[Simple1234]

I would stick to my position if it escalated to violence. The best strategy to counter terrorism is not to give up freedom. Giving up freedom is society acting as if it is terrorized. Acting terrorized is exactly what terrorist want.

Whether he wrote a song, a poem, a joke, a virus infected his computer and posted it, a friend wrote it while he wasn't looking, a hacker got in and wrote it, or any one of a million ways it could have come into existence or be interpreted, the government does not have to right to suppress his speech, set excessive bail, and seize his person. That is why we have the 1st, 4th, and 8th amendments. If all speech was happy-go-lucky speech, it wouldn't need to be protected.

I would rather die in a terrorist attack, then live without liberty. Look up the number of deaths caused by smoking, cars, alcohol, and obesity and then compare them to the deaths from terrorist. Then explain to my why we can't risk having a kid express himself. When did we become the land of the oppressed and the home of those scared by words?

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Really think about that. Think about what it means, why it was said, what the logic is behind it, what the philosophy is behind it. Say it over and over to yourself. Say it to friends and family. Memorize it. Live by it. It is the quintessential wisdom for our time, and for all time.

[corresation]

There have always been restrictions on speech -- specifically as it relates to threatening others -- for time eternal, having nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism. I'm actually Canadian, and here we have limits on hate speech, and I'm entirely for that.

We all need to live together, and rote recitations of absolute rights -- cast as if it's stark choices of blacks and whites -- doesn't match a reality that the world is a series of grays, and that your rights are perpetually in conflict with the rights of others (the rights of someone to make ill-conceived threats, versus the right to live peacefully and safely).

I also find it remarkable how many people cast this individual as a "kid". He is 19. At 19 many of us were living on our own, attending university, and there was no absurd notion that threats to schoolchildren would be treated as a joke, lol jk rofl.

Neither of us know why the police, judge and prosecutor decided to treat this so seriously, and it may absolutely be a gross overreach of the law, but at the same time the reflexively opposite reaction that holds his as an innocent joke of constitutional protected threats seem ill considered.