UK thought police arrest woman for silent prayer

[Gospel]

So, I see the point you are making Bomb, I think. You’re trying to discuss, “honest question, what’s the difference”?

When we say that one shop isn’t selling cakes to gays, we complain that it harms their rights, even though they could go to a shop in the next town (maybe)

When we say that decreased voting booths in certain precincts make the lines too long and therefore it harms voters rights, even though they could have voted absentee.

When we say that Bush creating no-speech zones around his appearences harms free speech, even though they can go behind the fence on the far side of the parking lot to say what they want.


So what’s the difference?

Maybe we should make a chart with a list of examples and why this one harms rights and that one doesn’t. I think people have been trying to fill in those blanks for you, but maybe it’s hard for us all to use previously answered examples when they are hard to all see together. We forget that one’s been answered - or not answered previously.

I’m all for starting a chart; what counts, what doesn’t. What do we (any of us) support and what don’t we and why. That way no one wastes time bringing up something for the 10th time after it’s already been addressed. One can see the answer to “but what about” before just posting the same query again. And one can examine, “well maybe I didn’t defend that one very well.”

Some themes that we’ve seen throughout this thread:

• Unlike the cake maker who is trying to not do business with certain people and saying that’s a matter of “compelled speech”, the protesters are trying to STOP someone else from going about their business. Their “free speech” can happen anywhere and get the message across, but it has to be in this area to force an impact on another person. Free speech does not provide a guaranteed right to force an impact on someone going about their own protected-right business.
• Unlike the removal of voting booths, in fact what makes the removal of voting booths JUST LIKE the bullying outside of the clinic, the attempt is to prevent people from exercising their rights. So both the removal of the voting booths AND the ongoing every other day protests are both violating other people’s rights and the stopping of those two does not harm those stopped.
• Unlike Bush’s rallies, this is in a residential neighborhood and affecting medical clients. The protests are intended to STOP them from going about their rightful business COMPLETELY; to make it so daunting that they don’t get care. Bush still had his rallies, he would have just had to share the media time with another view. But his rallies were not impacted. Moreover he is a public figure doing a public thing.

Simply put, when the government produces &/or enforces laws that doesn't protect the rights of all parties, then they're violating rights.

She can pray in her head outside of those borders? Then her right to pray inside her head wasn't taken away.

So does this mean you're okay with W's having the Secret Service make protesters bug off to his so-called "free speech zones"? They could still say Bush sucks outside of his defined borders so their right to speak out against him wasn't taken away? If they walked around the block and stood in front of McDonald's holding anti-Bush signs instead of where the TV cameras would see them they wouldn't have been arrested, so forbidding them near Bush didn't take away rights? Really?

You’d have a relevant point if Bush protesters were serial harassers with intent to intimidate civilians from accessing some legal service in the UK and creating a long standing disturbance in a specific neighborhood,

But they weren’t, so you don’t. I’d say better luck next time, but that would be an example of hope over experience.

You'd have a relevant point if Gospel had argued she was a serial harasser so her right to pray inside her head wasn't taken away. But he didn't, so you don't. Having relevant points isn't a matter of luck.

This is a Bush VS a local Australian community. Did Bush as the President of the USA ( a public official given a seat in the office by the people) have a constitutional right to prevent the people from protesting in a specific area? I'd so no. Do the people of a local Australian community have a right to request that their government do something about protests in their community? I'd think so. The Australian government seemed to have limited their response in both time and location as a result of listening to the people by giving the locals temporary relief and allowing the protests to presume after expiration. Now if some protesters ruin it again like I've seen happening in America where cities issued curfews due to bad elements of the Black Lives Matters movement, I wouldn't be shocked if they temporarily reinstated the restriction again.

Bush would have been right if the request came from the local community whos rights are being disrupted by protests. But to my knowledge, that's not what happened. What happened was a goofy wanna be cowboy without solicitation used the power of his office against the people.

 

[Gospel]

Loitering would best suit the charge, for standing silently, if you're praying in your head, i.e. just hanging about in a restricted area, for no proper reason - otherwise this sounds quite correct as the title of the thread suggests, being technically a 'thought' crime! I think someone on the thread mentioned test case or something, which it could well be. Thirty thousand plus people signed a petition against the arrest; naturally there would be concern to some, in the sense that other silent thoughts could gradually be added to the list etc..

It would be punishment for thought crime if it only involved thought. Too bad for your argument that there was a whole community of people who sought action from the local government to do something about some protestors disruptive behavior. The crime was encroaching on that temporary relief the government granted the locals.

 

[Gospel]

Look I don't know about Australia but in America there is always a struggle to balance freedoms with protecting freedoms. If I was a dumbass, I'd claim curfews during the Black Live Matter protests that was due to rioting and looting was a blow against the movement itself then cry foul about America being against black people for stopping the riots. That would be incredibly dumb of me right?

There is a line between lawful protests and protests that violate the rights of other Americans. In this case, some Australians didn't appreciate the disruptive behavior of the protesters. And Judging by this lady trying to disrupt a temporary ban rather than spend that time getting her people in check I'm inclined to believe that their protests weren't always on the up and up with the support of leadership.

 

[Rhea]

This is a Bush VS a local Australian community.

FYI this was in England, not Australia.

Judging by this lady trying to disrupt a temporary ban rather than spend that time getting her people in check I'm inclined to believe that their protests weren't always on the up and up with the support of leadership.

It’s worse. She IS the leadership. She’s the director of the organization.

 

[Gospel]

Brain fart. I blame Metaphor for that one.

 

[bilby]

This is a Bush VS a local Australian community.

Australian? Birmingham is about as far away from Australia as it's possible to get without leaving the planet.

 

[Gospel]

...and she declines to accompany the police without arrest, which they offer her as a courtesy, so she is arrested.

People keep claiming this; but that's not what happened. They didn't ask her if she'd accompany the police without arrest -- they asked her if she'd come with them voluntarily. She didn't say she wouldn't come without arrest -- she said "If I've got a choice, then no." Seeing as how they then arrested her and took her away, it would be Orwellian to claim she had a choice -- she was going with them regardless. So her answer was a hypothetical about some alternate universe in which she had a choice; it was not an answer about whether she'd go with them in this universe where she didn't. The police could perfectly well have replied "You don't have a choice.", and then she'd presumably have said something like "So when you said 'voluntarily' you weren't being very honest, were you?", and then the police would presumably have said "Fine. Will you accompany us without being arrested?", and then she'd have said, well, we don't know what she would have said.

Just saw this. She had a choice to go voluntarily or by force. It seems if anything (considering your argument) she misunderstood the officers question because to me it was obvious she was about to get arrested. I saw in another post you mention that perceptions vary based on life experiences and I agree. Because in my world if an officer asks me if I'd come with them voluntarily after confessing to doing something restricted in that area I presume my black ass is about to get arrested. Her response in my opinion was a snippy one that amounts to "If I had a choice to stay then no". She knew damn well that she didn't have a choice to stay because what she was doing there was restricted.

Edit: It's why she went there in the first place!

 

[Bomb#20]

You are mistaken.

But he is correct - restricting a right in a specific location does not take away the right in general. Duh.

You're moving the goalposts. Metaphor didn't say "Either forbidding something in a certain jurisdiction takes away rights in general or it doesn't." He said it "takes away rights or it doesn't." Gospel replied "It doesn't." That's a claim that forbidding something in a certain jurisdiction doesn't take away rights. (Unless it's a large jurisdiction. The "unless part" is based on the qualifier Gospel added. The argument we're discussing is his, so he gets to add qualifiers; that doesn't mean you get to add them too.)

He was quite clearly making a general claim that forbidding something in a certain jurisdiction doesn't take away rights unless it's a very large jurisdiction.

Societies take away rights all the time when someone violates the rules and laws of that society. We have jailhouses and prisons full of such people.

Your bringing that up is an indication that you're okay with the right being taken away; it isn't weighing in on the dispute we were having over whether the right was being taken away.

 

[Bomb#20]

You'd have a relevant point if Gospel had argued she was a serial harasser so her right to pray inside her head wasn't taken away. But he didn't, so you don't. Having relevant points isn't a matter of luck.

The whole point of the PSPO is serial harassment. Thus said harassment is a given.

No. That's not how reasoning works. The circumstance that serial harassment was the motivation for the PSPO does not magically make everything the PSPO prohibits automatically qualify as harassment. She was standing alone at the side of a five-foot-wide sidewalk, blocking no one, approaching no one, speaking to no one, while the clinic she was protesting was closed. She was arrested because the PSPO prohibited doing so, but that this is "harassment" is not "a given". Whether the PSPO overreached and prohibited more behavior than it ought to have prohibited is precisely the point in dispute; you don't get to just sweep it aside by de facto calling your own opinion on the central issue "a given".

 

[Rhea]

The circumstance that serial harassment was the motivation for the PSPO does not magically make everything the PSPO prohibits automatically qualify as harassment. She was standing alone at the side of a five-foot-wide sidewalk, blocking no one, approaching no one, speaking to no one, while the clinic she was protesting was closed. She was arrested because the PSPO prohibited doing so, but that this is "harassment" is not "a given". Whether the PSPO overreached and prohibited more behavior than it ought to have prohibited is precisely the point in dispute;

She was standing alone

• Which, given that there is no reason for anyone to stand alone there, is intimidating. It is stalking.
• Stalkers are usually just “standing alone” also, aren’t they.
• The PSPO is to reduce ro eliminate the ongoing intimidation of the staff, clients and neighborhood

at the side of a five-foot-wide sidewalk, blocking no one,

• Standing in a sidewalk makes it so that two way traffie is blocked. One person must wait while the other passes you.
• Standing in a sidewalk means that anyone walking by must get within arms length of you to pass
• That is intimidating if the person one must get within arm’s length of is a known harasser
• The PSPO is to reduce or eliminate the ongoing intimidation of the staff, clients and neighborhood

approaching no one,

• She is putting herself in a place that they must approach her if they want to do business at the clinic or move about their neighborhood.
• Stalker will also stand in a plae where their victim must “technically” do the approaching so that they can claim they haven’t approached. This is very intimidating - deliberately.
• The PSPO is to reduce or eliminate the ongoing intimidation of the staff, clients and neighborhood

speaking to no one,

• She has been speaking for years. People know what her message is.
• Mobsters do this - standing and looking to remind people what they have said before and reiterate the threat, without speaking. This is vvery intimidating.
• The PSPO is to reduce or eliminate the ongoing intimidation of the staff, clients and neighborhood

while the clinic she was protesting was closed.

• It’s already been pointed out that when the clinic is closed, the staff will still move in and out. In fact, they will always move in and out when it is closed, because that’s what staff do, isn’t it.
• It is extremely intimidating to be the last one out of your closed office and see a stalker.
• The neighbor moves about regardless of the hours of the clinic. And it is extremely intimidating for them to see someone standing around at any hour, demonstating that they are never safe from this group, even at night, when the clinic is closed.
• The PSPO is to reduce or eliminate the ongoing intimidation of the staff, clients and neighborhood

Everything you’ve listed is a known method of harassment and intimidation.
She knows that.
The neighborhood knows that.
The clients and staff know that.
The judge knows that.
The cops know that.

And I think you know that, too.

 

[laughing dog]

You're moving the goalposts. Metaphor didn't say "Either forbidding something in a certain jurisdiction takes away rights in general or it doesn't." He said it "takes away rights or it doesn't." Gospel replied "It doesn't." That's a claim that forbidding something in a certain jurisdiction doesn't take away rights. (Unless it's a large jurisdiction. The "unless part" is based on the qualifier Gospel added.

A charitable interpretation of that reply is pointless hair splitting. You and Metaphor are mistaken- it does not take the right away.

The argument we're discussing is his, so he gets to add qualifiers; that doesn't mean you get to add them too.)

Your attempt to distract from the paucity of reason in your position is duly noted but it failed. The arrogance in telling me what I cannot do is a truly telling touch.

 

[ZiprHead]

He was quite clearly making a general claim that forbidding something in a certain jurisdiction doesn't take away rights unless it's a very large jurisdiction.

Societies take away rights all the time when someone violates the rules and laws of that society. We have jailhouses and prisons full of such people.

Your bringing that up is an indication that you're okay with the right being taken away; it isn't weighing in on the dispute we were having over whether the right was being taken away.

You're absolutely right I agree with that. The woman and the group she heads have abused their rights to the detriment of others who also have rights.

Fuck her.

 

[Bomb#20]

... When we say that Bush creating no-speech zones around his appearences harms free speech, even though they can go behind the fence on the far side of the parking lot to say what they want.

So what’s the difference?

Laughing dog already explained the difference upthread. And even if he hadn't, it would have been obvious -- progressives have been putting what the difference is on full display here for years, in thread after thread. The difference is:

I have no sympathy for this person whatsoever.

Maybe we should make a chart with a list of examples and why this one harms rights and that one doesn’t. I think people have been trying to fill in those blanks for you, but maybe it’s hard for us all to use previously answered examples when they are hard to all see together. We forget that one’s been answered - or not answered previously.

I’m all for starting a chart; what counts, what doesn’t. What do we (any of us) support and what don’t we and why. That way no one wastes time bringing up something for the 10th time after it’s already been addressed. One can see the answer to “but what about” before just posting the same query again. And one can examine, “well maybe I didn’t defend that one very well.”

Knock yourself out. Assuming you aren't satisfied with the "no sympathy" theory, we can use such a chart to test any competing theories anyone comes up with and see which theory better matches the facts. Falsifiable hypotheses are the sine qua non of the scientific method.

For example, here's a competing theory:

Some themes that we’ve seen throughout this thread:

• Unlike the cake maker who is trying to not do business with certain people and saying that’s a matter of “compelled speech”, the protesters are trying to STOP someone else from going about their business. Their “free speech” can happen anywhere and get the message across, but it has to be in this area to force an impact on another person. Free speech does not provide a guaranteed right to force an impact on someone going about their own protected-right business.
• Unlike the removal of voting booths, in fact what makes the removal of voting booths JUST LIKE the bullying outside of the clinic, the attempt is to prevent people from exercising their rights. So both the removal of the voting booths AND the ongoing every other day protests are both violating other people’s rights and the stopping of those two does not harm those stopped.
• Unlike Bush’s rallies, this is in a residential neighborhood and affecting medical clients. The protests are intended to STOP them from going about their rightful business COMPLETELY; to make it so daunting that they don’t get care. Bush still had his rallies, he would have just had to share the media time with another view. But his rallies were not impacted. Moreover he is a public figure doing a public thing.

That's a beautiful theory. But it's a rationalization, a post hoc justification for a judgment made on entirely different grounds, a story believers tell themselves in order to make their own morals look prettier in their own eyes. We can tell by direct observation. The hypothesis that progressives are against forcing an impact on someone going about his own protected-right business, against attempts to prevent people from exercising their rights, and against protests intended to STOP providers and clients from going about their rightful business COMPLETELY -- to make it so daunting that they don’t get each others' respective services, does not match the facts on the ground.

The observed fact is that progressives, almost to a man, are enthusiastic supporters of mass groups of protesters getting in people's personal space, making them run a gauntlet, and intimidating them out of exercising their right to go about their business, when it's a case in which the progressives have sympathy for the protesters, but for the intimidated providers and clients they have no sympathy whatsoever.

Beautiful theory, meet ugly fact.



Left-leaning folks have been organizing mass intimidation campaigns against scabs who are just trying to go about their own protected-right business, and singing songs celebrating the literal physical violence they'll commit if intimidation fails, for about two hundred years. Put that in your chart and smoke it.

 

[laughing dog]

... When we say that Bush creating no-speech zones around his appearences harms free speech, even though they can go behind the fence on the far side of the parking lot to say what they want.

So what’s the difference?

Laughing dog already explained the difference upthread. And even if he hadn't, it would have been obvious -- progressives have been putting what the difference is on full display here for years, in thread after thread. The difference is:

​

I have no sympathy for this person whatsoever.

Maybe we should make a chart with a list of examples and why this one harms rights and that one doesn’t. I think people have been trying to fill in those blanks for you, but maybe it’s hard for us all to use previously answered examples when they are hard to all see together. We forget that one’s been answered - or not answered previously.

I’m all for starting a chart; what counts, what doesn’t. What do we (any of us) support and what don’t we and why. That way no one wastes time bringing up something for the 10th time after it’s already been addressed. One can see the answer to “but what about” before just posting the same query again. And one can examine, “well maybe I didn’t defend that one very well.”

Knock yourself out. Assuming you aren't satisfied with the "no sympathy" theory, we can use such a chart to test any competing theories anyone comes up with and see which theory better matches the facts. Falsifiable hypotheses are the sine qua non of the scientific method.

For example, here's a competing theory:

Some themes that we’ve seen throughout this thread:

• Unlike the cake maker who is trying to not do business with certain people and saying that’s a matter of “compelled speech”, the protesters are trying to STOP someone else from going about their business. Their “free speech” can happen anywhere and get the message across, but it has to be in this area to force an impact on another person. Free speech does not provide a guaranteed right to force an impact on someone going about their own protected-right business.
• Unlike the removal of voting booths, in fact what makes the removal of voting booths JUST LIKE the bullying outside of the clinic, the attempt is to prevent people from exercising their rights. So both the removal of the voting booths AND the ongoing every other day protests are both violating other people’s rights and the stopping of those two does not harm those stopped.
• Unlike Bush’s rallies, this is in a residential neighborhood and affecting medical clients. The protests are intended to STOP them from going about their rightful business COMPLETELY; to make it so daunting that they don’t get care. Bush still had his rallies, he would have just had to share the media time with another view. But his rallies were not impacted. Moreover he is a public figure doing a public thing.

That's a beautiful theory. But it's a rationalization, a post hoc justification for a judgment made on entirely different grounds, a story believers tell themselves in order to make their own morals look prettier in their own eyes. We can tell by direct observation. The hypothesis that progressives are against forcing an impact on someone going about his own protected-right business, against attempts to prevent people from exercising their rights, and against protests intended to STOP providers and clients from going about their rightful business COMPLETELY -- to make it so daunting that they don’t get each others' respective services, does not match the facts on the ground.

The observed fact is that progressives, almost to a man, are enthusiastic supporters of mass groups of protesters getting in people's personal space, making them run a gauntlet, and intimidating them out of exercising their right to go about their business, when it's a case in which the progressives have sympathy for the protesters, but for the intimidated providers and clients they have no sympathy whatsoever.

Beautiful theory, meet ugly fact.



Left-leaning folks have been organizing mass intimidation campaigns against scabs who are just trying to go about their own protected-right business, and singing songs celebrating the literal physical violence they'll commit if intimidation fails, for about two hundred years. Put that in your chart and smoke it.

Using "progressives" and "left-leaning folks" as caricatures and pejoratives makes your post appear more like some right wing wet dream instead of unmitigated tripe.

But hey, you keep being you and pretending that the right to free speech is unrestricted, so that this woman's harassment and intimidation tactics are protected as free speech.

 

[Jarhyn]

The circumstance that serial harassment was the motivation for the PSPO does not magically make everything the PSPO prohibits automatically qualify as harassment. She was standing alone at the side of a five-foot-wide sidewalk, blocking no one, approaching no one, speaking to no one, while the clinic she was protesting was closed. She was arrested because the PSPO prohibited doing so, but that this is "harassment" is not "a given". Whether the PSPO overreached and prohibited more behavior than it ought to have prohibited is precisely the point in dispute;

She was standing alone

• Which, given that there is no reason for anyone to stand alone there, is intimidating. It is stalking.
• Stalkers are usually just “standing alone” also, aren’t they.
• The PSPO is to reduce ro eliminate the ongoing intimidation of the staff, clients and neighborhood

at the side of a five-foot-wide sidewalk, blocking no one,

• Standing in a sidewalk makes it so that two way traffie is blocked. One person must wait while the other passes you.
• Standing in a sidewalk means that anyone walking by must get within arms length of you to pass
• That is intimidating if the person one must get within arm’s length of is a known harasser
• The PSPO is to reduce or eliminate the ongoing intimidation of the staff, clients and neighborhood

approaching no one,

• She is putting herself in a place that they must approach her if they want to do business at the clinic or move about their neighborhood.
• Stalker will also stand in a plae where their victim must “technically” do the approaching so that they can claim they haven’t approached. This is very intimidating - deliberately.
• The PSPO is to reduce or eliminate the ongoing intimidation of the staff, clients and neighborhood

speaking to no one,

• She has been speaking for years. People know what her message is.
• Mobsters do this - standing and looking to remind people what they have said before and reiterate the threat, without speaking. This is vvery intimidating.
• The PSPO is to reduce or eliminate the ongoing intimidation of the staff, clients and neighborhood

while the clinic she was protesting was closed.

• It’s already been pointed out that when the clinic is closed, the staff will still move in and out. In fact, they will always move in and out when it is closed, because that’s what staff do, isn’t it.
• It is extremely intimidating to be the last one out of your closed office and see a stalker.
• The neighbor moves about regardless of the hours of the clinic. And it is extremely intimidating for them to see someone standing around at any hour, demonstating that they are never safe from this group, even at night, when the clinic is closed.
• The PSPO is to reduce or eliminate the ongoing intimidation of the staff, clients and neighborhood

Everything you’ve listed is a known method of harassment and intimidation.
She knows that.
The neighborhood knows that.
The clients and staff know that.
The judge knows that.
The cops know that.

And I think you know that, too.

And that's what the heart of all this cuts to isn't it? She is trying to use "prayer" as a fucking shield against enforcement upon her harassment and intimidation.

This is not something society should accept. It is not something religious folks should accept. It's not something atheists should accept.

Frankly if I can't stand there as she did and respond to the cop "picking my nose" or dancing a twostep" or "meditating quietly", why the fuck should it be any different if I say "praying"?

It absolutely should not.

"Praying" gets to be in the PSPO because "praying" is one of the things that shitheel said she was doing so she could claim she was being oppressed like a Muck Farmer in a Monty Python sketch.

Individuals who do this kind of bad faith rules lawyering as a cover for bad behavior need to absolutely be disabused of the notion that they will get away with it.

When people use the letter of the law against it's spirit, it doesn't make them clever. Instead, it just means that everyone who cares about the spirit of the law will be that much less concerned when someone punches them in the face, and that they will get a good list of those to watch for in the future in those that defend such bad faith.

It's a textbook application of the idea of "bad faith".

 

[bilby]

...this woman's harassment and intimidation tactics are protected as free speech.

This woman lives in the UK, and therefore nothing she does is protected as free speech. She has the right to Freedom of Expression, as set out in Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998; However this is not freedom of speech as it is understood by American law.

It's far from obvious to me that the US experiment with a written bill of absolute rights that underpin all other legislation as part of their national constitution, is a better way to run a country than the British system of rights granted by statute law which are treated as more equal in law to legislation against harassment and intimidation.

In an American court, a legislative prohibition is trumped by a constitutional right; In the UK, the courts have far more leeway to balance the HRA against other laws, and will consider each case on its merits.

Certainly Americans don't appear to be any happier, kinder, or better looked after by their government than the British are.

They do appear to struggle with the concept that their 5% of the world isn't the norm, isn't the standard against which everyone else agrees to be measured, and isn't looked up to by everyone else as a shining ideal towards which they want to strive.

But then, all world powers seem to struggle with that set of concepts, so that's yet another way in which America isn't exceptional.

 

[laughing dog]

The principle of unrestricted free speech is a chimera even in the USA. That is why it is either naive, arrogant or just plain stupid to project that principle as a moral precept or legal principle onto others.

 

[Bomb#20]

But hey, you keep being you and pretending that the right to free speech is unrestricted, so that this woman's harassment and intimidation tactics are protected as free speech.

In the words of the master, "your response is based on a straw man." I did not indicate in any way that the right to free speech is unrestricted, and none of my arguments relied on any such premise. You pulled that out of your ass, apparently in an attempt to set up a false dilemma, a forced choice between on the one hand arresting a person for disobeying an order not to stand alone at the side of a road looking like she disapproves of something, versus on the other hand having no restrictions on speech whatsoever and letting dozens of people block access and mob would-be customers. Your false dilemma is ridiculous and your deliberate attempt to misrepresent my position is unethical.

 

[Bomb#20]

You're moving the goalposts. Metaphor didn't say "Either forbidding something in a certain jurisdiction takes away rights in general or it doesn't." He said it "takes away rights or it doesn't." Gospel replied "It doesn't." That's a claim that forbidding something in a certain jurisdiction doesn't take away rights. (Unless it's a large jurisdiction. The "unless part" is based on the qualifier Gospel added.

A charitable interpretation of that reply is pointless hair splitting. You and Metaphor are mistaken- it does not take the right away.

The argument we're discussing is his, so he gets to add qualifiers; that doesn't mean you get to add them too.)

Your attempt to distract from the paucity of reason in your position is duly noted but it failed. The arrogance in telling me what I cannot do is a truly telling touch.

I didn't say you can't; I said Gospel's justification for doing so doesn't apply to you. Nobody's stopping you from adding them without justification. That you do so anyway doesn't mean you'll be arrested; it just means you're committing intellectual suicide. Nothing new about that.

 

[laughing dog]

But hey, you keep being you and pretending that the right to free speech is unrestricted, so that this woman's harassment and intimidation tactics are protected as free speech.

In the words of the master, "your response is based on a straw man." I did not indicate in any way that the right to free speech is unrestricted, and none of my arguments relied on any such premise....

Methinks you doeth protest to much. Your arguments are based on assumptions that were pulled out the ass of conservative reporting. Assumptions that members of your ideological tribe gladly ate up.

The woman was not arrested for silently praying, not matter how many times your repeat that false claim. Your "arguments' (such as they are) do appear to rest on the notion of unrestricted free speech. But at least you now admit that the freedom of speech (like any other right) has restrictions. That is a step towards rational discourse.