and pointed out that one cause could be how the civil rights Act (which is not the same thing as civil rights) was interpreted. You can easily look up the many conversations on this topic for yourself.
The 1980s wasn't great either, depending on where you were you had: AIDS, the Cold War, crack epidemic, war on drugs/mass incarceration, Satanic Panic, Iran-Contra, Tiananmen Square, plane bombings, peak gang violence, MOVE bombings, S&L crisis, sky-high interest rates, a couple deep recessions with high unemployment, Chernobyl, the Iran-Iraq War, widespread homophobia, Ethiopian famine and civil war, etc.
Trump's America. Don't forget to wipe your phone before travelling. You don't need to break any laws to have your life ruined, you just have to stumble into the crosshairs of the most vindictive leader we have ever had to endure.
Douglas Mackey was also convicted of posting fake election stuff like "avoid the line. Vote at home" with a phone number. But it looks like he was later cleared.
So the memeing can get you in trouble and people will either say you were "just memeing" or "posting dangerous misinformation/threats" depending on their political stance.
The excuse for why he was arrested (some school in the area shares the same name as the one that Trump was downplaying a shooting at) is, of course utter bullshit.
Its amazing how far people are willing to bend over backwards to explain how the speech of these public figures is harmless and non-threatening and none of us have anything to worry about (despite their actions putting the lie to it), but apply an entirely different set of standards to people criticising them.
Much of Kirk's public life and the life of his political allies was devoted to minimizing the impact of and the empathy we should feel for school shootings (because the ends justify the means of furthering his political agenda). He went on to die in one.
He was at a school, he got shot by a man who got a gun and took it to a school with intent to kill.
This happens every day to other people, and the advice of him and his political allies has always been to get over it and to stop politicizing it. It would be great if they could collectively take it and stop politicizing it.
Here are some "I-told-you-so"s regarding Douglass Mackey's original guilty verdict for posting Twitter memes, who, since then, was acquitted on appeal. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43531283
This thread is looking at this from a political angle, but he was arrested and charged for threats of mass violence. This seems to be a case of over zealous policing regarding school shootings in a very tense environment rather than a guy arrested over offensive memes.
There's no "tense environment" around school shootings. Like the president said: We have to... on second thoughts, maybe I should not be quoting him either.
The guy made multiple posts, which, taken together, made people supposedly consider him as making threats. The journalist here decides to cover this story, but only mention the content of one of his posts, and completely ignoring and not mentioning the contents of the other posts.
Surely the other posts are completely benign and there's nothing of interest in there, right? Surely the journalist had a reason for only reporting on the contents of one of his posts, and not the others, and that choice wasn't intentional in order to present a biased interpretation of reality. Surely.
The other posts were linked in the story. They were your everyday internet meme stuff. No person genuinely thought that this guy was threatening to do a school shooting.
>Surely the journalist had a reason for only reporting on the contents of one of his posts, and not the others, and that choice wasn't intentional in order to present a biased interpretation of reality. Surely.
Yes because the sheriff explicitly stated it was the trump quote picture, and nothing else, that got the man arrested, charged and thrown in a cage.
I think this is an example of using slow trials as a nonjudicial weapon. The defendant did not break the law and isn't likely to be convicted (at least not on appeal), but they can hold him in jail for months because they got mad at his Facebook post.
That should be where the right to a speedy trial comes into play. If he is held in jail because he isn't released on bail, the best thing to do is repeatedly file motions for the speedy trial.
A speedy trial is much slower than you’d probably think. I can’t find specific guidelines for Tennessee beyond having the right to one. The federal guidelines are generally 30 days to make a specific charge, and 70 days from then to appear before a judge. That also doesn’t ensure the case goes to trial, just that you’ve had a hearing.
Ie you can spend over 3 months in jail before an hearing and still be considered to have had a speedy trial. He’d have to wait til after that period to even file a motion for dismissal on speedy trial grounds, and then wait for the hearing on that to happen.
This is part of why plea deals are so common. Even if he were somehow to be convicted, his sentence would probably be less than the speedy trial window. At a certain point, the prosecution will offer to bump it down to some kind of misdemeanor with jail time less than he’s already done so it’s time served. He may as well plead guilty to that because otherwise he’ll keep sitting in jail waiting on a trial and do more time for no reason.
There’s no realistic route where he gets compensated for being wrongly prosecuted, even if he goes to trial and is found not guilty.
The justice system is deeply, deeply flawed and unjust.
At the state level, if a defendant does not waive their right to a speedy trial, the time from being charged (arraignment) to trial is limited by law. It ranges from 30 days for misdemeanors to 6 months for felonies. .
In California, the clock for a misdemeanor is 30 days if a defendant is taken into custody, or 45 days if not in custody. For a felony, it's 60 days from arraignment. If the defendant remains in custody after arrest, arraignment must occur within 48 hours of arrest, or on the first business day after the 48-hour period expires if it ends on a weekend or court holiday. If the defendant is freed from custody prior to arraignment, then arraignment can occur at a later date.
In NY and most red states, the clock is approximately 6 months for felonies. Due to the longer clock, in many of these states the clock begins when the defendant is taken into custody (or the state has a shorter timeframe for trial for defendants in custody). Florida just changed its laws to make the clock start on arraignment, lengthened the time required for arraignment to 30 days for defendants in custody, and made the speedy trial right an affirmative right that the defendant must specifically assert. Unlike pretty much every other state, the clock also restarts if the prosecutor withdraws and re-files the same charges (in almost every other state, the clock is only started anew for new charges.) FL also made the consequences for violation of these rights a mere dismissal without prejudice. (TLDR: don't get arrested in Florida.)
Most defense lawyers will advise clients to waive their speedy trial rights. This is for the lawyer's benefit, not the client's. It allows the lawyer to preserve their negotiating relationship with the prosecutor for future clients. In California, due to the shortened time frames, 99% of the time it is advisable to assert speedy trial rights (especially in felonies, but even in misdemeanors) because the prosecution usually can't get its act together in time. Some forensics can't even be completed in the 60 day window. The defense win rate in proceedings where the defendant asserts their speedy trial rights is so high that prosecutors will always offer a sweetheart plea deal to avoid going to trial.
(Of course the obvious solution is for the prosecutors to just wait until they have an actual complete case before filing charges. But if they did that we wouldn't need speedy trial laws in the first place.)
I think if there's a major constitutional right to be invoked here, it's the Eighth Amendment "excessive bail shall not be required". Two million dollars?! For a 61-year-old posting on Facebook? What kind of risk does he pose exactly?
Regardless of bail, IMO you are almost always better off staying in jail if at all possible and forcing the state to a speedy trial.
I watched a close family member go through the process after getting out on bail. The charge was effectively a he-said she-said situation, at a time when that was going especially poorly for the he involved.
He bailed out and took his lawyer's advice to wait the state out. That turned into a 4 year delay for what was technically a misdemeanor charge with a 1-year max charge. The trial was a joke and they offered effectively no evidence beyond one testimony contradicted by another witness directly in the room at the time.
Who knows what would have happened in a speedy trial. If nothing else, a 1-year sentence would have been completed 3 years earlier than the trial he had even happened.
>Regardless of bail, IMO you are almost always better off staying in jail if at all possible and forcing the state to a speedy trial.
I'm guessing that you have the means to pay your bills for years before having to worry about losing your income and your home. Most folks don't.
If you're in jail, you can't work. If you don't go to work, you'll lose your job. If you lose your job and you're like most people in the US, within a few months, you can't pay your mortgage or rent, so you'll lose your home as well as any belongings in that home.
Which are the biggest reasons why high/no bail forces folks to accept plea deals. "Speedy Trial" laws generally don't even enter into it.
> I'm guessing that you have the means to pay your bills for years before having to worry about losing your income and your home. Most folks don't.
That's a pretty big assumption that also happens to be wrong. I specifically said "if at all possible" because I'm well aware that plenty of people can't put everything on hold for 30-60 days and have to potentially start over after that's done.
If someone can in any way afford it, though, I would always recommend that approach. As soon as one is embroiled in the legal system its terrible no matter what the end result is. Either way the outcome is bad, if you can expedite the process you are better off.
I don't know anyone except the retired, who can afford to put everything on hold for 30-60 days (which in most cases will mean losing one's job). A small number of us have the savings to do that.
Do you mean that literally? You know noone less than 30-60 days of bankruptcy or ruin?
The fact that many, if not most, people are that close is the problem. We shouldn't be days or weeks away from ruin, and should the time come that one has to stand for their rights into the court of law they should be able to afford that fight on the order of a month or two. How can we keep our government in check if we can't afford to fight it for more than a few weeks?
>That's a pretty big assumption that also happens to be wrong. I specifically said "if at all possible" because I'm well aware that plenty of people can't put everything on hold for 30-60 days and have to potentially start over after that's done.
Okay. I've been wrong before, am wrong with this and will certainly be wrong again. My apologies. As such, I hope you never end up in a position where you'll need to consider taking your own advice.
But that doesn't change the overall point -- that sitting in jail for weeks or months, perhaps even years pre-trial will likely destroy most folks' life and livelihood.
Pointing attention at the basic hypocrisy and complete lack of principle of Dear Leader's party is an existential risk!
He can post again, so highly likely to "reoffend".
Bail is set at 2 million. So it’s a strategy
Had the exact same thought. How is there not a reasonable maximum time you can hold someone pre-trial? As always, rich offenders walk free.
IIRC some states have defined timeframes where charges are dismissed if the case is not brought to trial.
As they say, you can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride.
> but you can't beat the ride
You sure as hell can get paid for it afterwards.
Those settlements need to come out of police retirement funds, to better align interests.
> Those settlements need to come out of police retirement funds, to better align interests
If the sheriff, DA and judge each thought this was a good idea, it's fair for the voters who hired them to take the hit.
Are sheriff, DA and judge directly electable positions then? I thought they were appointed by the Council or Senate (no, I don't live in the US nor do I have any desire to).
In some places in the states, yes, all three can be elected.
Typically the sheriff is always elected, the DA almost always elected, and for the judges it depends, but if they aren’t elected they are appointed by elected officials.
The other thing to remember is that the US judicial system varies tremendously by state. No two states are the same so there is no easy way to summarize it.
> Are sheriff, DA and judge directly electable positions then?
Even if they're not, they're local enough positions that electeds have significant--if not final--say over their appointment.
The process is the punishment.
And that's why there should be serious consequences for everyone involved in this prosecution and prosecutions like it. If the case is as described here, there should be jail time involved for kidnapping and false imprisonment. But any justice system always protects their own.
> why there should be serious consequences for everyone involved
Do we have names of the arresting officers, prosecutors and judge this is in front of?
With that we can determine who above them is elected.
I think you have a lot of faith in democratic processes at this point, despite widespread evidence such as this very article that they are being clearly undermined.
> you have a lot of faith in democratic processes at this point
I think civic laziness and nihilism, particularly in Silicon Valley, did a lot to get us to where we are.
> "numerous…teachers, parents and students" somehow interpreted Bushart's meme—with its citation in fine print about a previous school shooting at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa—as a threat to carry out a similar shooting at nearby Perry County High School.
Wouldn’t matter. Those elected would likely be re elected. This wasn’t Trump advising some federal agency to bully someone he doesn’t like. It was the community organizing. This is the will of the people.
> Wouldn’t matter. Those elected would likely be re elected
This is just rationalising laziness and nihilism. They may get re-elected. That doesn't mean you can't create a lot of chaos and cost for them along the way.
Like, I wish my adversaries would preëmptively conclude that even attempting to oppose me is not worth it.
> This is the will of the people
You're concluding this how?
You are 100% correct. Just recently a single website that linked some e-mail addresses destroyed the EU Plans for chat control. Apathy and Cynicism would've led it happen but just the act of making one website and posting it at the right places, something everyone here could easily do, changed the course of law dramatically.
That small victory really made me reconsider.
>With that we can determine who above them is elected
"This country is for people like me, I want people not like me punished severely" is very much a mainstream opinion in the US. This is how people win elections, not lose them.
Months? This shit can go on for years. Emanuel Fair spent 9 years in prison and was ultimately acquited.
https://www.investigationdiscovery.com/crimefeed/seeking-jus...
People outside the U.S. should care about this because so much social media is based in the U.S..
i.e. If you post an anti-MAGA meme to Facebook or reddit from an identifiable account you could be charged as this man was. Perhaps the U.S. will try to extradite you. (I would hope most nations have sensible checks and balances to prevent extradition over this sort of thing, but it would still be a PITA.) However, the U.S. might also choose to wait and then arrest you if you ever travel to or through the U.S..
The U.S.'s slide away from freedom of speech could have a huge global impact on people who might think it doesn't effect them. We are far too reliant on American social media.
Canada, the E.U., etc. should be looking at protections to prevent social media companies operating servers in their jurisdictions from sharing information with the U.S. government. It's no longer a hypothetical situation. There is a real threat that is clearly evident now.
People outside the US can be in tons of trouble already for social media postings.
UK and Germany come to mind where the police/law will go after people for what they post.
That's just for developed countries. Consequences are worse in developing countries.
"Consequences are worse in developing countries."
Not necessary.
Which developing countries? I thought that many of those countries were either tied up with 'real', physical crime or just wouldn't care about internet stuff all that much. Lots of sketchy websites (like lots of piracy-related stuff) are hosted in countries where legal consequences are unlikely, even if it's illegal on paper. I can see how the more authoritarian countries can be going after social media posts based on grudges, but I'm wondering about which ones actively practice it - I don't know much about it.
> I would hope most nations have sensible checks and balances to prevent extradition over this sort of thing, but it would still be a PITA.
EDIT: If you're an emigrant:
More than just a PITA, you could still fail; see [1].
Also - I can't find the source right now - I remember hearing about Russian emigrants in Europe being charged with serious crimes in absentia over criticism of the war, and they were slated for deportation because the bureaucracy still considered all such Russian warrants as valid. The US would probably be harder to excise in this regard.
[1]https://www.dw.com/en/germany-shelters-russians-persecuted-f...
> Perhaps the U.S. will try to extradite you. (I would hope most nations have sensible checks and balances to prevent extradition over this sort of thing, but it would still be a PITA.)
I don't think there's any countries that allow extradition for actions that aren't crimes in their own country. Extradition treaties, as far as I know, aren't straightforward conveyor belts that let any countries hoover up anyone inconvenient for them, the requested countries don't want to let go of their own people for no reason, and can deny these requests as they see fit.
Being held up at an entry point to the US is a real worry, but at this stage I feel like they're not quite psychotic enough to be causing international drama over a Facebook post, so actions like these will probably remain domestic for a while.
The location where these websites are hosted probably doesn't matter - if you posted something the US doesn't like and you end up in a situation where they can get to you, no one would care about where exactly you posted it. All bets are off.
Yes many countries will decide to extradite for actions which are legal in said country.
I am French, and we recently convinced Scotland to extradite a French man who was denying the existence of the Holocaust and gaz chamber, which is something you could do in Scotland if you do it without violence.
So indeed it’s possible.
But I don’t think it’s the same as extraditing for a meme.
That's surprising, I hadn't heard about that. I had assumed that this was a blanket rule that generally applied to these treaties. I wonder how the UK justified it...
Also, one other differentiator here is that the man, as you described him, was a French citizen. The post up above implies extraditing foreigners from their countries of residence to the US, which is on a whole other level of insanity. Imagine what would've happened if France tried to extradite a Scottish man from within the UK for online posts.
Amazingly even this post is a reflection of the discourse around Kirk. There are replies equating any criticism of Kirk to celebrating his death and glossing over his past nasty behavior. All seems to detached from reality.
There is a group who has never debated anything in good faith, and they are certainly not about to start now.
It doesn't matter. Charlie Kirk could have been the greatest saint of our generation, and it would still be unjust to imprison someone for posting a meme saying that they don't care about his death.
It would be unjust to imprison or even have law enforcement knock on the door of a person who was celebrating in the streets that he died!
This is completely out of bounds for the United States. But that's the Woke Right for ya.
Woke right. That actually makes sense. Same form of madness.
It will be interesting to see the eventually empowered Left use reflective (identical) tactics to seal the coffin of the Second Amendment. And one could almost pity the... 'woke' Right for not seeing it coming.
I lean right. But I'm getting vertigo.
I think China must have put prions in our Tupperware a long time ago. We're a dead fuckin ringer for hopeless.
This entire story is a culmination of this effect. If 'celebrating someone's death' was a crime in the US, there's no doubt they would've used that to accuse that man. But since that's not actually illegal, they had to bend it out of shape until his milquetoast barely-criticism could somehow be interpreted as an active threat against some random high school. It would be funny if this wasn't completely acceptable behavior now.
Right, I despised what he stood for and his death has no impact on my life in reality. Doesn't mean I wanted him harmed in any fashion, I just didn't like him or his platform. I'm not sure why people are such simpletons that they can't distinguish the difference between that and wishing someone harm, especially on a site like HN where people should in general be aware of nuance and separation of concerns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_Wessel
It's a cudgel. It doesn't matter if it makes sense, it fits in your hand and you can whack your perceived enemies. As always, logic doesn't matter, only owning the libs matters.
Kirk, among many other right wing figures, have absolutely made light of past violence against Democrats. The discourse around Paul Pelosi was utterly vile and despicable. Nobody ever threatened his first amendment right to say horrendous things.
Not an American so I don't have a horse in the race. Didnt Kirk also describe Biden as a "tyrant" and that he should be given the death penalty [0]. Calling for the (then sitting) president to be put to death seems pretty extreme to me.
[0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-biden-death-p...
Those who think that criticizing Kirk is always calling for this death, would this comment above also be considered violent?
Or is this comment also unacceptable?
Where is the demarcation?
The demarcation is that my side celebrating someone's death is reasonable, level-headed criticism that reflects the will of the people and how dire the situation is - you've just gotta consider what we're saying and think that both sides have valid points. On the other hand, your side not showing Kim Jong Il funeral levels of grieving towards my figurehead is extremist violent rhetoric that has no place anywhere in our society, it has to be punished; the deranged, crazed, murder-hungry perpetrators must be suppressed and removed before they kill someone. The demarcation is that I'm stronger than you. Rules and logical consistency don't matter when you have power.
I only tried to be mildly cynical here, because I actually can't come up with any other justifications here. I don't think there's anything non-inflammatory that can justify this outside of ideological reasons. If anything can think of any, let me know.
FWIW I agree Kirk shouldn't have made fun of Paul Pelosi. I think Kirk probably wouldn't be proud of his own behaviour there.
> think Kirk probably wouldn't be proud of his own behaviour there
He had years to apologise. It could have meaningfully altered the temperature of our discourse, particularly among young men. He never did. Kirk gets no credit for amends he never made.
This is how Charlie Kirk got on my radar:
"Mere weeks before his death, Kirk reveled in Trump's deployment of federal troops to DC. 'Shock and awe. Force,' he wrote. 'We're taking our country back from these cockroaches.'"
Cockroaches! Literally language of the Rwandan genocide. And it's a Christian saying this about other human beings? The man never changed.
(Obviously, he should not have been shot. But his sanctification is repulsive.)
In case the reference doesn't click[1]:
> Twenty-five years ago this month, all hell broke loose in my country, which is tucked away in the Great Lakes region of Africa. Hordes of members of the Hutu ethnic majority, armed with machetes, spears, nail-studded clubs, and other rudimentary weapons, moved house to house in villages, hunting for Tutsis, the second largest of Rwanda’s three ethnic groups. The radio station RTLM, allied with leaders of the government, had been inciting Hutus against the Tutsi minority, repeatedly describing the latter as inyenzi, or “cockroaches,” and as inzoka, or “snakes.” The station, unfortunately, had many listeners.
> The promoters of genocide used other metaphors to turn people against their neighbors. Hutus, by reputation, are shorter than Tutsis; radio broadcasters also urged Hutus to “cut down the tall trees.”
> In urban centers, government soldiers and well-armed members of the Interahamwe militia affiliated with the ruling party set up roadblocks filtering out Tutsis and killing them by the roadside. It was an easy task to pick them out. Ever since independence from Belgium in 1962, national identification cards specified ethnicity.
> Within 100 days, an estimated 1 million people, the overwhelming majority of whom were Tutsis, lay dead. The worst kind of hatred had been unleashed. What began with dehumanizing words ended in bloodshed.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/rwanda-sho...
NARRATOR: he was, in fact, proud of his behavior there, plainly visible by comparing such behavior to hundreds of other publicly recorded instances of such behavior for which he was also quite proud
But that’s not true - it was uncharacteristic. There are many instances where he was kind to someone being openly aggressive towards him and one where he made fun of Paul Pelosi.
kind to people....who he was speaking to directly in person? or making social media references while they were not present (or adding them to dox lists so they could be harassed for years with death threats [1]) ? This is the key difference of course. It's also a really basic technique of horrible people to come off as very empathetic and friendly in person under specific circumstances so people are fooled in exactly this way, giving them full leeway to do horrible things elsewhere (such as maintaining dox lists to terrorize people into submission, or referring to women of color as having lesser "brain processing power" - e.g. unfiltered racism [2]....oh or insisting that children should be forced to watch executions [3]).
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/charlie-kirk-professor-...
[2] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-black-women/
[3] https://meidasnews.com/news/charlie-kirk-wants-coca-cola-spo...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45554559
Due to Tennessee law, he has to come up with $210,000 himself to get bail from a bondsmen. And he loses $10,000 of that permanently. TN law is designed to keep non-rich folks in jail. He likely won't get his trial for months in TN. Also by design.
> he has to come up with $210,000 himself
Source?
The linked article.
Nothing in the law [1] requires he come up with that sum himself. (The qualifier implies e.g. a legal defence fund or even family member couldn't help.)
[1] https://www.capitol.tn.gov/Bills/114/Bill/SB0464.pdf
That seems kind of pedantic. From what the original commenter said, my immediate interpretation of it was that the obligation to procure the money and pay up is on his side, not that the $200k must be 'his' in some other way. It doesn't matter what source he gets it from, but the bill is on him to pay.
For what its worth I thought the same thing -- that he had to get it himself -- as I already assumed to get a bail bond you still had to pay a percent first. I guess I have been desensitized enough towards absurd laws being from Texas that the idea of TN (or other southern/red states) passing something like that would not be shocking. I do appreciate the clarification/explanation.
> my immediate interpretation of it was that the obligation to procure the money and pay up is on his side, not that the $200k must be 'his' in some other way
I suppose. I honestly read it as suggesting he, personally, had to come up with that money. The law is cruel. But as positioned, it seems like you'd just have an industry of secondary lenders.
I wish the article would show a screenshot of what was posted, however 'uncivil'.
Found this on a linked facebook post - no clue if it's accurate.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=25571453995778528&se...
That is directly linked in the article, in the sentence "The image was one of several Bushart posted".
Thanks, I must have clicked on every link in the article except that one.
Here it is to save anyone else:
https://wopclive.linkedupradio.com/assets/images/2025/IMG_73...
I appreciate it
If this is accurate, this whole thing is beyond hysterical. Irrespective of political beliefs, this is an insane thing to have happen in the U.S. (this example is innocuous speech protected under the 1st amendment).
Spooky shit as it sets precedence for anyone to go after anyone for a social media post on any grounds. That's psychotic.
> Irrespective of political beliefs,
I wish people would stop pretending that this has nothing to do with politics. Belief that the rules should punish anyone you don't like and protect those you do is incredibly popular, and the dominant ideology of this administration and its supporters. It is a political belief, and nobody is seriously combatting it. Still we act as though there are two sides with a shared goal of creating a better world, and differing ideas of how to accomplish that. It's been pretty clearly demonstrated that the goal of this incarnation of the Republican party is an authoritarian police state dedicated to punishing and eradicating whomever they deem an "enemy within". And a lot of voters are ok with this, so long as it doesn't apply to them personally, so long as they're a favored party.
The apparent hypocrisy is naked and insulting. They'll cry "cancel culture" and censorship over companies deciding not to platform bigots while cheering when the police kidnap protestors or outspoken political opponents. I say "apparent" because this all makes perfect sense when you realize that they never cared about free speech or anything else they claimed to. It was always about "good guys" getting to do whatever they want, and "bad guys" getting hurt. The friend-enemy distinction. No policy goals, no principled stance on issues, just a convenient facade.
The article has a hyperlink on it : "Bushart shared an image[1] of President Donald Trump with the quote"
[1] https://x.com/aaronterr1/status/1970272191884468241
Google search for 'trump "get over it" cartoon shooting' turns up many cartoon images. This is a major meme.
"Investigators believe Bushart was fully aware of the fear his post would cause and intentionally sought to create hysteria within the community"
Someone tell the LHC at CERN folks to avoid Tennessee...
The comments on this article are horrifying. It's clear people have lost their damn minds.
A common theme in these comments is justifying retribution against the left as if everyone in the country is for or against one team or the other- when in reality many of us are in the middle and think injustice remains evil no matter who does it.
Funny thing is, I’m not 100% sure which “side” you are referring to…
You should, it’s pretty clear MAGA are completely out of their minds… if you’re equating anything that happens in your country to whatever happened under Biden or Obama before that, you’re delusional. The government is speed running fascism, and the apathy of the opposition should be terrifying.
Which comments you have an issue with?
I presume they are referring to these ones: https://reason.com/2025/10/10/tennessee-man-arrested-gets-2-...
Reason is a big part of how we got here. Billionaire funded climate denial etc. so they have big audience of idiots they've cultivated.
Libertarianism is often described as a broken clock and it's their time of the day again.
Don't make the mistake of thinking comments on a random article are indicative of the way the population actually thinks. They may not even be real.
They are real. I cleansed 100s of people from Facebook that were planning Charlie Kirk vigils and shit. It's real.
Are you seriously claiming it to be objectionable to mourn for a man who was murdered in cold blood? That's pretty fucked up if so.
> claiming it to be objectionable to mourn for a man who was murdered
To be fair, a vigil held in the wake of a death is in mourning. A "vigil" held today for Kirk is a right-wing rally.
What concern of it is yours? Will you mourn whomever I ask you to mourn? Sounds like an absurd proposition.
There is a huge difference between holding a vigil and demanding retribution.
I used to think that, then the last decade happened. The conspiracy theorists are in the halls of power now and their followers are frothing at the mouth for revenge against perceived enemies. The uncomfortable uncle at Thanksgiving is now driving national health policy and funding.
Oh, they are real, they aren't just bots, and they've all been emboldened.
Go on these people's facebooks, or invite them to Thanksgiving, you'll see the same firehose of shit.
> Go on these people's facebooks, or invite them to Thanksgiving, you'll see the same firehose of shit.
A fun game is to look at Facebook profiles selected from random comment sections.
By doing this, I have come away with even less understanding of people’s believes, motivations, etc.
Profiles can be faked too
exactly, clicking on most bluecheck accounts on any politically active post on twitter and you will likely find a bot posting 24/7 about politics, usually as a right wing troll, been quite a while since I spotted a leftist one, but I have seen a few.
They’re bots.
Trump was not elected by bots. Half the US population is hateful.
What did people expect to happen? Nobody seems to ask the question why military is being deployed to US cities. What would be your assumption if the same happens in Africa or South America? Seriously, how stupid can people be ...
I have many friends who already left the US or prepared to leave at a moments notice. None of them are actually political, but they are aware that 1984 is already fully implemented and at any point in time it could get very, very ugly very quickly.
$2m should be the minimum compensation he is entitled to when the dust settles.
No one is safe in this environment
Conservatives mostly can get away with anything right now.
Keyword "right now".
Many who initially supported Hitler found themselves dearly regretting their actions.
There's nothing "conservative" about the fascist movement. It's regressive / reactionary (to use Yarvin's own label).
This is a distinction without a difference. "Regressive", "reactionary", and "conservative" are three words that refer to the exact same people and mean the exact same thing.
No, the words mean different things. When used to refer to a group, those meanings confer connotations. The point is that we need to stop referring to people destroying our society as "conservative".
Words mean what they are used to mean. In a political context, "conservative" has had _many_ meanings over the past few centuries.
Sure, and so has "democratic" - eg DPRK. That doesn't mean we shouldn't call out abuse of the term when it's used for something decidedly anti-democratic. And "democratic" is at least a purely political word, whereas "conservative" has a strong meaning outside of politics.
why do we need to do that? Which of the two political parties in the US is known as "conservative"? What does that party look like now? What policies are being pursued by that party's elected officials, and how much do they differ in concept from what that same party was doing ten years ago, twenty years ago, fifty years ago? The Southern Strategy, Reagan's speech at Neshoba county fair, "Starve the Beast", "Brownie you're doing a heckuva job", you can draw a straight line all the way through to today.
we're living in the utter pinnacle of unfettered conservatism today.
Try painting with a less broad brush. I agree that we're experiencing the endgame of the Republican political operatives scorched-earth divisive tactics, but to insist on tying all their latent supporters to that is a grave mistake.
Imagine for a minute, if you will, that there are reasonable people who believe in some conservative values, but don't examine the rest of the party platform (or its results) all too hard. Now imagine that by pointing out where Trump falls short or is even directly opposed to those values (eg 2nd amendment), you might actually make them come around to seeing that we need to oust this autocratic child-raping anti-American scumbag. That would be a good thing, right?
I do get that Trump is just the tip of the Party's spear, and the whole pantheon of corrupt congresscritters / supreme council members / corporate backers really needs to go down with the ship. But that didn't work for 2024, and I'd say at this point we're losing our society and our country faster at a faster rate that those enablers' reputations are being damaged, so that seems like a terrible strategy. First and foremost, we need to stop the hemorrhaging.
i live in a town full of Republicans. Some are more soft spoken than others, but to claim that any of them are not MAGA (which would mean they actually did not vote for Trump) is simply ridiculous. the "non-MAGA republican" is basically a few hundred famous podcast hosts who were ejected from the power they had under the Bush regime. That's pretty much it.
> but to claim that any of them are not MAGA
> (which would mean they actually did not vote for Trump)
There is a difference between these two things, no? I've talked to people who voted for Trump subsequently regretted it after they saw what he is actually doing. Low. Information. Voters.
Our goal should be to leverage this difference. It's self-defeating to simply assume everyone that voted for Trump in 2024 continues to support cozying up to middle eastern autocrats, covering up the Epstein case, bully pulpit led cryptocurrency fraud, middle of the night raids on entire apartment buildings, deploying National Guards to occupy American cities and attack protestors, deliberately inhumane treatment of deportees while mostly letting businesses continue on as usual, etc. Or even that they support things that Trump did in his first term, like attacking the second amendment (eg his leadership around Kenneth Walker / Breonna Taylor).
Of course some of these topics are more subtle and lend themselves to propaganda bubbles. Like dwelling on the concentration camps probably isn't the best idea, since it's so easy to shut off one's empathy. But these are the angles of engagement we need to be looking for - unless we're just going to watch our Constitutional Republic being destroyed for four years, while hoping there might be some pieces left to pick up at the end.
Reactionary movements can be paradoxically revolutionary in their means, aspirations and intended outcomes, and sticking to the academic definition of conservatism, the word doesn't accurately describe all of them.
But yes, in general, I agree with your point, in a colloquial sense, the Venn diagram is usually a circle.
Self-identified "conservatives" are pushing this wave of censorship and autocracy. You're not helping anyone with those rhetoric tricks.
> Self-identified "conservatives" are pushing this wave of censorship and autocracy
Yes, exactly! They are lying to themselves, and as a group. They're not conserving our society, but rather throwing it away. I'm not doing a rhetorical trick - they are doing a rhetorical trick, and I am calling it out.
When a group calling themselves 'X', who are also broadly called 'X' by outsiders, decides to do something, that group 'has something to do with X'.
> who are also broadly called 'X' by outsiders
Yes. I keep saying - we need to stop doing this. "Conservative" makes it sound like what they are doing is gradual, measured, and familiar. Maybe not in narrow progressive circles where "conservative" has gathered strong negative connotations, but still in the wider general world. Using "conservative" as a synonym for Republicans/reactionaries/fascists is helping to support their movement.
> Self-identified "conservatives" are pushing this wave of censorship and autocracy
Are they? MAGA has made it a point to purge the former GOP of conservatives.
I'm gonna need a source for that with specificity to the "conservative" self-identification.
You’re the one who made the claim that “self-identified ‘conservatives’ are pushing this wave of censorship and autocracy.” Isn’t the burden of proof on you?
In any case, we have polling around non-MAGA Republicans [1]. And contrasting Trump 1 and 2 seems to show how having non-MAGA Republicans, many of whom identified as conservative and didn’t endorse the 2020 coup attempt, makes a difference.
[1] https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econtoplines...
Here's one example of the MAGA crowd self-identifying as conservative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Political_Action_...
> Here's one example of the MAGA crowd self-identifying as conservative
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply no conservatives are MAGA. Just that I would be surprised if a majority of self-identifying conservatives identify with MAGA. (I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of former conservatives were now MAGA.)
The difference is meaningful, because by unifying MAGA and conservatives one loses resolution on a powerful breakaway faction. (The main reason we had a free and fair election in 2020 is because some Republicans upheld their oaths to the Constitution.)
This just in, the National Socialist Party of Germany in the 1930s is not actually Socialist !
> the National Socialist Party of Germany in the 1930s is not actually Socialist
Good comparison. One of the victims of the Night of the Long Knives were the Strasserists [1][2]. It’s absolutely legitimate to point out when the German Socialist movement was coöpted by Hitler.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasserism
No true socialist could do such a thing.
> No true socialist could do such a thing
You’re really going to reduce a historical event to platitudes?
What people call themselves matters. It may not be strictly correct. But it’s an identity, and that predicts how they’ll align in a crisis or movement.
It was a reference to "no true scottsman"
> It was a reference to "no true scottsman"
I know. A platitude is a trite and obvious remark.
Whether the Nazis are true socialists is a red herring. The point is the people who called themselves socialist before the Nazis were systematically purged by the Nazis once they coöpted their party. It would be incorrect to say self-identified socialists were responsible for everything the Nazis did; it would be correct to say they enabled them to rise to power.
Most importantly, however, would be observing that right before the Nazis consolidated power, it was the former socialists who could have been peeled away, potentially to huge consequence.
Is there a legal defence fund?
I looked at the pictures, and even with no context, it was obvious that he was pointing out the hypocrisy of Trump with that meme.
Ain't no way people looked at the picture, and genuinely thought "Is he threatening to shoot up the school?". But then again, there are some incredibly stupid people out there.
To me, it mostly seems like manufactured outrage. Someone saw him posting edgy memes, got offended, and called to the cops that the guy was posting about doing a school shooting.
He is being punished for his speech. His persecutors aren't bold enough yet to publicly proclaim their violation of his constitutional rights, hence the verbal gymnastics.
> Someone saw him posting edgy memes, got offended, and called to the cops that the guy was posting about doing a school shooting.
I don't think even that happened. Most likely some law enforcement officials sat down at a table for a brainstorming session trying to figure out a pretext to jail this guy.
Without context, it seems like somebody obviously just sharing some tasteless memes, but the context is precisely what makes things not so clear. This is a former police officer (in other words: armed) who was obviously rather unhinged, a political extremist, lived near a Perry High School, and then posts an image that shows Trump saying "We have to get over it." with the subtext being "Donald Trump, on the Perry High School mass shooting, one day after." All under the title, "This seems relevant today..."
It's very easy to see how people could genuinely interpret that as a credible threat of imminent violence. Imagine somebody similar in your area did the exact same thing except with your local high school's name. So this is going to be a very interesting case, because what it's going to come down to is the prosecution arguing that he was aware that it would be interpreted as a threat on the nearby Perry High School, while the defense will claim he shared the meme without understanding the perceived threat it might cause and assumed people would understand he was referencing a previous shooting that occurred at a different Perry High School.
Where did you find this context? in particular
>obviously rather unhinged, a political extremist
Normal people don't post 'memes' with images of dying people in them. If you don't understand this imagine a 'meme' that showed that terrifying image of the dying Iryna Zarutska in it, murderer right behind her, and posted some edgelord caption below it. You only do this sort of stuff if you're completely screwed in the head, generally caused by political extremism.
You seem to be avoiding the question.
Here's another: what meme did he post with a picture of a dying person in? I didn't see that in the reporting.
I actually agree with this, because there are a lot of people out there who are unaware of anything outside of the 50x50 mile area they live in.
This is just crazy! Just look at the actual post: https://x.com/aaronterr1/status/1970272191884468241. There is no way this can be interpreted as "Threats of Mass Violence on School Property and Activities". How should anyone trust law enforcement and the judicial system when they fabricate cases like this?
Once more, it demonstrates that MAGA only cares about free speech as long as it serves their own interest. This is almost comical when you think about J.D. Vance' speech in Munich.
Thanks to reason.com for strongly calling out the BS!
> Bushart did not elaborate, but the context seems clear: Why should I care about this shooting, when the sitting president said I should "get over" this other shooting?
From one perspective, this is clearly bad governance. He's using his free speech rights that generations of us died for, to point out hypocrisy.
I'm going to say it, and we'll see if I get arrested for it. Charlie Kirk was one of the useful idiots groomed from high school to push conservative propaganda. One of his assignments was to minimize the cultural impact of school shootings. He died in front of thousands in a school shooting.
Maybe that irony is something and maybe it is nothing. But the essence of conservative propaganda, that will survive any individual propaganda and any individual regime, is the central idea that some of us have rights and freedoms and some of us don't. So any deviation from that idea must be punished very severely.
Who groomed him, and who gave him the assignment to minimize the cultural impact of school shootings?
Rush Limbaugh and Bill Montgomery for the first bit.
The second bit he was hardly innovative on. That’s been a thing since at least Columbine.
An uncaring algorithm that maximizes engagement.
There's a large group of people saying that anyone who doesn't accept a guy from a couple thousand years ago into a primary organ in their chest area, that not only do they deserve to die, they will, and then be damned for eternity.
Others openly suggest capital punishment for nonviolent crimes. E.g. narco boaters, repeat offenders, homeless (see: Killmeade), drugs etc. In fact, we have no sanctions on Singapore, a land where one can indeed be killed for fussing with drugs. There are of course, many other similar examples.
Both the left, right and many between recommend death for many people, in a manner having nothing to do with self defense, response to murder or in alignment with current law. Ouch.
We have a LOT OF PEOPLE TO ARREST! I expect hypocrisy to complicate the process a bit though.
Edit: I should say, by the speed of the dvotes, I'll be on the hitlist too. And upholding the First Amendment and the rest of our Constitution is well worth it.
large-scale drug smuggling is absolutely a violent crime.
Then corruption should be on the list too.
Corruption at the very top is what I'd like to see capital punishment for. Exclusively.
There's a group that plays with Guilt by Association. It's fun. Until someone else does it. But the frenzy comes when everybody does it. And some just can't see that coming.
How?
Even when it isn't?
Edit: what your type tends to be highly obtuse to, is the impending reality of blowback, where your warping of law is turned upon you. But it feels so good now, it must be worth it.
Abuse of power has serious consequences.
"my type". based on what, exactly?
i don't like this administration — at all — and I believe we're definitionally in a fascist state now.
the lives of many of my friends & family have been devastated by drugs. 80k+ americans die every year from overdose. i understand why you may disagree with me with and i'm not going to dismiss your concerns out-of-hand but multinational illegal drug enterprises are absolutely an assault on this country in my view. i'm talking about organized criminal enterprises, not dudes pitching eight balls in nightclub bathrooms.
Sometimes time clarifies some things. I think I should have either mentioned or only mentioned the following:
The heavyhanded, cavalier fancies of this administration may seem fun and well deserved. Whether or not, they set a precedent as they go. I can't predict, but it seems probable that the next administration will turn left. If it does, it will have amassed excuses along with a well rehearsed methodology of spending them. The divisive shitstick of now will become the polar end of the divisive shitstick of tomorrow.
The notion that this shit can be gotten away with is ludicrous. Every breach of integrity that occurs with the present regime sets a citable example for the next to exploit. Anyone not eating ambian by the ton is aware of the unprecedented levels of tension and hostility between the right and left. It's simply predictable what will happen.
We'd be wise to arrange for a slightly smoother transition. Brazen disregard for law will not help. And any attempt to justify it with dubious ideology will come with a serious hangover.
Preface: I'm not interested in debating this topic here. Therefore I'll be concise, abridged and probably glib.
Your term "assault", can legally, imply a prelude to battery. Maybe that's a stupid point.
And I do not wish to dismiss your concerns either.
However, if you endeavor to qualify the transport of potentially fatal materials as violence, such would be a highly abstract interpretation requiring an unprecedented overhaul of the present system.
If someone is caught planning a violent act, e.g. performing internet search queries for "how to do terrible x and accomplish terrible y, the rule of law doesn't permit immediately executing the individual. Traditionally, a trial ensues where possibilities of error and other critical considerations are made in order to ensure greater probabilities of a just outcome, hence Justice. An immediate threat and remote hypothetical threat are treated differently. If Bob knows you plan to kill him on Friday, but he finds you while you're doing laundry and kills you Thursday, while tactically legit, it doesn't work legally. Extrajudicial is what we might call this. But regular folks wouldn't earn the term.
But that's barely the surface. If transport qualifies as violence, then the users that contribute or essentially enable the entire cycle must be included. So now we are killing foreign boaters in the Caribbean and e.g. Hunter Biden on his jetski as he swirls around the Florida Keys high on fentanyl. We'll need to kill his hooker friend too, because she directly supports these transporters.
It gets much sillier from here, all the way until you kill Bill because he spent money at the same pizza parlor as the guy who sold the baggy that overdosed your friend.
And then comes the strange dynamics where you need to kill me because my self-righteous doctor won't prescribe me pain management for my cancer because xyz and I'm looking on the streets for some kind of relief.
But we needn't go that far. We can go back to the top and kill the growers. And their children which might aid and abet them. And certainly a few chemists here and there.
It gets way messier. If you fail to kill me, I might have a grudge. Because I was not trying to hurt anyone. I'm in pain and just want help.
While this all takes place, other artistically inclined persons superimpose their own values upon the law.
But really, a few guys steering a boat full of drugs is not violence. Certainly not an imminent threat especially after they've been identified. It's the potential for violence, but so is our trusty old proverbial hammer.
Obviously an interesting test case for the US, especially in light of Vance, Musk, and Farage attacking the UK (especially) and the EU for apparently lacking free speech.
If/when this gets tossed - does the have grounds to sue (and who would he be suing) on wrongful arrest, or something else?
probably not unless it's against people sending him death threats and he can actually manage to track them down
Funfact:
Icon backgroundcolor of targetsite reason.com seems to be the same as HN icon backgroundcolor :-D
rgb(244, 108, 52) vs rgb(255, 102, 0)
Well, very quite in the (optical) range, I'd say? (-:
How on earth does this get past a grand jury?!?
Grand juries have for years been entirely useless. They should be filtering aggressively, not only for this case, but for all such bozo cases. I don't know why it is they act the way they do. Given the data I have seen, certainly I would not have been in favor of indicting him.
they're basically rubber stamps these days.
There is a little bit more context here in a different article where the sheriff explains how the posts were interpreted as a threat
https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2025/09/23/tennessee-l...
> There is a little bit more context here in a different article where the sheriff explains how the posts were interpreted as a threat
> https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2025/09/23/tennessee-l...
There isn’t anything there that wasn’t in the original article.
The Reason article said there was no reason to interpret this as a threat and that it was entirely just political. The article made it seem like the memes were held completely out of context. It mentioned there happens to be a nearby Perry High School just by chance but the nearby Perry High School is the central reason why this was interpreted as a threat. This was posted in a group that was organizing an event at the high school. I could see how someone might construe this as a threat more clearly from the tennessean article if they were being overly cautious. Also the sheriff mentioned the arrest was not done for legal speech content but more for the coincidental possibility this was a threat. Reason didn't elaborate on this.
The Reason article is making this seem like it's entirely political and unreasonable. I don't think an arrest should have been made, that is too far. This seems like an unfortunate coincidence but someone looked at all this and reported it as a threat. The fact Perry High School's name is highly relevant here was not included.
> The Reason article said there was no reason to interpret this as a threat and that it was entirely just political. The article made it seem like the memes were held completely out of context. It mentioned there happens to be a nearby Perry High School just by chance but the nearby Perry High School is the central reason why this was interpreted as a threat. This was posted in a group that was organizing an event at the high school. I could see how someone might construe this as a threat more clearly from the tennessean article if they were being overly cautious. Also the sheriff mentioned the arrest was not done for legal speech content but more for the coincidental possibility this was a threat. Reason didn't elaborate on this.
> The Reason article is making this seem like it's entirely political and unreasonable. I don't think an arrest should have been made, that is too far. This seems like an unfortunate coincidence but someone looked at all this and reported it as a threat. The fact Perry High School's name is highly relevant here was not included.
All of this was in the first article. With far fewer intrusive ads.
They totally de-emphasized the point about the name of the high school like it was just the sheriff going out of their way to find memes they were offended by. They mentioned the name as if it didn't matter to the case at all when it clearly did. I couldn't understand why someone reported this as a threat based on the Reason article. I can kind of see why someone might be concerned now but as I said the cops shouldn't have arrested the guy when no threat exists. This whole thread is filled up with people who now think there is a police force looking for offensive memes forgetting that someone reported this based on the name. If you don't think that then go FOIA the sheriff and prove this is corruption. If you don't think the Reason article was trying to portray this as out of control police trying to politically enforce memes and it's totally unbiased whatever, I'm done.
As someone who grew up in a small town with a not so moral local law enforcement, I almost guarantee this sheriff has a political agenda against someone who dared post a meme about their favorite podcaster who was just assassinated.
That is in the Reason article.
The officer's fabricated justification there is just as weak as the referenced article.
I think this is a pretty stark example of how the rule of law has already failed the populace in general.
Historically, bad things happen when its generally recognized that non-violent conflict resolution mechanisms are no long available, and that false claims to the contrary are false claims.
The primary purpose of a rule of law is so conflict resolution can take place non-violently. When that's no longer working, you can expect everything to go off the rails in chaotic and unpredictable ways.
You either have a functioning "rule of law" or you have a "rule by law" where arbitrary violence can be expected. This is basic foundational social contract theory going back to the 16-1700s.
Its amazing how so many delusional people are just coming out of the woodwork now, and creating abuses on innocent people. We have constitutional rights because the founders of the country understood what not having them meant. Seems we are coming full circle now where evil complacent people are left to run wild; and the innocent are jailed/harassed/or worse.
Sad times we live in.
This Sheriff Weems is either a fool or a knave.
I remember when the far right claimed they were for free speech and against “cancel culture.”
I’m curious. Have any of the people who actually bought into that been falling away? Has the 180 degree flip away from free speech actually popped the bubble for anyone?
> Has the 180 degree flip away from free speech actually popped the bubble for anyone
Absolutely not. Right here on HN, you see the "moderates" and "center right" people: completely ignore what's going on, never call him out by name, blame both sides, or pretend it's just lefties being hyperbolic again.
Ah republicans.
No wonder 2025 is the first year that extremist left wing violence has exceeded extremist right wing violence for the first time in 30 years.
I wish we could see all of the offending posts. Without that, it’s hard to tell if the messages are threatening or not.
The Kirk assassination was awful, as well as the plainly false things said about his life by some parts of the media. But nobody is obligated to have a particular political opinion and Kirk himself would have pointed out that civil disagreement is this man's right as an American.
Kirks career literally started with organised harasment of what they perceived as leftists professors. Kirk himself was pretty atrocious verbally to people he looked down at. And he wink wink condoned violence against husband of democrat.
His murder was wrong. It is not true that he would be some kind of universal "civil disagreement" advocate.
Murdering bad people is probably wrong, up to certain limits. Arresting someone for saying that the victim was also a bad person is definitely unequivocally wrong.
I'm pretty sure murder is wrong.
Do you want to post an example? Kirk would defend students being harassed for unrelated political matters - eg the most recent case on his channel was an Agriculture major who had to take some kind of 'equity in agriculture' class and was being bothered by her professor for not being left leaning.
Kirk on the attack against Pelosi husband: “Why has he not been bailed out? [] By the way, if some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out,..." That was about attacker by the way. Like common, the start if Kirks career was making a list of "leftists professors" and promoting their harassment. Kirk literally intentionally created and promoted toxic culture we have now. That is who he was.
Yeah, he would defend right winger or bigot. He would attack anyone not right wing. The rights of people who were not white conservatives did not concerned kirk. He was literally against civil rights, openly. Blacks are all stupid and trans are all groomers. They all should be fired.
I have no idea about what happened between that "left leaning professor" and student. But there is about zero reason to believe what right wing activist like Kirk says about the issue. As far as he was concerned, left need not exist and need to be punished for existing.
> leftists professors" and promoting their harassment
That’s an incredible inversion of defending students from professors demanding conformance to their political beliefs rather than educating.
https://www.professorwatchlist.org/
> He was literally against civil rights, openly.
The silly thing about criticising a public speaker for saying things they didn’t is there are ample videos of them speaking about the topic.
No. He pointed out correctly that black Americans were poorer now than they were in 1950, and pointed out that one cause could be how the civil rights Act (which is not the same thing as civil rights) was interpreted. You can easily look up the many conversations on this topic for yourself.
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8A5e3Nb/
> trans are all groomers
Here’s how he handled a trans identifying child:
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8A5dgQa/
I found these while searching and thought they were sweet: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8A5S9Gv/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8A59yhk/
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8A5GoW1/
I want to be living in the 80s again. The world is an absolute shit show at the moment
The 1980s wasn't great either, depending on where you were you had: AIDS, the Cold War, crack epidemic, war on drugs/mass incarceration, Satanic Panic, Iran-Contra, Tiananmen Square, plane bombings, peak gang violence, MOVE bombings, S&L crisis, sky-high interest rates, a couple deep recessions with high unemployment, Chernobyl, the Iran-Iraq War, widespread homophobia, Ethiopian famine and civil war, etc.
Of course it was called GRID instead of AIDS back then.
Trump's America. Don't forget to wipe your phone before travelling. You don't need to break any laws to have your life ruined, you just have to stumble into the crosshairs of the most vindictive leader we have ever had to endure.
Tennessee just seems like not a First Amendment state. Here's another from 2021 https://apnews.com/article/meme-arrest-officer-killed-lawsui...
Douglas Mackey was also convicted of posting fake election stuff like "avoid the line. Vote at home" with a phone number. But it looks like he was later cleared.
So the memeing can get you in trouble and people will either say you were "just memeing" or "posting dangerous misinformation/threats" depending on their political stance.
The excuse for why he was arrested (some school in the area shares the same name as the one that Trump was downplaying a shooting at) is, of course utter bullshit.
Its amazing how far people are willing to bend over backwards to explain how the speech of these public figures is harmless and non-threatening and none of us have anything to worry about (despite their actions putting the lie to it), but apply an entirely different set of standards to people criticising them.
Much of Kirk's public life and the life of his political allies was devoted to minimizing the impact of and the empathy we should feel for school shootings (because the ends justify the means of furthering his political agenda). He went on to die in one.
What school shooting did he die in?
#497 by my count, excluding non-fatal ones.
He was at a school, he got shot by a man who got a gun and took it to a school with intent to kill.
This happens every day to other people, and the advice of him and his political allies has always been to get over it and to stop politicizing it. It would be great if they could collectively take it and stop politicizing it.
The utah valley university shooting
Here are some "I-told-you-so"s regarding Douglass Mackey's original guilty verdict for posting Twitter memes, who, since then, was acquitted on appeal. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43531283
This thread is looking at this from a political angle, but he was arrested and charged for threats of mass violence. This seems to be a case of over zealous policing regarding school shootings in a very tense environment rather than a guy arrested over offensive memes.
There's no "tense environment" around school shootings. Like the president said: We have to... on second thoughts, maybe I should not be quoting him either.
The guy made multiple posts, which, taken together, made people supposedly consider him as making threats. The journalist here decides to cover this story, but only mention the content of one of his posts, and completely ignoring and not mentioning the contents of the other posts.
Surely the other posts are completely benign and there's nothing of interest in there, right? Surely the journalist had a reason for only reporting on the contents of one of his posts, and not the others, and that choice wasn't intentional in order to present a biased interpretation of reality. Surely.
The other posts were linked in the story. They were your everyday internet meme stuff. No person genuinely thought that this guy was threatening to do a school shooting.
>Surely the journalist had a reason for only reporting on the contents of one of his posts, and not the others, and that choice wasn't intentional in order to present a biased interpretation of reality. Surely.
Yes because the sheriff explicitly stated it was the trump quote picture, and nothing else, that got the man arrested, charged and thrown in a cage.
https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2025/09/23/tennessee-l...
The article even links to the above.
Makes me wonder if you even read the article or already knew what I just said and are being dishonest.