[rmunn]

I'm disappointed in Reason magazine. They're usually better than this, but they flubbed the facts on this one. The guy wasn't convicted for "transporting anti-government pamphlets", he was convicted for concealing evidence. His wife called him from the county jail and asked him to hide the documents, and he did it. And that's what he was charged with: not possession of anti-government pamphlets, but trying to hide documents that he knew were going to be used as evidence against someone (his wife) who had been arrested. If you try to hide evidence, you become an accessory after the fact. Reason's article finishes with "possessing "anti-government" documents or ideology is not illegal." Which is totally true, but also irrelevant to this case. That's not what he was charged with, he was charged with trying to hide evidence that he knew the court was going to want. I'm disappointed in Reason for completely failing to report accurately on this one.

As an aside, this was a federal conviction so Texas law doesn't apply to this case. And the defendants are lucky Texas law didn't apply to this case, because in Texas, if you're (for example) the getaway driver for a robbery, but someone is shot and killed during the robbery, then you can be held guilty of murder even though you didn't pull the trigger, if you knew ahead of time that your co-conspirators were likely to end up killing someone. https://www.ericbenavides.com/what-is-the-law-of-parties-in-... has a short discussion of that aspect of Texas law. If the defendants had been charged under Texas law, everyone, including the guy who tried to conceal evidence after the fact (thereby becoming part of the conspiracy in the eyes of state law), could have been convicted of attempted murder: the shooter shot at an ICE officer (and several other people) and hit him in the neck, but the officer survived. But because federal law applied rather than Texas law, only the guy who actually fired the shots was convicted of attempted murder; the jury found the other four, who had been part of the planning but hadn't fired their own guns, not guilty of attempted murder. (But guilty of the other charges, like conspiracy).

[yread]

Very reasonable. I'm looking forward to the time when such reasonable laws are applied to execs of companies ordering destruction of evidence. 30 years behind bars

EDIT: or elected officials. Imagine Nixon getting 30 years for tampering with evidence

[floor2]

What you are misleadingly calling "evidence" here is constitutionally protected free speech political materials. It's only "evidence" that he disagreed with the president on immigration, not anything related to a crime.

Take a step back and be honest about this situation, even if you dislike the people or disagree with their political views. This is an authoritarian attack on political opponents.

Everyone, regardless of political views or party affiliation should be outraged and horrified by this. This is the type of government violence against dissidents and opposition that we decry when it happens in other countries, and we shouldn't tolerate it here.

[spwa4]

When you get older you sadly find out more and more than all news sources have an ideological bent and a political side they're supporting. I mean if you didn't wake up when Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post, then what does it take?

Which sadly changes the whole situation around, say, the bias of Facebook or Twitter. It's not that these new social media are biased vs. the unbiased traditional media. It's that these are more successful and have a different bias, which currently established parties see as a threat to their power.

Now you may still agree with the parties behind, say, a traditional newspaper and be opposed to, say, Twitter because of that. But you can at least be honest about this being the case.