rgrokelley wrote:He is an 9-11 truther. He has odd beliefs. So what. That is apples and oranges to this case. The last I checked, different beliefs and conspiracy theories are not grounds for being "detained" because you do not want the police searching your house without a search warrant.
If his house was searched without a warrant, or without proper and DOCUMENTED CONSENT, then he has an ironclad case and grounds for a lawsuit, which he will win by a landslide.
rgrokelley wrote:There were no specific threats to others by this Marine. Nada. There were no threats of harming himself, also Nada.
Really? Have you gone and read his posts? The premise of an involuntary commitment is not only a harm or danger to yourself, but others as well. It wasn't just one thing that triggered his detention. It was a host of things.....things he was repetitious about and emphatic of the same. Not one person I know of (And I have many) that has opposing views of the government has ever been detained for expressing those views or arrested. This guy took things too far. His OWN WORDS and postings made himself stand out, not anyone else, as someone who was a potential threat against those he perceived as an adversary. It doesn't matter how corrupt you may think someone is, you have no right to sit in judgement and carry out sentence of the same. That's why, as a society, we are a nation of laws with an expectation of good order and discipline.
rgrokelley wrote:The reason that Virginia owes him an apology is because what they did was wrong. Plain and simple. It does not matter if he has bullshit ideas or not.
Hate to differ with you, but it does. VA, just like NC, has a duty to investigate and protect the public from harm, potential, imminent or active. Raub's platoon leader in Iraq, described Raub as "an excellent Marine" but added that he had been alarmed by his recent behavior.said he was disturbed by his recent fixation with conspiracy theories and that his political beliefs had become both extreme and violent.
I look at it this way. If I hear a woman screaming from the inside of her house next door, do I blow it off and figure "Ah, that's their business and none of mine" or do I do something about it? Who's to say his own friends weren't the ones who made a call about it? And if it was one of them, is anyone is going to disclose it or who it was? It doesn't matter whether Raub was a stellar Marine and a Veteran. I wouldn't care if he was an MOH recipient. If you are going to do harm, or exhibit the potential of doing harm, if its me, or someone I care about, or an innocent bystander, you're going to be held accountable, either before you become a threat or are a threat. Plain and simple.
His own PL, a man who clearly knows him better than any of us, went as far as to say this:
"Knowing the man that he is, I believe that he fully intended to act on the threats he was posting," Lawlor wrote. "We may never know, but the fact that law enforcement intervened may have kept Brandon from doing something extremely destructive."
There's nothing wrong with being patriotic and patriotism. I hate injustice as much as the next guy. I have taken away the freedom of people who acted contrary to the law, for whatever reason. Felt damn good about at times. And when it was someone I knew, damned hard, and gave me reason to question why at nights, and second guess myself. In the end, I wasn't left a choice, that decision was already made for me, by him. And in Raub's case, the same applies. Again, the man was DETAINED, not arrested. Everyone sees someone in cuffs and automatically comes to a conclusion he's under arrest, the media goes into a frenzy and so does everyone else. It's for that very reason, prisoners who go to a trial by jury, are NOT handcuffed in court. It's to ensure undue influence is not made of a persons guilt or innocence by the jury seeing a person cuffed up.
Many are saying it was a result of Big Brother snooping on his posts and then swooped in to get him. When they really don't know for a fact, how his questioning came about, or what started everything in motion. Maybe his thought process changed after he had a trigger point ignite a fire from within and he decided "You know what? Enough is enough" And things began to spiral from there. There's a pattern of his postings that clearly identifies exactly that, and was escalating himself into something further. How far we may never know. That's the entire crux for my stance. You, I or anyone else for that matter, knows how far he may have taken this.After reading his posts, the Feds had every right to question him and the courts, within its authority to have him get a check up from the neck up.
Had Timothy McVeigh had access to FB and other social media, and used it, who's to say Oklahoma City might have never happened?
Bottom line is if your views are that extreme (And by all accounts from what I've read with my own eyes, they were) and then, you draw attention to yourself by posting it on public media for the whole world to see, then you should also have every expectation of receiving a visit. I know I am not popular based on the 50 pages of Google entries all but stating the "Government this, liberty that, a hero was arrested and so on going against me. Same thing on FB. I've never been about winning a "Popularity Contest" so, feel free to think of me as you will. That's your God given right to do so and should you choose, your right to express openly.
There are those who see this case as an injustice and a form of tyranny by the government. On the surface, I'll admit, it does. But in the FWIW department, if an expression is made repetitiously, it is perceived to be true. And after enough time has passed, perception becomes reality. And reality becomes a truth, no matter how flawed the original thought or intent might have been. In closing, for the record, know this. If I ever feel that the (My, yours and our) government has betrayed us and prepared to carry out an enslavement of a free society, and we are then, no longer a nation of laws, then I will act accordingly. Until then, we can agree to disagree, but not to the extent of unreasonable acts in order to change what we perceive and not current reality. And by all means, I will never stand in the way of anyone expressing their thoughts and ideas. Post anything you'd like. Raub is once again a free man. He has every right to do the same. As for me, I kinda tend to choose my thoughts and words I post carefully. I don't particularly care for uninvited guests or unexpected company.
