May We Have This in Writing, Please?

UPDATE:

Given all the chatter – and fear – being generated following Department of Justice head, Loretta Lynchem’s deliberate ratcheting up of the already tense situation in her remarks to a Muslim group, here’s a calm reflection from Hot Air giving some context. My emphasis below:

Via BuzzFeed. To be honest, I’m not sure my headline captures what she’s saying. Watch the clip and ask yourself if she’s talking about hateful acts or hateful speech. Not so clear, is it? She mentions speech and rhetoric and the First Amendment but she keeps coming back to prosecuting actions. If all she’s saying is that she’ll charge anyone who acts violently towards Muslims, that’s not newsworthy. That’s her doing her job. If what she’s saying is that she’ll charge anyone who speaks violently about Muslims, that’s something else. She could have spoken perfectly clearly on this subject if she wanted to. The fact that she didn’t means she intended to be vague. How come?

You have the right to say you hate a particular person or a particular group. You don’t have the right to try to harm that person or group. One is speech, protected by the First Amendment, the other is action. The gray area is when someone uses speech to encourage someone else to act violently. Even then, speech is usually protected. You can say, e.g., “let’s kill the atheists” without fear of going to jail. If you say that, though, to someone who seems like he really does want to kill some atheists and there just so happens to be some atheists nearby at that moment, then you can be prosecuted for saying it. That’s incitement.

The rule courts follow in analyzing a case like that is whether the speech was intended to produce, and likely to produce, imminent lawless action. Because of that, it’s almost impossible to be guilty of incitement in most situations. If you’re addressing an angry mob, you’re in the danger zone. Anywhere else — especially if your speech consists of writing, not spoken words, since writing can’t trigger “imminent” action — and you’re safe. Threats operate similarly. If you say “the atheists should be killed,” courts will chalk that up to hyperbole or political grandstanding and refuse to let the state prosecute for it. If you say it, though, to a group of atheists while your hand rests uneasily on your holstered semiautomatic, well, that’s different. That threat seems real. You can go to jail for that.

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There have been reports that at least one worker in the neighborhood where these two dead terrorists lived thought the level of activity – a lot of men going in and out of that garage – found their behaviors “suspicious” but was afraid he’d be labelled a racist if he spoke up… given the political climate Obama has worked so hard to create, who can blame him?

Now we have the FBI Director, James Comey, not only telling us to speak up, but he uses the ‘T’ word… I thought the ‘T’ word was verboten. Only a little less dangerous than the ‘N’ word. But listen for yourself:

So what now? We need to write to the FBI and get this You Tube advisory in writing. Particularly since the new Attorney General is going after certain language.

Loretta Lynch, same kind of player as the last Justice Department head:a divider. What a fitting last name for someone who wants to abridge our First Amendment Rights.

Don’t let her scare you.

30 thoughts on “May We Have This in Writing, Please?

  1. Why is it Obama and everyone to do with the American regime talk of ‘ISIL’ and the rest of the world refer to ‘ISIS?’ (Islamic state in Syria)
    As I understand it ISIL is Islamic state in Lebanon, which surely has nothing to do with it. Mind you, Obama would get it wrong anyway. (intentionally)

    • The “L” in ISIL doesn’t refer to Lebanon. It refers to the Levant, an overall term for the lands bordering the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

      I prefer “Daesh,” the pronunciation of the Arabic acronym, if for no other reason that the group’s leaders don’t like it. Somewhere (and I’m irritated that I can’t remember where) I read that the pronunciation (Dah-esh) means something derogatory in Arabic. Not scatological or sacreligious, just derogatory, like American English speakers might call someone a “jerk” or “creep.” Those aren’t dirty words, but they aren’t polite, either.

      So with Daesh.

      • what? a Daesh of terrorism served with islam on a daeshboard? do you have the receipe?
        OK, I know, so I’m moderated.
        I was going to say something about the DC Loretta Lynch mob coming after us conservative folk.
        now I will be moderated for certain 🙂

      • “Daesh” was invented for the sole purpose to deceive. By removing the “I” representing “Islam” as in “I“SIS (Islamic State Syria)/ “I“SIL (Islamic State in Levant)/ “I“S (Islamic State) … “Daesh” removes the immediate connection of a terrorist organization dedicated to resurrecting the caliphate… to Islam

        The powers that be insist the narrative “Islam is a religion of peace” be maintained, and so the identity shifts to suit the meme of the day.

        Never overlook the use of taqiyya – deception – where it can serve Islamic interests. War is deception.

        • and war can be fought on many fronts, such as in economies, financial markets, and even demographics. I am concerned for the American oil producing/exploration companies and the credit markets that invested in them. Saudi Arabia wants any competition that we might muster destroyed. They are being helped out by EPA regulations in the name of global warming and of course the current below market pricing of oil. The credit market in America may be at an inflection point as the result of the collapse of the oil well servicing and development industry. Once those companies are gone and the credit/investment markets dried up, Saudi Arabia can simply close the tap as they did 40 years ago. I am very well aware of corporate strong-arm tactics. I believe that I now know where they learned the art of economic warfare. Who needs nukes when you can manipulate foreign exchange rates and credit hedging?

        • The widespread use of Daesh in France I would agree is meant to deflect public attention away from Islam. It is also a conscious self-deception by the establishment who want to believe their your own BS because that don’t want to owe up to the ugly truth of demographic nightmare they face, but they are only forestalling the inevitable. At some point the Muslims in France will embark on an all-out offensive jihad according to Islam’s Rule of Numbers as outlined by Raymond Ibrahim.

          The only time I use Daesh is when I’m talking to Assyrian Christians, which there are plenty of in the Metro-Detroit area, because they understand it’s derogatory and are acutely aware that it’s Islamic and are in no way deceived by this usage. Otherwise I use Islamic state for the specific reason to emphasize it’s Islamic.

        • This so much this, good post, using Daesh which denotes criminals more than anything else tries to say that it is not Islam and further enhances the clouding of the true nature of Islam to both Muslims and non-Muslims.

          ISIS hate Muslims using that expression, that is the key part Cynthia is missing, I don’t think they really care too much about non-Muslims using it apart from when they want us to over-react to their barbaric attacks. The reactions of the French people has baffled them by the way…

          • Thank you; in fact I had *not* known that ISIS hates for Muslims specifically to use “Daesh.”

        • No it isn’t Taqiyya when used by Arabic speakers!

          It’s an Arabic acronym for “al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham.” It can sometimes be spelled DAIISH, Da’esh or Daech in French.

          Notice the word Islam in it.

      • OK got it, but I’ll still go with isis; Obama just annoys me with his isil–as he does with everything.

        • yes, and with the help of a Turkey, hopes for peace in the Middle East have been Daesh-ed.

  2. The leaders of IS made a mistake. At first they called their organization Isil. The islamic state of irak and the levant.

    As soon as the leaders of IS found out about their un-islamic ( the islamic ideology is to be spread all over the globe according to the koran and thus allah) mistake they changed their name to IS.

    President Obama still uses the term Isil. Either the President thinks he is making them less islamic by calling them isil, or your president is a slow thinker.
    I think your president is a slow thinker when i look and listen to John Kerry. That gunboat captain of the year 1968, john Kerry speaks of Daesh..And John does that with a Massachucetss( or whatever you call that silly states name) accent. Daesh meaning: full blown vietcong enemy communist insurgents wanting to kill every American and still have some ketchup…..

    Thank god this anti-American Obama/Kerry ticket will be over in a year and 46 days. Their succecsors should have one goal: eliminate islam out of this world while we still can.

      • Nor would I; it isn’t that Obama is particularly smart–more that westerners are going out of their way to be purposely naïve and just plain dumb.

  3. If it is written in the Mohammedans’ holy book that Mohammed says to kill the unbelievers, should that writing be subject to the law against incitement? Or should it be the Imam who preaches it to his congregants? A command coming from a holy book seems to be pretty powerful incitement to those who regard it as infallible.

    • Indeed. And this is one of the questions the PC attitude does NOT ever want asked; after all, to ask it is to convict oneself of (gasp!) Islamophobia.

      Weird, that word. I’m not afraid of Islam in the sense that the PC folk mean it; I detest its drive for world domination. How do we express THAT???

  4. I’m wondering whether we have to kill our way out of this mess or can we create enough apostates to solve the problem. I have no idea which.

    • The Islamics are attacking our free speech on Islam, this is what they fear most, because there are a lot of Muslims who have their own interpretation of Islam that is not akin to Al Queda, the key approach to winning this war of ideologies is to expose what Islam really is and try to get those people to reject the key tenets of Islam, after that you will just have to remove those that reject the lives of non-Muslims from our societies and keep them out at let them live in their own ignorance and stupidity and keep them away from us.

      • Constant harsh, but reasoned, criticism against Islam from our leaders–and the world’s–using all the communication devices extant would be the ideal approach. I think. But we have to physically destroy cells that have engaged in warfare against us.

        This is a tall order and means a lot more military and costs than this half-left country would tolerate….at least without much more terrorist damage. Maybe we are going to have to have a lot more deaths in the U S and the West before it will be politically possible to win this thing. Geez.

        This looks like another 30 year war.

        It is actually a war against the left more than any other opponent. And we had better have some smart financial leaders too because we are going to have to have quantitative easing–printing money–up the gazoo. All our fiddling around against Saddam and the Taliban and Al Quada so far has been a trifling preliminary bout compared to what is coming. And it is all because we haven’t named our enemies and thought. Thinking has been our deficit.

        Our future leaders have to be smart and shrewed or we might all perish.

  5. “She could have spoken perfectly clearly on this subject if she wanted to. The fact that she didn’t means she intended to be vague. How come?”

    a) If she had been “clear” she would have had to draw a bright line between speech and action.

    b) By not being “clear” she has successfully stoked the fires of PC reporting 

    and therefore 

    c) Nobody now knows if the wrath of Dear Leader’s DOJ will be unleashed on them or not.

    Remember, the process is the punishment.

  6. If the government intends to prosecute anti-Islamic speech inciting violence, why aren’t they prosecuting Muslims for extolling the Koran which preaches genocide? Why are they not prosecuting all the Marxist Rent A Crowd who are not only preaching violence but practicing it?

    I have never ever seen such a high level of bald-faced lying and evasion from the government because the truth doesn’t fit their ideology.

    • Exactly. Not only the American government, but virtually everyone in media will do almost anything, perform frantic linguistic gymnastics, lie faster than a horse can gallop; anything at all to avoid offending their dearest friends the muslims, who just happen to be our deadly enemies—and have been for their entire 1400 year existence.
      Why do I get the inescapable feeling they are afraid of islam?

  7. More to the point – why isn’t there more widespread outrage at Loretta Lynch’s words – which are clearly vague? Don’t Americans care about the First Amendment anymore?

    • I’ve seen NO coverage of her statement apart from GoV. I’d look to that absence of coverage to explain the lack of reaction. Many people here in the S.F. Bay Area, even far-left people, are First Amendment absolutists (to the extent that some feminists support the right of–ugh!–pornographers to publish their stuff and hopefully be boycotted) and would speak out against such Prior Restraint.

  8. After clickinh I got: “This video is no longer available because the YouTube account … has been terminated.”

    What was it about?

    • I think someone used AP’s video and the latter complained. If this person has done that several times – violated copyright rules – then You Tube will remove the channel.

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