CDR: Re: Abortion Assasination Politics likely going to Supremes

[Jim Burnes]

On Tue, 12 Sep 2000, Michael Motyka wrote:

> The violent anti-abortion movement's method for coping with coexistent
> conflicting thoughts and behaviors is a form of dysfunction not unlike
> that of a stroke patient who sees himself in a mirror and is unable to
> perceive his own paralysis or similar paralysis in others. A moribund
> arm can be perceived as functioning normally. A half-paralyzed face can
> be perceived as smiling left and right. Amazing. Pathetic.
>
> Or criminal. Were I a doctor I would consider the Nuremberg Files site a
> direct and credible threat. The jury decision was the correct one.
>

More to the point.  Would a supreme court ruling in this respect be a
good ruling.  Trying to read someone's mind and trying him on his
supposed thoughts is a little like convicting a man via ESP.

Despite the fact that the man running the site wrote that killing
abortion doctors would be justified, he did not explicitly state
that these people or their families should be harmed.  Shunned
perhaps, protested against perhaps.  But incitement to murder
should have an extremely high standard of evidence and equally
high protection of the supposed speech by the first amendment.

The second point assumes that a common citizen would react
by killing the people on his web page.  If a cypherpunk copied
his page and archived it on his website would it also be incitement
to murder?  The implication is that guilt or innocence is dependent
upon the visitors to your web site.  

If the supreme upholds this it could set a precedent to go after
any web site that publishes controversial data.  By the same
standard of evidence can we convict everyone that supplies
data regarding drugs, machine gun construction techniques,
bomb making info of 'knowing that someone would use it
to nefarious ends?'  The jury in this case says that the 
publisher of the information is responsible for the potential
use of the information.

And that is one long slippery slope.  Not that Congress 
wouldn't be game.

I think a more credible indictment would be charges of aiding
and abetting the killers.  Of course you need evidence
for that.  That takes real work from police detectives.
Gosh, couldn't have any of that.

For the record, I am not anti-abortion.

jim

-- 
Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of
himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we
found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this
question.	-- Thomas Jefferson, 1st Inaugural