The Star Tribune devotes 405 words on its editorial page to caviling about the moron who dumped glitter on Mitt Romney on Wednesday. He's the same moron who dumped pennies on Tom Emmer. You can read the editorial if you want here.
Lemme boil it down for you. This isn't a First Amendment issue. This guy is assaulting people. There is ample video evidence of his guilt. Arrest him, prosecute him and throw his butt in jail, preferably for a long time.
6 comments:
Amen
Kinda reminds me of a question; when punishing assault, does one predicate the punishment on how hurt the victim is?
Not sure, Bubba. I do know there's a distinction between simply battery and aggravated battery. Assault and battery are technically different things.
Mark,
couldn't agree with you more if I wanted to. The essential elements of assault consist of an act intended to cause apprehension of harmful or offensive contact that causes apprehension of such contact in the victim. If the act produces a true apprehension of harm in the victim, or a reasonable fear of injury, it is assault.
I am pretty certain having a complte stranger run at me, in a crowd, with a bucket full of God-only-knows-what meets the definition. If I don't know what's in the bucket and someone tosses it on me, I am prettty certain I'd have a reasonable fear of harmful contact. Even if the contact isn't ultimately harmful (and BTW, I worked in an Trauma Center for 10 years and actually saw at least three children who had to have their eyes flushed free of glitter, one of whom had scratched corneas... glitter in the eyes certainly can be harmful). I am pretty certain that this passes the test of offensive contact. It's assualt. And it's battery if it makes contacts with it's target.
But beyond that, let's not ignore just how lame this alleged act of political protest is. To paraphrase Austin Powers, who throws a...bucket of glitter? Or a handful of pennies? What was thuis ass-clown "protesting"? And, are we supposed to take someone seriously who thinks throwing glitter at someone else is political speech? Unless your playing basketball aginst the Washington Generals, this is just lame.
Regards,
Rich
Unless your playing basketball aginst the Washington Generals, this is just lame.
LOL.
To answer your question, the guy "protests" all manner of things. The penny incident was supposedly concerning the tip credit for waitstaff in restaurants, which was a momentary issue in the last gubernatorial campaign up here. But in the main, as I'm sure you've figured out, his primary raison d'etre is general purpose attention whoring.
Thanks, Rich.
Now the key issue here is whether the person has a reasonable fear of grievous bodily harm or death, whether the victim can reasonably retreat, whether lesser force will stop the assault, and whether the use of force against the assailant stops when the threat is gone.......
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