Guy Charged With Harassment For Sending Email Complaint To Senator Jim Bunning
from the careful-who-you-get-angry-with dept
We've talked multiple times about the problems with various online "harassment" laws, many of which are written so broadly as to outlaw using email to try to "annoy" someone. Basically, they try to outlaw being a jerk, which doesn't seem to make sense if you believe in the First Amendment.With the recent situation involving AT&T threatening to take legal action against a customer for sending a complaint email to AT&T's CEO, it seems like lots of people are overreacting to email complaints. The latest is Senator Jim Bunning, from Kentucky. Bunning got a lot of attention back in February when he decided to become a one-man filibuster against extending unemployment benefits (much to the annoyance of politicians from both major parties). DavidClerk alerts us to the news that Bruce Shore, an unemployed man in Philadelphia, got so upset at Bunning that he sent some angry emails to Bunning and his staff. Fair enough. These are the basics of representative democracy.
The emails were definitely angry, but it's a stretch to claim they are real harassment. Yes, the final line could cut it close, but is hardly a direct threat.
Hello,Now there are lots of ways Bunning and his staff could respond to such emails. But the way he did respond was to get the Capitol Police and the FBI involved leading to the guy being indicted for online harassment, specifically that he "did utilize a telecommunications device, that is a computer, whether or not communication ensued, without disclosing his identity and with the intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, and harass any person who received the communication." You can see the indictment here:
I am at a LOSS of words for SENATOR BUNTING blocking unemployment benefits for me and my children. If I do NOT get my check next week I WILL HAVE NO FOOD AND WILL BE ON THE STREET.
What kind of people are you? 10 Billion goes to the war every couple days and to Wall street weekly. I want my benefits or there will be people starving and dying.
What is wrong with you people. NOW is NOT the time to play politics with childrens lives.
ARE you'all insane. NO checks equal no food for me. DO YOU GET IT??
IF THIS POLITICAL GRANDSTANDING DOES NOT END TODAY - WE WILL COME TO YOUR OFFICES AND MAKE OUR POINT. YOU ARE PLAYING A LIFE AND DEATH GAME HERE.
DO YOU GET IT.
Brad Shore
Louisville, KY 40202
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Filed Under: email, harassment, jim bunning
Reader Comments
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Not unreasonable for the Senator/FBI to check it out. Unreasonable (and possibly unconstitutional) to charge the guy.
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you have to be an idiot not to be able to see the threat involved here. mike, are you that big of an idiot?
utilize a telecommunications device, that is a computer, whether or not communication ensued, without disclosing his identity and with the intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, and harass any person who received the communication.
Seems to me that your post is an open-and-shut case of online harassment. You guys think we should we notify the police?
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stop listening to the MSM so much... He had absolutely no problem with extending unemployment benefits - he just wanted Congress to follow the PAY-GO law it had passed days earlier and find a way to pay for those new benefits
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Yeah, but what's amazing is that, for a race of beings consisting entirely of lizard like pod people, they have such thick skin....
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*thin
Dammit....joke fail!
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Hopefully he gets off with a "think before you type next time".
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I feel sorry for this guy, actually.
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Either way the harassment charge is stupid. Seriously, harassment because he falsely reported his location?
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I stand my my statement that the harassment charge is stupid either way.
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Agreed.
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To life's leechers: Get a JOB, ho's!
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This sounds like it came from someone who doesn't understand a very basic part of unemployment benefits: You pay into the unemployment system with every paycheck you receive while employed. Utilizing those benefits when you become unemployed is not "taking money from someone else", it is utilizing money that you put into the system for specifically that purpose.
Of course the true intent of unemployment benefits is to hold you over while you search for another job, and some people do take advantage of the system. aguywhoneedstenbucks statement is spot on: It all depends on the facts of the individual situation. Most who utilize the unemployment benefits are not crooks.
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On the other hand, if he wanted to seek out unemployment insurance that patronizes those people that voluntarily wish to be covered in exchange for a regular fee - that I have no problem with.
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this is a threat
LISTEN YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE I WANT MY BENEFITS NOW OR IM COMING OVER THERE AND IM A GONNA FUCKING RIP YOUR FASCIST GAY HEAD OFF, YOU NAZI FAGGIT
THEN IM GONNA SET THE BUILDING ON FIRE
kill your family slowly by roasting them over the fire
and video tape everything so i can give copies to your corporate war mongering friends
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hey
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That's how the Nazi's operate
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Re: That's how the Nazi's operate
Bunning is a lame duck and has been for years so he has no one to please. The GOP forced him out to run their own conservative candidate. He lost to Rand Paul who immediately began to self destruct in excess Libertarian doctrinaireism.
Bunning has a Pennsylvania link though he was a pitcher for the Phillies.
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Because nothing else in that comment is even close.
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How about this?
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Re: How about this?
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men on the edge
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Planning
Fact is he would not starve, I'm sure his local church operates a charity food pantry that he could visit. Maybe he could have worked a part-time job. Maybe he could have shovelled snow or mowed lawns. Maybe he could have worked as a day labourer for a temp agency. Instead he choose to send harassing emails in hopes he gets paid.
People need to stop expecting the government to be their nanny!
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Re: Planning
You are so correct. What ever happened to personal responsibility. It is not the government's job to provide our food. It is ours. If Mr. Shore were a responsible husband and father, he would have been saving the whole time in the event of a situation just like this.
Americans have too long been bleating like sheep down the pathway of government dependence. What ever happened to liberty? What happened to the freedom to succeed or fail on our own? The American dream is to opportunity to make something great of ourselves. How is that manifested in the mediocrity of "what can the government do for me?"
Come on America! Wake up and become great again. Loose the chains of entitlement and make something of yourself!
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And this is not about the freedom to fail or succeed on your own. This is about making sure that when you fail, you don't starve. The possibility of starving is a much more significant deterent to entrepreneurship than any taxes and regulations. It's insurance. Everyone pays into a big pool. When your life fails, you get to have some part of the pool so you get a chance to try again. If you don't like it, you can leave the country...
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What kind of pompous idiots are commenting here at all!! When an elected government official is using the resources of the FBI and Police to condemn a man for worrying about his family, no matter what his circumstances may be. Then the known fact that others choose professions that will allow them the luxury of taking the winters off because they have paid in enough to cover themselves to sleep away the winter being paid, like landscaping in frigid climates. This does not sound like our guy but to condemn him as so many has without knowing anything aboiut him is similar to the God complex
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Two adults well over the age of fifty, who never had kids, live in a house they paid off more than 20 years ago, and both have always been fully employed and self-sufficient. My friend said "Blank is so ashamed, he wants to kill himself." His unemployment, with all the extensions, had finally run out, they've tapped out their last savings account, and the wife, a highly educated woman, is working part-time as a security guard. This was the last couple on earth I would have pegged as being at the end of a financial and emotional rope, and it has made the rest of us who know this couple to realize none of us should be complacent.
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I do have compassion for his situation, but not his entitlement attitude.
There are plenty of charitable organizations in this great nation that would have gladly provided this man food.
I suspect he also has neighbors similar to yourself who would have gladly helped him.
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If I had received that email...
And as far as the First Amendment issue is concerned, the First Amendment doesn't guarantee you that no one will question your speech. If you think someone's speech falls outside of First Amendment protections, you have the right (just as important as the other guy's First Amendment rights) to bring the issue to a judge/jury to decide. There's responsibility that goes along with the free speech right. Your speech may be called into question, though it may ultimately be proven to be protected. The First Amendment doesn't guarantee you won't be sued or prosecuted.
HM
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Re: If I had received that email...
True. But questioning such speech with more speech and the government punishing you for such speech are two different things.
"The First Amendment doesn't guarantee you won't be sued or prosecuted"
I think that's exactly what it does (as far as prosecution goes), except for the fact that no law is a "guarantee" that it won't be broken. If the government prosecutes you for protected speech, that's a violation of the First Amendment.
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HM
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It's obvious that this person is desperate to "put food on his family" to survive and meant no harm.
The best part about Jim Bunning: not only he has declined to extend unemployment benefits for families, he also wasted resources on charges against this poor unemployed person.
Hopefully Bunning does not get re-elected, he does not deserve his post.
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Interesting article
He may have been sidelined from work due to injury, or he may very well have no marketable skills. Given how many people in this country (~10%) are unemployed, a large portion of them for OVER A YEAR, perhaps his area is also depressed and without any available employment?
I suppose it's easier to just judge people from afar with no information whatsoever, in order to feel better about oneself.
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Re: Interesting article
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Senator Bunning Harrasment
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Re: Senator Bunning Harrasment
heck in california late last year the average approval rating for elected officials was 13%. and i point out california for a very specific reason, a fairly overwhelming base of liberal voters electing liberal politicians takes the idea of "conservatives vs a liberal administration" right out the window and shines a light at the fact that its not just a matter of cons vs dems as some would like to believe.
even if you give a very large margin of error thats staggering. and yet, they keep getting elected year in and year out.
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Thomas Jefferson (who, I'm pretty sure, is rolling in his grave) was happy to point out that democracy is totally dependent on a intelligent and well educated populace. Discussions like this make his point and demonstrate that this country has neither. Continue listening to and reading the tripe you do, having the discussions you do and believing the way you do (without the luxury of having anything resembling the facts) and you'll be right where the Right and the Left want you to be. Moronic sheep that cannot be troubled with thought or the ability to take decisive and relevant action.
Keep up the good work.
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Those laws are idiotic, the man could have been anything and still that law is ridiculous, not only that it chip away of one of the most important duties that should come from the people. COMPLAINING, that should be viewed as a metered scale for issues, but it is now being banned because some people feel that comfort is more important to them than having to listen to the people who put them there. Protests will be classified as harassment too in the future? probably because it is harassing the government it is not?
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Stop emailing me infringing material cousin.
Who cares about the judge, he obviously doesn't understand technology and how can be used and not, why take him seriously when we all know it will not be enforced and anybody that says it will is just dreaming.
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What a dumb law.
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