Sig Ep Out at Ole Miss

[Kevin]

Good grief.. clamoring for hate crime charges? Y'all know the federal government cannot punish an act of speech--even if it's dumb and offensive as hell. The school, on the other hand can give these young men das boot if it wants to, but "pursuing hate crimes charges" for an act which damaged no property and broke no actual laws? Or at least nothing the state or local authorities could proceed with? Good luck with that one.

The LA Times

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nation...#axzz2uVaXftsa

has an interesting article which states that if the government could prove that this was an effort to intimidate, then maybe hate crime charges could be filed. Since these kids are doing the smart thing and not saying a word to the authorities, so long as they continue to do so, I don't see a world where there could ever be enough evidence to file charges (unless we have some sort of tweet about them trying to kick off a race war or something along those lines).

[Low D Flat]

Y'all know the federal government cannot punish an act of speech--even if it's dumb and offensive as hell.

Sure it can, if it interprets the speech as a threat of violence. It's not much of a stretch to consider this a threat of violence. Tweeting that you plan to shoot black people on your campus would be speech, too, but it could get you thrown in jail.

There may be other reasons that hate crime charges are inappropriate here, but speech can be a crime.

[thetalady]

GREAT NEWS!!!! So glad to see that this racist is actually being prosecuted, not given a slap on the wrist.

Graeme Harris Indicted