Texas Continues to go off the rails

In the case of that guy in Florida getting shot 68 times, I’m actually not finding any fault with the cops at all.
The guy had already shot two cops and a dog, with one of the cops being shot 8 times and then executed with two rounds at point blank range to his head. So the reasonable reaction from police is gonna be to kill this guy if he makes anything even approaching a threatening move.

After you do that, and you raise a gun when surrounded by a ton of other cops? Yeah, you’re gonna get shot many, many times. Not out of revenge, but because each of those cops is gonna fire a few rounds, and those rounds are gonna add up.

I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it. I just think saying “We ran out of bullets” is kind of classic crazy Florida. :)

More on the Jade Helm hysteria. Three men arrested for planning an elaborate scheme where they were going to lure Jade Helm participants into an ambush and then kill them with pipe bombs. Ironically, they were undone when they attempted to buy a rifle for a convicted felon.

Man, this whole thing sounds like a bad movie plot - RED DAWN 3 - This time, they came from within!"

Kind of scary that the max penalty for those guys is only 5 years, given they are clearly batshit crazy and were conspiring to murder people.

Yeah, but the Constitution is pretty adamant that punishing people for stuff that they MIGHT have done is a no-no. These guys might be batshit crazy, or they may just be talking trash and playing weekend freedom fighter as a fantasy. It’s also not clear (at least to me from the article) as to whether they were actually going to murder federal agents/troops no matter what, or only if this wingnut-fantasy “coup” came to pass. It seems like the latter… so except for the buying a firearm for a felon and making illegal explosives, their actions are no different than those of most “preppers”

Huh? I mean, sure, the 8th amendment says no excessive fine or bail, and no cruel and unusual punishment, but is there anything to support the actual claim here?

Well, conspiracy to commit a crime is still a crime. If they were actually planning to murder people, as it seems they were, then that’s illegal.

You’re strictly correct in that the US Constitution doesn’t actually lay out the presumption of innocence in any given article. However, the 5th, 6th and 14th amendments have been widely held as support for the practice. And in this case, charging people for attempted murder when they haven’t actually attempted any murder except as a thought-exercise would not pass constitutional muster.

Not exactly. Caveat: IANAL. Conspiracy isn’t just the planning, you have to take some concrete steps towards the act (which they did in this case by attempting to purchase the gun for the felon and building the explosives). And I’m pretty sure that you have to prove some degree of imminent intention to carry out the plan, not just boastful talk or we’d be locking up Gangsta Rappers right and left.

Again, in this case these guys planned to murder federal agents in the event of a Federal coup where the Obama administration overthrew the sovereign government… of Texas… and declared martial law. Since that is a fantasy scenario that was never going to happen, can you actually charge them with the intent to break the law? If so, then pretty much any “prepper” out there could be charged with conspiracy to commit murder because all their fantasy situations end with them sitting in their spider holes and picking off people who come onto their land uninvited one by one.

Yeah, you’re right about the definition of conspiracy, but I think all of those requirements were clearly met here. In terms of imminent intention, that would have easily been met by the specific declaration that they needed to have this stuff ready by the start date of the Jade Helm event.

To be clear – I’m sort of playing Devil’s Advocate here. I hope the DA can find something to put these guys away for longer than five years.

But ironically, these guys have probably done to themselves exactly what they feared that the Evil Obama Administration was going to do: deprive them of their guns and land.

The fact that they made steps is the big part. Talking shit isn’t something you can generally be prosecuted for, but taking actual steps, including explosives and guns for felons is. Sure the “actual” scenario they were prepping for isn’t real, but they think it is and odds are they would be doing something when the “event” happened.

If I think the police are going to be possessed by demons on the 12th and take steps to destroy them, it doesn’t matter that they wont actually become possessed. I think they will be and plan to go kill a bunch of them. They think Jade Helm is going to happen and would’ve acted when they thought shit was popping off.

Fair enough. But tell me more about this police thing next Wednesday.

Ah, Texas. 14-year-old suspended from school for building a clock.

A high school student in Texas whose hobby was inventing thought he had a unique idea for a project: to build his own clock.

But the effort landed him in handcuffs and juvenile detention, accused of making a hoax bomb.

When Ahmed Mohamed, 14, brought the clock to MacArthur High School in Irving, Tex., on Monday, an engineering teacher suggested that he not show the invention to other teachers. But it beeped during an English class, prompting Ahmed to show his English teacher what it was, according to an account in The Dallas Morning News.

In a video posted on the newspaper’s website, Ahmed described how he was taken from school by the police. “They took me to a room filled with five officers,” he said. “They interrogated me, and searched through my stuff and took my tablet and my invention.”

He was then hauled off to Juvenile Hall, fingerprinted, mog-shots taken, etc. The school suspended him for three days, under somewhat murky reasoning:

“We have no information that he claimed it was a bomb,” Mr. McLellan said. “He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation.

“It could reasonably be mistaken as a device if left in a bathroom or under a car. The concern was, what was this thing built for? Do we take him into custody?”

I can imagine this conversation:

Police: “What is this?”

Ahmed: “It’s a clock.”

Police: “And is it also a bomb?”

Ahmed: “No.”

Police: “You’re holding out on us! WHY is is a clock?!”

Welcome to Ray Bradbury’s “The Pedestrian”. “I don’t understand why you’d do this, therefore you’re under arrest!”

Ah, I didn’t see this before I posted a new thread. The reference to “The Pedestrian” is right on.

Edit: That reminds me of a line in an SF story from long ago. Something along the lines of “An iron-fisted man would be arrested for painting a chair in his own backyard if he didn’t have the right permits”. My 12-year-old self thought that was completely ridiculous, but it actually starts to seem more possible these days. Combine a gradual drift in norms with an ever-present willingness to criminalize anything you disagree with and there you are.

The combination of malice and stupidity is terrible to behold. Everyone involved in this debacle should be fired.

[stuff I said that is wrong]

And the kid should be given first prize in the science fair. To restate the obvious, this is just horrible.