A while ago I talked about how after September 9, 2001 there would be lots of issues develop with personal freedom and our rights as citizens. There is one of the most obvious examples of that in the news right now. First let me say again that I consider myself an American and I have no desire to leave or see the county hurt in any way, but I also must state that what I am about to talk about, in my opinion, hurts the county if it isn’t corrected.
Recently in New York a kid, 17 years old I think, was arrested for posting on a web site that he wanted to attack his school in what Good Morning America called a “Columbine Mannerâ€. After stating this they show first the alleged criminal’s picture, which I think is illegal, and then showed a press conference where some authority figure stated that this kid would face seven years in jail for this crime thanks to New York’s new anti-terror laws. Laws that were inacted after September 11. There are several things here that need to be looked at. First, to the best of my knowledge these laws would have done nothing to stop the terrorist that attacked the World Trade Centers since they were never arrested, nor did they really have anything to do with New York other than to crash planes into it. This means that had these laws been in effect before September 11 they wouldn’t have done anything at all. Second, according this police chief, this kid faces SEVEN years in prison for committing no crime. All he did was express himself. He has a freedom of speech right to say whatever he wants to as long as it doesn’t cause anyone else harm. The old “Yelling fire in a crowded theater†analogy doesn’t apply here. What he said has no bearing on anyone else. It doesn’t hurt them in any way. Therefore there should be no reason to arrest him, let alone attempt to sentence him to seven years in jail.
Now I admit that what he said doesn’t need to be said, and shouldn’t be said. This doesn’t give us the right to arrest him though. Instead he should be watched and monitored to see if he is going to attempt to make good on these threats. If movements where seen that would relate to such an activity then I would have no problem with them arresting him and attempting to prove that he was going to it. The analogy that I came up with earlier is this, if I were to say that I am going to get in my car and drive 100mph to Bowling Green and a cop comes into my house and gives me a ticket for it. In that situation I just got penalized for something that I said I was going to do but not had not done. It is the same thing here.
This is wrong, an injustice and against the American way. I hope the courts see that and drop this case, if for no other reason than the fact that that law violates our constitutional rights.