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Today would have been the 95th birthday of Milton Friedman. |
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Today would have been the 95th birthday of Milton Friedman. |
WorldNetDaily and the Drudge Report are questionable legal authority, so I thought I'd ask De Novo readers about a claim made in both outlets' stories regarding a joke about shooting President Bush for his Social Security policy. 'A government source told Drudge, "Even joking about shooting the president is a crime, let alone doing it on national radio ... we are taking this very seriously."'
While obviously the Secret Service needs to investigate everyone who makes a threat against the president, no matter how absurd and unlikely to come to violent fruition, I was surprised that speech clearly categorizable as a joke -- even a very poor one -- could be considered a crime. Has anyone ever been arrested, charged or prosecuted for it? Watts v. United States limited 18 USCS § 871 to "true threats," placing the burden of proof on the prosecution to show that the remark was not made in jest.
UPDATE: Note to self -- always check Volokh first.
Eugene Volokh had a good post about this yesterday: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_04_24-2005_04_30.shtml#1114632412
Posted by: Jared at April 28, 2005 08:56 AMYes, always check Volokh. However, I thought I'd add that there was an incident at my UG where a student was arrested and charged because of a similar joke on his website. I'm not sure how it turned out, but I do recall the secret service coming on campus to get him.
Posted by: JMoore at April 29, 2005 12:11 AMI imagine the procedure goes such that people get arrested and charged under 18 USCS § 871, but the prosecutor realizes that she cannot prove the joke to have been a true threat and the case is dropped.
Posted by: PG at April 29, 2005 03:11 AM It is not unusual for people who do engage in violence to use verbal signals first. Often the threats are purposely ambiguous.
Joking can be a form of verbal harassment, deliberately creating a hostile environment.
I do not regard the anonymous source's comment to drudge as an official expression of government policy.