Teacher institutionalized over sci-fi novel, and a man gets life in prison for buying weed

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/in-cambridge-md-a-soviet-style-punishment-for-a-novelist/379431/

http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/02/opinion/vanita-gupta-marijuana-life-sentence/

GameboyRMH wrote: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/in-cambridge-md-a-soviet-style-punishment-for-a-novelist/379431/

Two notes... 1. Eastern shore explains a lot. 2. I smell a big lawsuit.

And yet the men destroying our country remain at large!

Uh, he was jailed for trafficking. Way to spin that tale though (insert roll-eyes here). Ya, 7 lbs of weed for "personal use" right?

Also, people who focus on the money being spent are ignorant idiots. You don't "not enforce the law" because its hard. (facepalm)

I would not want my kids to be taught by someone who thought it was cool to write a book about mass murdering of kids, even if fiction. That is not an unreasonable thing.

1988RedT2 wrote: And yet the men destroying our country remain at large!

And in-charge!

HiTempguy wrote: I would not want my kids to be taught by someone who thought it was cool to write a book about mass murdering of kids, even if fiction. That is not an unreasonable thing.

Suppose I was to have you hauled off and "evaluated" for not wanting your child taught by him? Afterall - you both broke the same number of laws.

7lbs is a nutty amount of weed, but all he did was buy it. Buying a truckload of weed with written intent to traffic is not worth life in prison IMO.

Maybe I'd have to be a parent to understand why a teacher who writes stories involving fictional mass child murder is bad.

GameboyRMH wrote: Maybe I'd have to be a parent to understand why a teacher who writes stories involving fictional mass child murder is bad.

Or the sort of person who read Fahrenheit 451 and thought that the easier way to get a dystopian future would be to make authors of books fearful of what they wrote. It saves big on all the "firemen" salaries.

HiTempguy wrote: I would not want my kids to be taught by someone who thought it was cool to write a book about mass murdering of kids, even if fiction. That is not an unreasonable thing.

There's a big leap from your preference to having someone involuntarily submitted to a mental health exam and held in an undisclosed location against their will.

Land of the free, indeed.

In reply to Gameboy and HiTempguy: in the USA we have a little thing called the First Amendment of the Constitution , and that Constitution also requires due process of law. These things cover all of the USA, except, seemingly, Dorchester Co. MD.

I hope the people responsible are sued into oblivion. It's a terrible shame that tax payers will be paying for their defense.

HappyAndy wrote: in the USA we have a little thing called the First Amendment of the Constitution , and that Constitution also requires due process of law. These things cover all of the USA, except, seemingly, Dorchester Co. MD.

That would be nice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception

HiTempguy wrote: Uh, he was jailed for trafficking. Way to spin that tale though (insert roll-eyes here). Ya, 7 lbs of weed for "personal use" right? Also, people who focus on the money being spent are ignorant idiots. You don't "not enforce the law" because its hard. (facepalm) I would not want my kids to be taught by someone who thought it was cool to write a book about mass murdering of kids, even if fiction. That is not an unreasonable thing.

Write this down: today is the first time Sky_Render has ever found himself agreeing with HiTempGuy.

GameboyRMH wrote: 7lbs is a nutty amount of weed, but all he did was buy it. Buying a truckload of weed with written intent to traffic is not worth life in prison IMO.

It was his third time.

OH NOES not his third time!

Even if those were giant megabricks of weed too...still seems horribly wrong.

Trafficking in illicit drugs- regardless of one's personal beliefs in the good/bad of that drug- does come with consequences. He broke the law. He took his chances. He got caught. He serves the time.

In reply to Will: Border search exception is primarily in conflict with the fourth amendment, and in practice usually applies to federal law enforcement like Customs and the Coast Gaurd. The case of the Sci-fi writing teacher in MD sounds like straight ahead First amendment issues to me. That and seeming lack of due process. Any sensible community would brag about having a published author working in its schools.

Sadly, I am well aware that Big Brother has many work arounds for when the constitution gets in his way.

BTW, those books sound like something that I'd have zero interest in reading, but if a teacher wrote a book like Silence of the Lambs, would he be locked away and acused of cannibalism with no other evidence of crime? If I write a book about a dystopian near future that paints the government in a bad light, should I expect the real government to come knocking on my door and boot me out of my job?

Sorry, I know that was a bit of a rant, but IMO, the First Amendment is this nation's greatest asset. It makes me sad just how ignorant citizens and leaders alike are of its meaning, reach and application.

Sky_Render wrote:

HiTempguy wrote: Uh, he was jailed for trafficking. Way to spin that tale though (insert roll-eyes here). Ya, 7 lbs of weed for "personal use" right? Also, people who focus on the money being spent are ignorant idiots. You don't "not enforce the law" because its hard. (facepalm) I would not want my kids to be taught by someone who thought it was cool to write a book about mass murdering of kids, even if fiction. That is not an unreasonable thing.

Write this down: today is the first time Sky_Render has ever found himself agreeing with HiTempGuy.

Better go arrest and evaluate every teacher who uses Enders Game as teaching material then. Using a child's sociopathic tendencies and naivety to commit genocide is acceptable to the adults of the story. So the teacher must be advocating genocide as an acceptable solution.

I know I'm twisting the theme but let's be realistic, the First Amendment exists and I'd like it to keep existing.

Datsun1500 wrote:

Fueled by Caffeine wrote:

GameboyRMH wrote: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/in-cambridge-md-a-soviet-style-punishment-for-a-novelist/379431/

Two notes... 1. Eastern shore explains a lot. 2. I smell a big lawsuit.

Eastern Shore explains it 100%

As another Maryland resident, I agree.

Guys, I am NOT saying the teacher should have been "arrested" or anything. I am simply saying that if someone found out a teacher of my "theoretical" kids had written this, I would be CONCERNED. So an evaluation of sorts, imo, would indeed be in order. Not a "lock the madman up in the psych ward" kind of deal.

I know I'm probably one of the few, but I don't want the people that are repsonsible for being major role models in my kids life being berkeleyed up individuals, be them strippers, drug dealers, or writing books about mass kid killings.

Vast numbers of books involve murder, drug abuse, prostitution, whatever. Are you really condemning the authors of all such books as berkeleyed up individuals? You're then condemning pretty much every high profile author in history.

In my opinion, writing about something, especially in a published context, has nothing to do with risk of performing that action.

Pretty much, yeah. Some people don't seem to be able to understand 'compartmentalization', my mom is one. She detests Stephen King, says he should be put away. So, we see 'Shawshank Repdemption', it captivated her the whole way through. At the end I ask if she knew who wrote it, she said no and I toild her Stephen King. She sat there with her mouth open, now she won't watch it again.

Sure, there are people who fantasize and then act on terrible impulses. Thankfully they are few and far between. The question is, how do we differentiate between these people before something terrible happens and (as is common) 20/20 hindsight shows 'the signs were there all along'.

I don't pretend to have the answers.

Actually Stephen King wrote a book that does something closer to portraying a school shooting in a positive light (he regrets writing the book now) than this book does (which is a sci-fi murder mystery where the crime is a mass school shooting).

The0retical wrote: the First Amendment exists and I'd like it to keep existing.

good luck with that..... or any other protection you may think you have...

The0retical wrote: Better go arrest and evaluate every teacher who uses Enders Game as teaching material then. Using a child's sociopathic tendencies and naivety to commit genocide is acceptable to the adults of the story. So the teacher must be advocating genocide as an acceptable solution. I know I'm twisting the theme but let's be realistic, the First Amendment exists and I'd like it to keep existing.

I love me some good science fiction, but I would also be concerned if a teacher of my children was using literature written by a Hitler apologist, too. I also never said the teacher should be locked up.

Sky_Render wrote:

The0retical wrote: Better go arrest and evaluate every teacher who uses Enders Game as teaching material then. Using a child's sociopathic tendencies and naivety to commit genocide is acceptable to the adults of the story. So the teacher must be advocating genocide as an acceptable solution. I know I'm twisting the theme but let's be realistic, the First Amendment exists and I'd like it to keep existing.

I love me some good science fiction, but I would also be concerned if a teacher of my children was using literature written by a Hitler apologist, too. I also never said the teacher should be locked up.

The guy's a raging homophobe as well, but you wouldn't know any of that from Ender's Game.