Don Lemon arrested for the church invasion
You may or may not agree with the FACE Act (1994), but it’s pretty clear that Lemon and the other activists in the Minnesota church invasion violated it. Leftists are perfectly fine with the Act’s application to anti-abortion activists, but apply it to those who harass churchgoers and the left’s not so happy.
Especially if the person is Don Lemon, who says he was just there as an observing reporter:
Presumably, the DoJ got an indictment from a grand jury, the only practical option open to them at that point. If so, it certainly didn’t take long to get, and underscores the point that they should have probably tried that first. …
Lemon has hired Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell to represent him, and Lowell is already all-in on the First Amendment defense …
However, this defense is a loser for several reasons, the first of which is that Lemon wasn’t the only party to this incident that had First Amendment rights at stake. The First Amendment protects the right to freedom of religious expression, the core of which is the right to worship in one’s own church in peace. Even people claiming to be journalists can’t interrupt worship services and demand impromptu “interviews” with the minister or celebrant, especially inside the church on private property. Lemon filmed himself preparing with the instigators outside before invading the church, and his “interview” consisted of demanding answers to the instigators’ claims and demands.
Next up, the criminal statutes involved do not have “journalist” exceptions. Neither the FACE Act nor the Ku Klux Klan act allow for disruption of church services for the purpose of “journalism.” …
As for Lemon’s thirty years in journalism, that’s irrelevant to the crime at hand. If a journalist is dumb enough to commit a crime on video, that doesn’t automatically transform itself into a news report. Lemon filmed himself actively conspiring to invade a church for a protest in violation of both the FACE and Klan Acts, and then participated in the act by buttonholing the pastor and harassing him while his co-conspirators terrorized the rest of the congregation.
Seems pretty straightforward to me. But the left is really into the elevation and expansion of the right of freedom of speech over everything else when it’s their “speech” that’s involved.
Yay! Even if Lemon weasels out of this somehow, it will have a deterrent effect.
For the encouragement of others.
And here I thought Christmas was over!!
Good for the goose.
Good for the gander.
Lemon finds out.
What it’s like
In the slammer.
One can hope.
Finally a big fry instead of more small fry. Yeah, he’ll walk, but it may make other celebs think twice.
I’m waiting to see what judge gets the case. This is a slam dunk case. If an activist judge interferes with justice being served, it should be appealed all the way to the S.C.
Given Don Lemon’s sexual preferences, he should be quite the thing in prison.
That’s why it’s called the slammer?
Seriously, I’d been told told it’s the cell door loudly being shut. What, were you raised in a barn?
Lemon is a hard fella to like.
Jeez, what a weird moral fantasy he had that he and his conspirators were riding with Rosa Parks when she refused to move from the front of the bus where the white folks sat.
That seems to be a very different matter from barging into a church, disrupting the worship service, verbally confronting people and frightening children.
But how to explain it to the many self-righteous people like Don Lemon.
HARASSING PEOPLE IS NOT SPEECH, especially in a religious service. I do not want to hear any bullshit about “conflicting 1st Amendment claims” with regard to this. Even the Westboro Baptist psychos stayed outside on the sidewalk and that case may have been wrongly decided IMO
Let me guess huxley. Rosa Parks did not scream at the other passengers that they were all “privileged white racists”. Am I right?
When we first learned about the Rosa Parks incident, we were fed an image of a normal (average?) black working woman who had just had enough of the racist nonsense and was no longer going to comply with the local rules/laws/ordinances about bus travel “etiquette”.
I now understand that she was coached or trained to resist in a firm but civil civil-rights way as part of a planned protest campaign.
She was basically a trained protester or instigator, but not an insurrectionist. I am not sure which version is better from a PR or a legal perspective, but I gather she accomplished her goals in the context of a “peaceful protest” setting the stage for a wider public demonstration.
@R2L:She was basically a trained protester or instigator
She was an employee of the NAACP and was selected to be a sympathetic victim. Other black women in Montgomery had done what she had done before her.
Even in the days when protesting could be dangerous to people who actually WERE peaceful, there was a lot of astroturf.
She was an employee of the NAACP and was selected to be a sympathetic victim.
==
An officer in the local chapter. Doubt she was paid a salary.
Today all the bus passengers would be holding up their phones.
To be fair I don’t have a problem with the NAACP chosing a specific individual, given that individual was going to attract a fair bit of attention, scrutiny and probably harrassment as the case went through the courts.
I’d really only have a problem if the NAACP had both Rosa Parks and the bus driver on the payroll.