If the recipient is another person in that subculture, sure. So, no, screaming "I'll kill you, n00b" during a CoD deathmatch wouldn't be considered a real threat, but sending death threats over Twitter to a journalist or developer would be.

Yes, that's exactly it: preventing someone from making threats is no better than Sharia law.

Anyway, since we're in Crazytown and you're clearly the Mayor, there's no need to keep discussing this.

Would you like to try again, but with a comment that makes sense and is in some way relevant to the thread, rather than just ranting about biatches accusing you of harassment?

I don't know why this got "insightful" points. Let's see... First, the free speech protections in the first amendment have never been absolute: from yelling fire in a crowded theater to threatening to kill someone, there have always been reasonable limits. In fact, no limitation in the Bill of Rights is absolute - we don't allow prison inmates to have guns, you can't practice your human sacrifice-based religion, etc.

Second, this has nothing to do with "a court case between two individuals." See the title, Elonis vs. United States? That's a criminal conviction - Elonis is appealing because he was convicted of a crime. And the government certainly has "influence in a court case" where the government is one of the parties.

At least your signature seems to be correct. So there's that.

This case has nothing to do with whether "rap lyric threats" are free speech, but whether convicting someone for making a threat should require that the accused intended to make a threat, or whether a reasonable person who received the message would interpret it as an intentional threat. The former is very difficult to prove and a simple disclaimer would obviate it: "oh, those were just rap lyrics when I said 'I'm coming to your house this evening to cut your throat, you biatch.' Ha ha ha!"

The wider implication is in the area of cyberbullying and online death threats - if threats are judged from the perspective of a reasonable recipient, rather than the intent of the sender, then the "oh, everyone makes death threats online, they'd never follow through" defense fizzles away.

Leik speeling or grammatical?

(i) Announces self as male;
(ii) Admits self lacks knowledge in a particular field;
(iii) Makes wild generalizations anyway.

There's a reason they call it "mansplaining", y'know.

... unlike the grand jury proceedings, in which just the prosecutor presents inculpatory evidence and asks for an indictment. Or at least, that's the normal system. Here, the prosecutor didn't even ask for charges, meaning you had no one who was adverse to the cop.

Now you're lying about what I said, even though everyone can just scroll up and read it? Wow. Unbelievable. I never said that "the documents don't include the testimony of eye witnesses" and you know it, which is why you don't even use a quote here, even though Slashdot has a big ol' "Quote Parent" button. It's amazing.You actually think that you can get away with bullshiat like that?

What I actually said was that the documents don't include what you claimed, which was - and here I provide an exact quote, because I'm not a lying piece of shiat like you:

Those are your words. And my words were:

I never said that there were no eyewitnesses. I said that there aren't 7 of them saying what you claim they're saying. Instead, there are actually a bunch of eyewitnesses that say things very different from what you claim they said, including that Brown was surrendering. Heck, one eyewitness says that the cop shot him execution style in the head at point blank range. That's a far cry from what you're claiming.

Anyways, your misrepresentations of the witness testimony aside, you've now been caught in such a complete and obvious lie over just these last few posts that no one could possibly believe anything you write here, so I think we're done. Goodbye, hypocritical, lying troll.

Nice try moving the goalposts there, but everyone can read this thread and see that, no, we're not talking about whether or not a judge oversees the panel. You called the evidence that was shown to the jury "the judge's published material." That's incorrect: no judge ever had a hand in creating it.

You're now claiming witnesses don't exist? After you started off claiming there were 7, six of whom were African-American? You can't even keep your own story straight.

Maybe if you spent less time ranting and more time citing page numbers in the testimony to support your accusations of lying, you'd have some credibility here. But as long as you keep responding to "where's the support for your claim" with "it's out there! Somewhere! Shut up! Liar!" people will keep considering you to be a hypocrite and a fool.

The summary is so off-base that it's in the "not even wrong" category:

Yes, that's true.

Well, yeah, that quote is in the article, but it's not in response to the question "can renewables be cheaper than coal".

No, because you're answering the wrong question.

Let's go back to the article:

There's the quote in the summary, and those bolded sentences are what it's referring to. Not "can renewables be cheaper", but "even if we switch to renewables, can we significantly reduce CO2". And from the sidebar with the two graphs:

While nuclear may be a fine technology, it doesn't "pull CO2 from the atmosphere and store it". So, no, Subby, nuclear is not the answer to the question they were asking either.

That's good, since, y'know, there was no judge involved. Apparently I've given the materials a much better glance than you have.

And you're wrong. I'm suggesting, based on your incorrect assertion that a judge was involved in this, that you've never even looked at the materials and are just regurgitating what you (mis)heard at the press conference, and are now calling everyone disagreeing with you a liar.

You say I know where the testimony is and that I'm "pretending" that I can't find it? Bullshiat - you're the one who's claiming it exists. Cite some page numbers. Otherwise, you're no better than someone claiming they proved the existence of God while insisting that everyone else is lying about not being able to see the evidence (that you're unwilling to discuss).

And your evidence for this is...?
I asked for that evidence, and you were unable to provide it and instead called me lazy and accused me of ad hominems. How do we know that you're not spreading false information on purpose? You know, deliberate deception. Lying.

You made very specific and explicit claims about the documents. I looked through them and saw nothing to support those claims. So I asked you for support. You have now repeatedly failed to support your claims, and instead just pound the table with your name calling. Why? Since there are all sorts of searchable, link-able documents, why do you repeatedly decline to provide any specific citations that would support your claims? Is it because you know they don't exist? Is it that you hope to throw thousands of pages of documents at me, hoping that I won't look through them all, because you know that nowhere in those thousands of pages are support for what you're saying? If that's true, wouldn't that be "deliberate deception" or "lying"?

You make a claim; I ask for support; you start demanding to know why everyone doesn't immediately accept you at your word and how therefore everyone else must be liars and not you... And you think that that helps your credibility?

No, frankly, I don't know how anyone could ever trust anything you say, if simple questions asking you for citations are met with angry ranting and name calling.

Regardless of how one feels about the outcome, this much is apparent. Normally, prosecutors go to a grand jury and ask for specific charges, and present only inculpatory evidence (i.e. evidence that points towards the likelihood that a crime was committed). The prosecutors are under no requirement to present exculpatory evidence (i.e. that points away from guilt), and can even present only witness testimony that supports the charges while suppressing witness testimony that undermines the charges. This is considered fine, because (i) grand jury indictments are a low bar, (ii) that exculpatory evidence will be presented at trial, and (iii) theoretically, a reasonable jury could find all of the exculpatory evidence non-credible and inculpatory evidence credible and vote to convict so there's no need to show the potentially non-credible exculpatory evidence to the grand jury when determining mere probable cause.

That's normally. Here, the prosecutors didn't ask for any charges, and simply put all of the various contradictory testimony before the grand jury. It's not surprising that they returned with no indictment.

You can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, but you have to at least ask them to indict. Simply serving them lunch doesn't qualify.

It's a little hypocritical that you accuse me of an ad hominem, considering that I replied to your post repeatedly calling someone a liar based only on hearsay, no?

And, it's also hypocritical that you call me lazy when I ask you for citations of the very explicit claims you made - 7 witnesses, 6 of whom were African-American, all agreeing on a specific story - and you then link to... all the evidence, including the evidence which contradicts your claims.

Let's be clear here - it's not an ad hominem to point out that you're being a hypocrite, because you clearly are. It's also not an ad homimen to ask that you provide support for your claims before you call other people liars. It is an ad hominem to call someone lazy or say that they "don't like facts" when you haven't provided any such facts, simply to cover your own hypocrisy.