No one is quite sure what the effect of social media is.

But I am sure that one effect of social media caused Ravi to turn down a reasonable plea offer that would have given him 6 months probation, no jail time and several hundred hours of community service.

He was guilty of spying, period. The bias stuff is "thought crime," pure and simple. If we allow the Left to continue to criminalize attitudes, then we are truly sunk.

And I vote to simply deport him. Non-citizens who can't behave themselves while on our soil need to get the boot.

Social Media - where are you now?

No social media or surprise even the Lame Stream Media is reporting ad nasuem about the 22 year U.S. Marine killed on February 1 by a Afghan soldier. Lance Corporal Edward Dycus of Mississippi was shot in the back of the head. The Afghan soldier was turned over to the Afghan authorities by our people.

Thank God that Michael Yon is doing his job to get information like this to the American people.

The Most Intelligent President Ever - especially when it comes to historical facts is also the most inept Command in Chief ever will put his tale between his legs on this one.

Ah... one more thing that Social Media and LSM are not reporting:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/16/executive-order-national-defense-resources-preparedness

The wussy little wanna-be-dictator iin the WH is not getting his way and he is mad at everyone who is against him so he is putting out an Executive Order that puts in him control of things like gas, food, etc. if something nasty emergency takes place. This guy is a piece of crap.

And I will state proudly I WAS NOT STUPID ENOUGH TO VOTE FOR HIM.

on the topic of thought crime, i was where a man was arrested in England this week after he posted racist comments on twitter following the tragic collapse of fabrice muamba during the boltan vs spurs fa cup tie.

Makes you wonder if Orwell is still read in his native country. These people who pass these laws - they don't seem to understand that the cure is worse than the disease.

If you looked at the law broadly you would understand that the cure scales with the disease.

What you are not seeing is the role of plea bargains. This is an example of a case that should never have gone to trial, and it is pretty much 100% the fault of the defense attorney, and the bone headed client who now faces 10 years in jail and deportation.

Personally I blame social media for the bone headedness of the client. I blame social media for all of his actions starting with the spying.

In all likelyhood he felt very much as Ann Althouse says he felt: His personal space was being invaded by some old guy that was going to have sex with his roomate in his room.

So instead of writting/ranting about it in the abstract, with no verifiable evidence, he decided to do investigative journalism, and evangelize his conservative victimhood.

It just keep escalating from there. His desire to push the story blinded him to the emotional impact it might have on his roomate. He was a conservative drama queen.

He should have awakened when his roomate actually commited suicide(probably an emo liberal drama queen), and probably volunteered for a harsher punishment in terms of community service than the prosecutor offered... But instead he decided that he was pressing his moral conviction, and he was prepared to literally make a federal case out of it.

Look make no mistake, the cases you see in the copyright industrial complex, only show you what happens if neither party can reach a sensible resolution on an issue.

In the conservative culture war, Althouse and Rush are the Ayatollah's and Ravi is the suicide bomber.

At this point Ravi is pot commited to an appeal. This is not the point where you say something sensible by urging an appeal. The appeal happens and you drum up conservative anger and "outrage" over "hate crime" laws.

Like the supposed egregious suit against McDonalds, no one bothers to remmember that it could have been settled are one point for $3000.

Some cases have to go to court to get a baseline. It is true that the mediators and moderates have no ideology. They are sort of cannibals upon the radical activists, the hardline negotiators, trial attorneys, table thumpers, drama queens, the "true" conservatives and the "true" progressives.

Of course in terms of the "cure" being worse than the "disease". The position of a Cicero is that you have the disease and the cure backwards. Trial is the disease. The cure is the settlement.

Feminists activitist, or especially democracy activists who set themselves on fire (literally, lets move away from american rhetoric) are beyond help, as is the guy who jumps off a bridge. What you are trying to accomplish in society, will at the very least not acrue to your bennefit.

You simply choose a very painful life, in order to imagine giving a direction to history, or a moral compass to humanity.

Culture warriors! This isn't hate crime legistlation. This is really ideological/activist blindness legistlation. The idea being that you are so driven to make your moral case, that you will collect evidence without regard for distinctions between spying and investigative journalism or the feelings of the other, and that is the legal standard: "Did the other person feel victimized/targeted by your drive to proselytize ideology"?

Ravi and Clementi started out with a moral intuition of being victimized, and when two drama queens get going
it doesn't end until one of them dies and the other gets deported after 10 years in jail.

Three words, John: Strunk and White