Before we all get carried away with our emotions, I would like to open with a reminder of the Fighting Words Doctrine.  You do not have unlimited freedom of speech.  Words that threaten physical harm are an assault.  If someone says that they are going to kill you - given the context - you have the right to kill them back first.  That's the law.

In a post for Bloomberg View, former Reason editor Virginia Postrel wrote: "Los Angeles legal blogger Ken White has obtained a grand jury subpoena issued to Reason.com, the online home of the libertarian magazine I edited throughout the 1990s. The subpoena seeks information about commenters who posted in response to an article by the site’s editor Nick Gillespie about the letter that Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht wrote to Judge Katherine B. Forrest before she sentenced him to life in prison without parole."

I was not clear on how a "legal blogger" could obtain a subpoena.  It sounded as if the blogger, as a lawyer, knew how to do something most citizens do not.  In fact, Ken White blogs as Popehat and he obtained a copy of the subpoena.  He posted it to his WordPress content archive and you can get it here:

http://popehat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Revised-Grand-Jury-Subpoena.pdf

The prosecutor's job is what it is.  He does not make the laws; he just enforces them.  That said, he has been an aggressive prosecutor of business executives.

His office has prosecuted people worldwide and has prosecuted nearly 100 Wall Street executives. His office reached historic settlements with the three largest banks in the US and has brought down many City and State politicians including the speaker of New York State Assembly. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preet_Bharara

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 6/13, 6:26am)

Quite right, Luke.

The prosecutor's job is what it is.  He does not make the laws; he just enforces them.  That said, he has been an aggressive prosecutor of business executives.

If he is being selective in his prosecution, then he violates his duty (and does so in a cowardly fashion).

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 Marotta wrote:

...I would like to open with a reminder of the Fighting Words Doctrine.  You do not have unlimited freedom of speech.  Words that threaten physical harm are an assault.  If someone says that they are going to kill you - given the context - you have the right to kill them back first.  That's the law.

I'm not sure what the law is - it may vary from state to state.  And I'm sure that Supreme Court decisions have set some guidelines for courts.  But we should always start with moral rights, then go to constitutional rights and only get to statutory after that.  

We do have a moral right to unlimited freedom of speech.  When someone says they are going to kill you (given a context where it is believable) then it is the threat to initiate force that is a violation of the victim's individual rights - not the speech.  To be a violation of an individual right it has to prevent choice.  That can only be done by the initiation of physical force, the threat to initiate physical force, theft or fraud.  Words from someones mouth (or words on a paper or text on a screen), alone, cannot prevent us from acting on our own choices.  It requires that a reasonable person would believe that an initiation of physical force has been threatened and that the threat is believable.  The fact that states or courts may write laws in ways that fail to reflect the underlying moral rights is to be expected given the philosophical ignorance extant.

Those of us who are not philosophically ignorant should always remember the difference between legal and moral rights, that the former must always derived from the latter, and that the only way to violate a right requires the initiation of force, threat to initiate force, fraud or theft. And in this case, the freedom of speech IS unlimited.  It takes more than speech to make a threat to initiate force and it is the threat that should be targeted, not the words - they are only a chosen delivery vehicle for the threat.