Poetic Justice for the Mob

For those that tend to support the authorities over civil liberties the most common argument is that, "i am not special i have nothing to hide". Most people think this is true. Then you happen to come into a situation where you do something stupid, maybe even trivial. Its not a big deal, not even a "real" crime in the sense that society attaches moral blame. Now however, the government finds you and you get sent to prison.

The impetus for this post is that the secret service is investigating the "kill him" shout that was reported by Dana Millbank in the pages of the wapo. I can guarantee that the people in the palin rally would support the governments surveillance and police powers to catch terrorists. i bet the person who made that comment would too. Yet the secret service, if it really wanted to, could use those powers to hunt down that person right now. That person is a domestic terrorist and would be accorded zero rights. They could be sent right off to gitmo if a future president obama wanted to.

Do you think that all those people at that palin rally worked into a frenzy by her vile rhetoric should end up in prison for those threats? Should we follow palin and mccain across the country and simply jail everyone who makes comments like that? the secret service could and they could go about it however they wanted. Those palinites would probably say they did not mean it or that they were sorry but that would be no excuse. how does 5 years in prison sound? I doubt those palin supporters would be such big fans of the police state after that.