You can be arrested for bad thoughts

An Oak Creek High School teacher has been arrested after authorities said he posted comments online in a debate about teacher salaries, saying the Columbine High School shooters were heroes.

James Buss, 46, of Cudahy, was arrested Thursday by West Bend police and released after posting $300 bail. He has been suspended from his job. He could face criminal charges.

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Could face criminal charges for posting offensive comments? Do we arrest people now just because they might at some point have to face criminal charges?

And those criminal charges would be related to offensive comments?

Outrages like this are becoming more common. While Buss's comments may have been inappropriate, arresting someone for praising criminals is fundamentally wrong and is more offensive than his praise of the Columbine killers.

We have to protect offensive speech. That's why we have the first amendment. Those protections were added to our most important national document to protect the unpopular and offensive. Popular and politically correct speech doesn't need protection. The unpopular statements need to be protected.

Buss deserves a large settlement from the department that had him arrested. Elected officials who approve the arrest of people who simply post their thoughts on line need to be recalled or voted out of office.

I'm afraid it won't be long before something like this would be considered subversive and arrestable:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.