Attorney General Loretta Lynch doesn't want you saying offensive stuff about Islam or Muslims. And if you don't wise up, she's prepared to do something about it.
Hence this story from ABC News:
"Obviously this is a country that is based on free speech," Lynch told the audience at the Muslim Advocates dinner in Arlington, VA. "But when that edges towards violence...we will take action."
I don't know exactly what "edges towards violence" means, and I think there used to be this thing called the "void-for-vagueness" doctrine circumscribing the actions of prosecutors. But Ms. Lynch is only Attorney General, so I can't expect her to know everything.
Still, I want to take this opportunity to test the new limits (or non-limits) on prosecution of speech by saying some things that could quite plausibly be viewed as "edging toward violence." DOJ, I hope you're listening.
Here goes:
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Islam has a radical strain that believes "infidels" (i.e., non-Muslims) should be killed. This same strain likewise thinks that the West is decadent, as shown, for example, by its allowing women to hold hands in public with their boyfriends and by declining to punish gays as they should be, to wit, by stoning them to death. This strain of Islam has killed hundreds if not thousands of people, most recently in San Bernardino, Paris and Beirut.
The majority of Muslims do not, to my knowledge, hold these beliefs, but it can no longer be denied that a non-trivial number do. That number should be rooted out and curbed from acting on these "values." When they seem as if they are prepared imminently to act (see for example, but not exclusively, the places named above), they should be incapacitated, preferably before the fact, by any means at hand, including, as will often need to be the case, by violence.
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OK, Ms. Lynch, there you have it. I believe that counts as speech unambiguously critical of (some) Muslims, and at the minimum, it "edges toward violence."
If you want to arrest me, I teach at Georgetown Law Center, just a few blocks from your office. I'm about 5'7", 145 pounds, brown hair, late sixties. I generally wear a dark blue suit and tie, and am often mistaken for an Assistant US Attorney. I hope you'll order my arrest to be made in public during daylight hours, since that will serve to create two examples.
The first is what awaits free speech in this Administration -- that being the example useful to your "you-better-watch-your-mouth" agenda. The second is to illustrate to Georgetown's increasingly sensitive (to "micro-aggression") students what fascism actually looks like.
Come on down.
Any silly thoughts that Attorney General Lynch would represent a departure from the partisan, agenda-driven, traditional values be damned sycophant that marked Holder's reign-- have been summarily dashed.
I was foolish to have expected more-this administration policies have set into motion the most insidious, virulent, undermining of our national and international security in modern times.
You know what is the most disgusting thing about Lynch's comments? Her yapping about "who we are." I, for one, am sick and tired of people who believe in race-norming school discipline (as evil a policy as can be imagined in America) presuming to tell us "who we are."
Her "who we are" remark put me in mind of the Baltimore State's Attorney who filed charges against six police officers in the Freddie Gray case, then held a (grossly unprofessional) campaign rally-style "news conference" on the courthouse steps to announce, "our time has come!"
She never defined who "our" is referring to.
Like you, I believe elected officials (and still less unelected ones like Ms. Lynch) have no business telling us "who we are."
It's (still) a free country, and I will decide for myself who I am. If a point be made of it, I am a person who would prefer that terrorists be preemptively and completely disabled before they kill me.