Wisconsin Idiot(?) charged for "Dirty Bomb" Hoax

Yahoo News is reporting that the 20 year old grocery store worker who posted a "threat" on The Friend Society website was charged after the FBI and Homeland Security screwheads determined the "threat" to be a Hoax.

Hmmm, this kid, Jake J. Brahm, is guilty of one thing...Living in a country where freedom of speech is no longer a right.  Bad judgment was involved but bad judgment shouldn't negate the right to freely express creativity.  Had this scene played itself out in a novel, ala a Tom Clancy terrorist attack, a problem wouldn't exist.  A writing "duel" between two people involved coming up with the scariest threat.  Apparently this man won as the other participant is not being charged nor does the story say whether the other participant actually posted his "threat".  

This is a free speech concern.  This country has gone from being a believer in creative expression to be a country that suppresses creative expression.  The powers that be need to come to grips with the fact that the internet is a new landscape for all manners of activity such as news, entertainment, online writing forums etc.  From the fight over Blogs and Campaign contributions and their media "worthiness" to topic centric sites the internet is vast and fluid and has several hundred million (guessing on the total number of net users) voices adding opinions 2 cents at a time.  And the government is caught in "what do we do about this" land, instead of letting the evolution of the internet(s) continue on its journey.  Just watch the diaries here.  Every day there are diaries touching hundreds of different topics.  We have long drawn out conversations concerning YouTube footage from Al Jazeera or the BBC.  We have rumors spouted then later disproven or proven.  We have political commentators, health and wellness commentators, business commentators, science commentators, history commentators, we even have a writer teaching others how to write and get published.  And we've all seen offensive comments, pointed them out, trolled them told the commenter that "we're better than that."  That is what should have happened to this guy.  He should have been rebuked on the forum in which he posted.  He should have been forced to defend his words or apologize..  Either way it would have saved everyone a big headache and would have saved him a future legal bill and possible jail time.  All because a joke was misconstrued by the wrong people.

Something I come back to over and over:  "9-11 changed everything."  Bullshit.  9-11 didn't change my life.  It didn't change what I do for work.  How safe I feel in my home (safe from terrorists, not safe from govt intrusion).  Or how I view the world in general.  The only people that changed on 9-11 were the people directly affected by the attack, victim's family members, DC and NYC residents, people who already had a fear of flying.  Most of us were pissed.  Most of us were ready to go get Osama, dead or alive.  We all felt bad.  We all donated our money or our prayers or both to the funds set up to help the victims families, show FDNY that we appreciated their work, their sacrifice.  But while we did what we could, we moved on with our lives which, despite the govt's claim, remained remarkably unchanged.  

The govt did change, and not a little but a lot.  They turned the USA, land of the free-home of the brave into the "homeland".  George Bush stood on a pile of rubble and claimed that we were going to get those responsible.  We all rallied behind our President, our country.  That was before we saw pictures and video of a dense-looking irresolute chimp sitting in a chair doing nothing after he was told that planes were flying into the WTC.  That was before we heard Bush say "I really don't worry about Osama."  5 years later the people responsible for 9-11 are still alive and thinking up new ways to punish the "west".  5 years later we are still stuck in a war of attrition in a country that didn't attack us, didn't want to attack us, didn't have the capability to attack us.  Yep the govt changed.  It became a blame first regime.  Get Osama...no no let's blame Saddam instead...damn Sunni insurgents...no no it's the Shia death squads...civil war?  what civil war...oh you mean the sectarian violence (civil war)?  Fuck that, it wasn't Osama's fault or Hussein's fault it was CLINTON'S fault for not killing both of them pre 2001.  Mark Foley?  How dare those liberals sit on this information until election season.  (it was a republican who leaked the story)  Mark Foley?  It was a joke the pages were playing.  Damn Liberals.  Damn activist judges.  Damn liberal press.  Damn those damn leftists.  Followed by Fear.  "They want to kill your kids Matt."  "We're in a war for civilization."  "Liberals want to appease the terrorists".  "Liberals are cut and runners".  "American's should go shopping."---no need to be alarmed by 9-11 we'll give you enough fear to keep you voting for 'warriors' who will defend America.  Sidenote:  the defense of America consists of ignoring the 9-11 commission recommendations and building a 700 mile fence along the Mexican border.  It includes underfunding the military with regards to armored vehicles and body armor.  It includes sending PTSD diagnosed troops back to the front.  It includes the use of a backdoor draft to keep troop levels up.  It includes cutting funding to the VA despite the thousands of additional victims who are going to require VA assistance in years to come due to our govts "defense" of the "homeland".

No matter.  What is now important is gutting the Constitution.  Making it legal to detain whoever we want, whenever we want, for whatever reason our president wants and then torturing those detainees by whatever means the president deems as "acceptable".  What matters now is that the punditry (Ann Coulter, Imus in the Morning) can call for the assassination of a president or the beheading of a congressman but a 20 year old can't making a similarly fictional 'threat' without being arrested and charged.

The other man involved in the bet corroborates Brahm's story of the bet and the "threat-off".  Anyone who watched Olbermann last night would have seen his skewering of Homeland Security for giving this story creedence.  

I've always been told that the one no-no was making a threat against the life of the POTUS, even in jest.  But simply put, the times have changed.  How many web forums are there?  Is this really the first time a terror threat has been joked about?  Has nobody ever joked about offing the Prez?  

With all of the online writing forums all subjects are bound to be broached at one time or another.  The govt needs to understand that, just like with porn, even expression that the govt deems undesirable is going to be allowed by the courts.  

There is a problem with "the boy who cried wolf."  At some pt a real threat is going to posted and carried out.  But the simple fact is that fear of possibility is not an excuse to deny freedom of speech, creative expression, or whatever.  Just as with the Muslim cartoons not everyone is going to have the same threshold of acceptance.  While I found some of the cartoons funny and some offensive it is not my place, nor the govts, to say "that's unacceptable."

How do we sift through the info to glean real threat from hoax?  No idea.  But if we have to endure the punditry's over the top statements while the govt looks away then the govt can also forgive us for our errors in judgement.  

The man questioned did not appear to have any ties to terrorist groups, according to the official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

No shit?  A 20 year old grocery clerk in Wisconsin has no ties to terrorist groups?  Hmm, who coulda guessed?  I wonder how many Gitmo Hotel residents have no ties to terrorism but sit incarcerated regardless.  Because Bushco is focused on the obvious hoaxes they are going to miss the real threat.  Within a short time the NY "subway threat" was exposed as a fraud.  This was exposed as a hoax shortly after it was reported (by everyone but the feds)--which Olbermann joked about.  How many times has the terror threat been raised?  How many times has anything happened?  There is no pt in having a threat meter if it is only raised during election seasons.  No pt to Homeland Security at all if they can't get anything right.  I think it was on either the Daily Show or Colbert last night:  "We have another plan for Iraq and we now have a plan to rescue survivors of Katrina." (not sure of source)  The level of ineptitude with this govt is staggering but at least we got the kid who made the "threat".

Memo to all Kossacks, watch the "I wanna kick Bush's ass" comments, you might be taken seriously.

And yeah, yeah, I know the kid should've exercised better judgement but to my mind he should have the freedom to write what he wants.  Writing or orating an idea does not a terrorist make.  Without action the idea is just an idea.

Basically the word freedom has no meaning if freedom has a boundary.  If it's ok for a comedian or pundit to say whatever they want, no matter how outrageous or inflammatory, then so should the rest of us.

Good day.  Please correct whatever is wrong in your comments and I'll take note and apply the corrections as soon as possible.  I'm a lazy proofreader and I do apologize.  Especially with regards to this diary's non-linear form.  I apologize for bouncing around so much.  Now I'd better get back to work. *UPDATE* Additional link to News story stating that the two had posted threats as many as forty times. What gets me is

"These types of hoaxes scare innocent people, cost business resources and waste valuable homeland security resources. We cannot tolerate this Internet version of yelling fire in a crowded theater in the post-9/11 era," Christie said.

And that is baloney. A short investigation would have revealed the names of the two, just as it did when the story broke. The story could have been discredited before it became news. What is happening is once again the DHS has been proven to be totally incapable of finding threats, either credible or fake, without the story first breaking in the media. And now they have to cover their ineptitude by making a mountain out of a hill of indeterminate size and scope. IE, I no longer know where the cut off pt should be in this case. Were it just the one post, then I think he shouldn't have been arrested. But I will now agree that some sort of punishment is warranted now that I know that the goal was to get noticed by someone and possibly cause a panic. They may just be dumb attention hounds but that definitely doesn't excuse 40 attempts to have the hoax noticed.