Well, demonstrators were chanting “kill the bill,” so it’s only reasonable to fight violence with violence:
On Saturday night, when Mother Jones staffers tweeted a report that riot police might soon sweep demonstrators out of the Wisconsin capitol building—something that didn’t end up happening—one Twitter user sent out a chilling public response: “Use live ammunition.”
From my own Twitter account, I confronted the user, JCCentCom. He tweeted back that the demonstrators were “political enemies” and “thugs” who were “physically threatening legally elected officials.” In response to such behavior, he said, “You’re damned right I advocate deadly force.” He later called me a “typical leftist,” adding, “liberals hate police.”
Only later did we realize that JCCentCom was a deputy attorney general for the state of Indiana.
Deputy Attorney General Jeff Cox has since been fired, a development over which I’m a bit torn, as seeking to cost someone their livelihood over their exercise of free speech is generally more of a right-wing tactic. On the other hand, he is the kinda asshole who I wouldn’t want working for me, so who am I to question the judgment of the Indiana AG?
In any case, WaPo’s Charles Lane is right again, protesting against bad legislation is just as uncivil as suggesting that the protesters should be shot, so I guess we progressives kinda had it coming.
It’s amazing to me how quickly the Indiana AG fired the guy considering how much dithering and blathering the Michigan AG did before reluctantly firing the guy who was stalking/intimidating the gay UM student body president.
Firing someone over free speech is wrong. If he was siding with the GOP (or the Dems), and was fired for that, that would be wrong.
Firing someone over encouraging violence is quite acceptable.
You may now feel not-conflicted.
Yeah, the Indiana AG may be a Republican (former aide to Dan Quayle no less), but before being elected he was a managing AAG himself for many years. I’m guessing had his eye on this guy already and this was the last straw.
Yeeeaaaaahhhh…I kinda think someone who’s been to law school should recognize protest is a key part of a democracy and, you know, not call for a gross violation of the rule of law in response to it.
In his defense, the guy at Mother Jones probably is a “typical liberal.”
Advocating violence is not protected speech under the First Amendment.
Can’t we do both, @9?
He was a government official in a position where he was supposed to uphold the law and he advocated violence against peaceful protesters by the police. Sorry, that isn’t free speech. Once you cross the line from disagreeing with someone politically to saying they should be killed for their opinions you no longer deserve your job if you work in any official capacity.
Free speech has limits, and incitement to murder is one of them. This guy advocated a massacre of innocent people and, when confronted, did not walk it back. If that is not cause to fire a public official, then I don’t know what is.