The indispensable Don Surber summarizes a story from yesterday:
ITEM 1: The Washington Times reported, "An Iowa man who was found guilty of lighting a local church’s LGBTQ flag on fire was sentenced to more than 16 years in prison Wednesday.
"Adolfo Martinez, 30, was found guilty last month of a hate crime, third-degree harassment and reckless use of fire after admitting to police in June that he stole a pride banner hanging outside the Ames United Church of Christ and set it on fire using lighter fluid about two blocks away outside the Dangerous Curves Gentleman’s Club, The Des Moines Register reported."
The story also said, "Mr. Martinez was sentenced to 15 years for the hate crime charge, one year for reckless use of fire and 30 days for harassment, all of which will be served consecutively, the Associated Press reported."
We live in a country where you cannot jail someone for burning the American flag, but you can give someone 15 years for burning a gay one.
Remember all those school prayer and flag buring cases years ago? It's high time this SCOTUS found the time to defend the First Amendment again.
He is listed as a 'habitual offender,' whatever that means in this instance. I read stories like this and I come away thinking ALL our institutions are falling apart.
ReplyDeleteThink about it. If you were on a jury and you knew that if you convicted this man of burning this clown flag he would get 30 years, wouldn't you jury nullify?
You don't get a sentence like this for rape or murder. Surely, this gets overturned on appeal. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment.
That is the entire reasoning behind "Hate Crimes": to trump the 1st Amendment with emotional trauma. Null and void for one subset renders it a non-defense in all cases. Only the equally egregious repudiation of the concept of self-defense embedded in 'common sense' gun laws can match Hate Crimes as being antithetical to Americanism.
ReplyDeleteIf this is not overturned on appeal then expect prosecutions for insulting Mohammed/Allah/Islam, as in Europe, to follow soon.
Tom S.
If you see a comment wandering around, looking lost, it was mine that was intended for this thread. If it landed on a wrong thread (which I cannnot figure out as I had only this article open at the time) disregard it … maybe Mark can delete it.
ReplyDeleteIt was on the Durham thread. I hafta say, I rather enjoy seeing libs like Rowling being eaten alive by more woke libs.
DeleteBebe:
Now the current radicalization of our culture is affecting our justice system. This sentence is just plain wrong.
But here is something in the same vein, albeit with a lesser outcome:
J.K. Rowling, the wildly successful author of Harry Potter books is under fire on social media for posting a tweet in support of science. A tax expert at a think tank in London was fired for tweeting that transgender women can’t change their biological sex. Rowling tweeted in support of her. The horror. The immediate reaction of the cancel culture mob on Twitter was intense. (Snip) The outrage mob on Twitter is calling Rowling a “TERF,” a slur short for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” that is used to describe self-identifying feminists who don’t believe trans women are women.
https://hotair.com/archives/karen-townsend/2019/12/19/cancel-culture-comes-j-k-rowling-transphobic-tweet/
Now WE are the unprotected, endangered species...
Mark, how kind of you to pick it up and move this to its proper place.
DeleteI agree on Rowling. She is a flaming lib, a colossal pain… It is good to see that even she is not immune as the “wokes” devour their own.
Hate crimes are Orwell's crimethink come alive.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. Dershowitz can't figure out what happened to liberal civil libertarians. They got woke, just as their underlying principles would require.
Delete"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." - Thomas Jefferson.
DeleteWhile this remark was made in relation to religious belief and speech related to same, it applies to ALL speech.
Speech that offends others is just speech, and it is (or ought to be) protected under the 1st Amendment, since it cause neither physical injury nor theft on anyone.
There is no right -- under any plausible definition of rights -- against having your feelings hurt by something somebody else says (exceptions for yelling "FIRE" in a crowded fire-free theater, and for slander, both of which have the potential for real harm.)
Forbes is correct: hate speech crimes are the first step toward the tyranny of thought crimes.
The flag burning miscreant is at worst guilty of stealing the flag. Make him replace it.