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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   29896 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026

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There's not a "positive" for which anti-ICE can be in the right. Furthermore, ICE is right X% of the time and wrong (1-X%) of the time, whereas anti-ICE is wrong 100% of the time.

That's simply a value judgment that doesn't get us anywhere. Being anti-ICE is only "wrong" when the activity in furtherance of that position breaks the law. You may not like the fact that people are protesting, recording their activity, or warning the community of their presence, but all of these things are both legal and constitutionally protected.

Is it really constitutionally protected to warn a felon of the presence of the police? Like let's say Alice gets a phone alert that a white murderer who killed three black kids escaped from prison. Alice sides with the murder because she's a white supremacist. Alice later sees several police cruisers on a nearby street. Worried that her favorite convict is nearby and will be returned to prison, she starts blowing a whistle and making a ruckus to help the convict escape.

That is constitutionally protected speech?

There's a review on the history of such speech in section 2(a) of this paper.

Ok, but the standard is Brandenburg and Brandenburg says you can't incite imminent lawless action. Evading the police is lawless action, and alerting criminals to police is inciting them to flee.

In your example Alice isn't inciting lawless action, the murderer is going to try to escape regardless. At best, she's aiding or facilitating it, which isn't squarely covered by Brandenburg.

If you care to read the section aptly titled The Existing Crime-Facilitating Speech Cases is a fairly comprehensive survey of cases on it.

Is a posted lookout for a robbery not committing a crime because them alerting the thieves is protected speech?

OTOH blinking your brights to warn of an oncoming speed trap is.

So much here depends on the analogy chosen.

How about something closer to the bone then? Say I'm in the employ of an outreach organization that everyone knows is run by the mob but technically isn't and my job is to follow around cops and loudly broadcast their position to the general public. The organization also just happens to deploy my services around the time when mob activity is supposed to be going on. In fact they assign me to a particular street corner and instruct me to just wait until a cop car comes by and start work then. Is this protected speech?

Seems like a strong case that this is part of a conspiracy and not protected (see 2(b) of the article) -- at least on that fact pattern.

Then again, if some kids in the hood do whistle whenever the cops pulled up and some other guy does buy them fast food, it's gonna be hard to actually make that case.

The other part wrestled with in the general case is when there is dual-use speech, which again, depends on the fact pattern.

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