Man Indicted for Using Right to Free Speech

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25818.htm

June 25, 2010 "Reading Eagle" -- This is a story that should be a warning to Americans, regardless of political party, because it dramatically illustrates what pre-eminent civil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate documents in his book, "Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent" by means of the ever-increasing broad and vague federal laws that allow prosecutors to pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, even for the most seemingly innocuous behavior.

Consider what happened to an unemployed American, Bruce Shore, because of e-mails he sent to the Web site of U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky. As reported by Arthur Delaney on huffingtonpost.com, Shore, watching the Senate in inaction on C-Span, was angered when Bunning complained that, gosh, he has missed the Kentucky-South Carolina basketball game because he had to be in Congress to debate an unemployment benefits bill.

"I was livid, I was just livid," recalled the 51-year-old Shore. "I’m on unemployment, so it affects me."

Here is part of his Feb. 26 messages to Bunning staffers: "Are you’all insane. No checks equal no food for me. Do you get it?"

If he'd been threatening, he'd have been charged with threatening him instead of annoying him.

DC prohibits free speech.
(C) makes a telephone call or utilizes a telecommunications device, whether or not conversation or communication ensues, without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person at the called number or who receives the communications;


Statute he's charged of breaking:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/uscode47/usc_sec_47_00000223----000-.html

An email he sent, also older article
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/01/bruce-shore-pleads-not-gu_n_595905.html

Well, not anymore!

If you can't use an electronic device (telephone, email by computer or smartphone) to send complaints to your representatives, since those complaints might "annoy" them, then how are you supposed to petition the government for redress of grievances?

in multiple messages, email and sent messages from the politician's 'contact me' form. However the articles I read don't really say why he's being charged, just states the statute making *me* think they took issue with him not saying who he was correctly, name and location.

Bruce Shore lives in Philadelphia; Philly is not in Kentucky. Shore was pretending to be a constituent of Rep. Bunning.

that makes laws. We should have the right to complain to any of them.

However claiming to be part of their constituency while harassing them - and if you have multiple aliases, you can be pretty sure you're harassing - is where Shore went wrong.