I'm no constitutional lawyer, but this story and anniej's ordeal sound very much like unreasonable searches and seizures. It's amazing how easy it is to convince people that things that the Patriot Act seemingly allows are somehow necessary. I was wildly unpopular during the sniper crisis here in DC for suggesting that there was not reasonable cause to search every white van on the roads.
To me, the two stories sounded v. different. What happened to anniej would have happened before the Patriot Act. She made a (childish-sounding, but who the hell knows?) threat against the President's life. The Secret Service is pretty much obligated to check those out; it's their job. They came, they interviewed her, they determined she wasn't a threat, they went away. I'm not seeing the problem.
What happened (and is still happening) to resonant, on the other hand, scares the bejeebers out of me.
As I understand it (I haven't seen the original post, but this is how she characterized the entry in another post), anniesj didn't threaten the President personally. She said that she wished God would visit him with an aneurism--wished him bad luck, in other words.
Someone--I think sleigh, but I could be wrong--has been posting to mentions of this, urging caution, as he can't find any mention of it anywhere in the media, but only in the story circulating on LJ. The Patriot Act certainly is a threat to our rights, but this may or may not be a legitimate example of that.
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pegkerr
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Date: 2004-10-30 03:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-30 07:32 am (UTC)What happened (and is still happening) to resonant, on the other hand, scares the bejeebers out of me.
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Date: 2004-10-30 07:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-30 08:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-10-30 11:03 pm (UTC)Just over a third of the way down the page. (I pasted it in, but then thought better of it --- it's rather long.)