Arrested for Blogging in Maryland

We read:

"Yesterday, blogger Aaron Walker, aka “Aaron Worthing,” was arrested for his blogging critical of Brett Kimberlin, a convicted domestic terrorist known as the “Speedway Bomber” who has become a progressive activist.

As detailed by David Hogberg and Patterico and here, Kimberlin was able to convince a technologically illiterate judge that Walker’s blogging was incitement and violated a “peace order” Kimberlin had previously obtained against Walker.

Unless there are additional, as-yet-undisclosed reasons for Walker’s arrest, it was blatantly unconstitutional, as Eugene Volokh explains here.

Walker was released late yesterday afternoon, but an equally unconstitutional order barring him from, among other things, blogging about Kimberlin for the next six months further remains in effect.

Many of those commenting on these events have cast the dispute in ideological terms, as Walker is a conservative blogger and Kimberlin is a progressive activist.

Yet, as Popehat explains, the real issue here is the threat to free speech that Kimberlin’s tactics represent — a threat that should be of concern without regard to the ideological orientation of the participants.

Source

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Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).