Has our intelligence dropped to zero already?

[Dunlavy]

I've seen some stupid things and decisions that made me want to beat someone, but get ahold of this.

This is the link to a news story that will get most people pissed off at the low intelligence of the prosecutors.

[Trilby]

This is the country that we are living in. This is the pendulum swinging waaaaaaaaaay to the right. Unreal.

[Dunlavy]

yeah..... pendulum swinging to the right.... and it seems someone cut the string. *watches it bounce away and fall off the table*

[BigV]

Where do I send money for the kid's bail?

Oh, and for a brain transfusion for the people prosecuting him? Is fiction not protected? (not picking a constitutional fight here) It said "zombies" what's that code for? terrorists?

[Dunlavy]

I don't know. Doesn't tell us much about location.... Send money to abunch of places in kentucky and hope that one reaches him....

[Clodfobble]

I'd like to see the writing myself. 18 year olds are capable of lying, you know. Why was he writing a "story for English class" in his personal "journal?" And his own grandparents are the ones who found it and gave it to police, so either they don't know their grandson at all, or they know him better than we do.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

I'd like to see the writing myself. 18 year olds are capable of lying, you know. Why was he writing a "story for English class" in his personal "journal?" And his own grandparents are the ones who found it and gave it to police, so either they don't know their grandson at all, or they know him better than we do.

What could you discern from reading it yourself? What would you look for? You can't incite to riot in a freakin personal journal, other people gotta hear/see it.

**FICTION ALERT** (This means you AG Gonsalez) If I wrote "Zombies will take over the White House" **End Alert**, does my mail automatically get forwarded to Gitmo?

Is he guilty of a f*cking thoughtcrime?!?! Look, I saw Minority Report, I read 1984, and I understand they're also works of fiction. Some folks seem to think it's real though.

God, it's sad, no, tragic to think that we have to PREEMPT every bad thing that might happen. All that Sysiphean task accomplishes is more worry and more jumping at shadows and more conformity and more innocent people persecuted out of fear.

I will not live in fear.

What does it matter that this side or that is responsible for the elimination of our civil liberties. I can hear it now: "I had to burn the Constitution in order to save it".

Lord, help us.

[glatt]

The grandparents, not the government, snooped in the diary. They were motivated by something. We don't know what motivated them, but it's possible they knew this kid well, and knew that he might pull a Columbine. They were worried enough by what they found in the diary to call the police on their own flesh and blood. Most grandparents wouldn't get their grandkids in trouble with the law unless they absolutely had to.

The police read what was in the diary and decided it was bad. The DA agreed. The boy is claiming he is innocent. Is that really a surprise? Maybe he is, maybe he isn't.

This is why we have trials. The jury can read the journal, listen to the kid, hear from the english teacher, read what the law says, and make a decision.

You are making a decision after only listening to the kid.

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by BigV

What could you discern from reading it yourself? What would you look for? You can't incite to riot in a freakin personal journal, other people gotta hear/see it.

I would look and see if it said something like this:

The zombie horde stumbled through the hallways. "Brains... BRAAAAINS!!"

Or instead something like this:

John the Zombie took out his .357 that he'd gotten from his father's closet and began shooting all the students in the face, starting with Stephen, that fucking bully...

If the kid WERE planning to shoot up the school, and found himself being questioned by police because of his vivid written descriptions of it, the first thing that would pop out of his mouth is, "Uh, yeah, that's just fiction, I was just making some stuff up."

It could be a gross misuse of the court system, or it could be that the kid's a liar. Until I get to read the stuff he wrote, I'm not going to declare one way or the other the pendulum's position in its arc.

[chainsaw]

I'll just add this to my list of reasons to move to another country.

Current situation in my office:

Person A wrote a report. Person B asked “Can I see your report?” Person A said, “Yes, but then I’d have to kill you.” Person B writes a letter to the head office saying he/she was the victim of a “terrorist threat”. Person A is waiting for his/her day in court to tell Person B what a friggin’ ass-hat he/she is.

I am surrounded by such idiots! What is this world coming to?!

[BigV]

Originally Posted by glatt

The grandparents, not the government, snooped in the diary.

Hey, if my son snatches his sister’s diary without her permission and reads it, that’s snooping. If he then shows the diary to his brother, then they’re BOTH snooping. No permission=snooping. Even an 18 year old in Kentucky has a right to be secure in his effects. 4th amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches…

Originally Posted by glatt

They were motivated by something. We don't know what motivated them, but it's possible they knew this kid well, and knew that he might pull a Columbine. They were worried enough by what they found in the diary to call the police on their own flesh and blood. Most grandparents wouldn't get their grandkids in trouble with the law unless they absolutely had to.

I'd buy that for a dollar.

Originally Posted by glatt

The police read what was in the diary and decided it was bad. The DA agreed. The boy is claiming he is innocent. Is that really a surprise? Maybe he is, maybe he isn't.

This is why we have trials. The jury can read the journal, listen to the kid, hear from the english teacher, read what the law says, and make a decision.

Again, reasonable on it’s face, but the serious crisis here is why we are even having this discussion! More and more instances like this, where we are presented with a “potential” crime, places our national standard of innocent until proven guilty UNDER SIEGE.

No bulwark can resist constant pounding without being eroded. If our ideals are important, they must be protected. This constant drumbeat of criminal, terrorist, fear, fear, fear creates what it shouts about—literally. I know there was a time in our past when is was not a felony to write anything in a journal. But now, apparently those days are gone. Pound, pound, pound, that is the sound of your freedoms being ground away, in the name of preserving them. Where is the drumbeat in the name of civil liberties? Drowned out and shouted down, and we all are the poorer for it.

Get up, stand up,
Don’t give up the fight.

Originally Posted by glatt

You are making a decision after only listening to the kid.

No, I am not. This is not true. I am making some decisions after listening to what was reported, and the kid has something to say in the story and so does the law. For example:

”Even so, police say the nature of the story makes it a felony.”

Hel-lo. The nature of a story makes it a felony?! This is not what I signed up for—scandalous. It’s a felony to write about stuff in my journal?!

From 1984:
Thoughtcrime - see crimethink
crimethink - To even consider any thought not in line with the principles of Ingsoc. Doubting any of the principles of Ingsoc. All crimes begin with a thought. So, if you control thought, you can control crime. "Thoughtcrime is death. Thoughtcrime does not entail death, Thoughtcrime is death.... The essential crime that contains all others in itself.
Ingsoc - English Socialism. (feel free to substitute American Democracy in this thread)

Is this what we want to support? Striving to control thought in a doomed effort to control crime? Please clarify your position.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

I would look and see if it said something like this:

The zombie horde stumbled through the hallways. "Brains... BRAAAAINS!!"

Or instead something like this:

John the Zombie took out his .357 that he'd gotten from his father's closet and began shooting all the students in the face, starting with Stephen, that fucking bully...

Well, I guess that specifics like names in your example would be scary, but the young man says no:

"It didn't mention nobody who lives in Clark County, didn't mention (George Rogers Clark High School), didn't mention no principal or cops, nothing,"

Certainly, something like this is easy enough to check. I guess we’ll see, certainly a jury will see. Maybe the kid is really a dumbf*ck and he wrote like you described and then just lied about it to the reporter. 50-50, right? But the kid’s statement here regarding the content of what was written is much more easily verified than the state’s position:

"Investigators say they discovered materials at Poole's home that outline possible acts of violence aimed at students, teachers, and police."

My biggest beef here is that intent=crime. I cannot fully articulate why or how badly that offends me.

For the record, in my book, pre-emptive war is all f*cked up too.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Brianna

This is the country that we are living in. This is the pendulum swinging waaaaaaaaaay to the right. Unreal.

The word is 'swung'. Remember after the Madrid bombing? The FBI arrested a lawyer in Oregon and held him for (if I remember) 9 months in jail. Why? The Spanish police found a partial fingerprint that matched the lawyer's fingerprints. When the FBI (using principles in the Patriot Act) searched his house, they found Spanish messages. They arrested the lawyer on this other 'just as flimsy' evidence.

The FBI is so poorly run internally that it still takes a long time to translate that Spanish. It was his kid's Spanish homework.

How did we solve the problem? How many FBI agents were on the verge of discovered the 11 September attack if not stopped by their supervisors? At least four teams that we know of. So how do we fix this management defect? We made another layer of bureaucracy called Fatherland Security and passed all kinds of laws to give that Fatherland Security the right to violate basic American rights. At what point do we go after the only reasons for security failures - incompetent top management? To an administration dominated by the principles taught in B-schools, management is never the problem. Blame the terrorists, weak laws, people who advocate human rights, money shortages, a military too small, nuclear armed missiles, a universal hatred of Americans ... anything except the incompetent top management that made these problems possible.

Jail a lawyer for nine months because his son was writing secret terrorist messages in Spanish. Same reasons to justify torture of what we now know were innocent people in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, and Afghanistan - by the administration. This is the 'we fear everything' mentality that has even recreated something from 30+ years ago - the Ugly American.

[tw]

Originally Posted by chainsaw

Person A wrote a report. Person B asked “Can I see your report?” Person A said, “Yes, but then I’d have to kill you.” Person B writes a letter to the head office saying he/she was the victim of a “terrorist threat”. Person A is waiting for his/her day in court to tell Person B what a friggin’ ass-hat he/she is.

I am surrounded by such idiots! What is this world coming to?!

It's called intolerance - like we have not seen since the 1960s. Intolerance avocated by concepts such as racism and religious extremism. Intolerance of barbers murdered because they shave Iraqi beards in violate of Sharia law. Intolerance of science that teaches scientific principles in direct contradiction to Biblical parables (ie Dover PA):
Origin of Life Debate Key Issue For School Board Candidates

Intolerance starts with those who are most intolerant - the extremist religious who would force their religious beliefs on all others and who would even worry about silly wardrobe malfunctions as if it required an anti-ballistic missile defense system (another idea based on no science and justified by religious fever).

Once we start the disease of intolerance, then it only expands into every aspect of society. So intolerant that even a kid's Spanish homework becomes messages for terrorism. This is what happens when the most intolerant put their people into positions of power. Intolerance then spreads like a plague. Nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition.

[Beestie]

Originally Posted by tw

[Everything tw said]

The man makes a good point. Several actually.