Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by JuniperMesos 7 days ago
> Look at that Texas judge who threw a guy in prison for 30 years simply for moving a box of political contraband [2].

The guy in that case was sentenced for attempting to hide evidence that might show that his wife was associated with an activist group that had vandalized an ICE facility and shot a cop who came to investigate. It's possible that this is in fact an overreach of existing laws defining what counts as attempts to conceal or destroy evidence in court cases, but the legal justification for the prosecution was grounded in evidence and court procedure law for a legitimate prosecution (it is good to legally prosecute people who vandalize government facilities and then shoot cops who come to investigate; unless you genuinely support completely overthrowing the local government and replacing it with a different one through violence), not based on the political content of the pamphlets.

> Look at the state department's recent report that labels everything from the DSA to the Black Lives Matter movement as secret agents of Cuba [3].

Is it incorrect that secret agents of Cuba have attempted to increase the influence of American leftist movements like the DSA and Black Lives Matter? That seems plausible to me; and it doesn't contradict the proposition that there's also substantial organic domestic support for these movements by people who are generally unaware of or unconcerned with Cuban intelligence involement; or that it is and should be legal to voice support for domestic political movements in general even if some foreign intelligence agency thinks it's in its interest to also support the same movement.