The first victim of NDAA

[ez bake]

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/08/former-marine-detained-after-alleged-facebook-threats/

A 26 year old former Marine has been ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation after being detained for alleged threats he made on Facebook. Brandon Raub, who lives in Chesterfield, Virginia, was detained last Thursday after being questioned by law enforcement about his postings.

“Sharpen up my axe; I’m here to sever heads.” Raub posted to Facebook on August 13, 2012. The post appears to be a lyric from the band Swollen Members and its song “Bring Me Down.”

The case has pitted First Amendment freedoms against potential security concerns. Raub, who served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, was questioned by the FBI, U.S. Secret Service and Chesterfield County Police last Thursday and was then taken into custody by the Chesterfield County Police Department. At a court hearing on Monday Raub was ordered to be detained for mental evaluation for 30 days. Court records on Raub only showed traffic violations. A Facebook group supporting Raub already has over 5,800 supporters.

Sounds like everyone is safe, so it was all worth it...

 

[reddog1]

I feel safer. But why detain him, With the census, drones, and the NDAA, they could have just took him out next time he went to the range with a predator missle, and blamed it on faulty tannerite.

 

[berettaman]

Brandon Raub = Political Prisonor

 

[otis147]

to glean intel from him? can't interrogate a dead man.

 

[Fyrtwuck]

If he's quoting lyrics from a song and they are "detaining" him for that reason, sounds like they are going after the wrong people.

 

[OliverKlohzoff]

Interview with Brandon Raub from inside the psych ward a couple days ago by phone:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX1EvM6XksM&list=UU0RJJ_Wm7jyOU9eY10LgcwA&index=10&feature=plcp

Interview with Brandon Raub's family outside the psych ward:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIlL1pq1Fhc&list=UU0RJJ_Wm7jyOU9eY10LgcwA&index=2&feature=plcp

This type of thing is continuing. A Christian talk show radio host was taken in the same way for stating Christian beliefs and that he though it would be smart to have firearms to protect yourself from the way the country is going. They took him in for 20 hours of psych evaluation, told him to take drugs, report to therapy and turn in his guns.

 

[Street Rat]

Psychiatric evaluation - Sounds like he's being assimilated, probably in room 101.

 

[3inSlugger]

Psychiatric evaluation - Sounds like he's being assimilated, probably in room 101.

Hope there aren't any rats.

 

[Street Rat]

Here is another article:

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/08/21/military-vet-detained-for-psych-evaluation-over-anti-government-facebook-posts/

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - A former Marine involuntarily detained for psychiatric evaluation for posting strident anti-government messages on Facebook has received an outpouring of support from people who say authorities are trampling on his First Amendment rights.

Brandon J. Raub, 26, has been in custody since FBI and Secret Service agents and Chesterfield County police questioned him Thursday evening about what they considered ominous posts talking of a coming revolution. In one message earlier this month, Raub wrote: “Sharpen my axe; I’m here to sever heads.”

Police - acting under a state law that allows emergency, temporary psychiatric commitments upon the recommendation of a mental health professional - took Raub to the John Randolph Medical Center in Hopewell. He was not charged with any crime.

The Rutherford Institute, a Charlottesville-based civil liberties group, sent one of its attorneys to the hospital to represent Raub at a hearing Monday. A judge ordered Raub detained for another month, Rutherford executive director John Whitehead said.

“For government officials to not only arrest Brandon Raub for doing nothing more than exercising his First Amendment rights but to actually force him to undergo psychological evaluations and detain him against his will goes against every constitutional principle this country was founded upon,” Whitehead said. “This should be a wake-up call to Americans that the police state is here.”

Raub’s mother, Cathleen Thomas, said she was not surprised by her son’s plight.

“We’re seeing our government overstepping its bounds again and again on the Constitution,” she said in a telephone interview. “The bottom line is his freedom of speech has been violated. It was his patriotic right and duty to make those grievances known.”

Thomas said her son, who served tours as a combat engineer in Iraq and Afghanistan, is “concerned about all the wars we’ve experienced” and believes the U.S. government was complicit in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. One of his Facebook posts, she said, pictured the gaping hole in the Pentagon and asked “where’s the plane?”

“I want the country to know who he is - that he’s not crazy, he’s a staunch patriot,” Thomas said.



Whitehead said he found nothing alarming on in Raub’s social media commentaries.

“The posts I read that supposedly were of concern were libertarian-type posts I see all the time, so I don’t know what supposedly triggered this,” he said. “I see worse stuff.”

The big concern, Whitehead said, is that government officials are apparently monitoring citizens’ private Facebook pages and arresting people with whom they disagree.

Dee Rybiski, an FBI spokeswoman in Richmond, said there was no Facebook snooping by her agency.

“We received quite a few complaints about what were perceived as threatening posts,” she said. “Given the circumstances with the things that have gone on in the country with some of these mass shootings, it would be horrible for law enforcement not to pay attention to complaints.”

Whitehead said some of the posts in question were made on a closed Facebook page that Raub had just created and that had only three members, so he questioned whether anyone from the public would have complained about them.

“Support Brandon Raub” Facebook pages were drawing significant interest and - along with other Internet sites - had numerous comments from people outraged by the veteran’s detention.

Raub’s supporters are characterizing the detention as an arrest, complaining that he was handcuffed and whisked away in a police cruiser without being served a warrant or read his Miranda rights. But county and federal authorities say it was not an arrest because Raub doesn’t face criminal charges.

Col. Thierry Dupuis, the county police chief, said Raub was taken into custody upon the recommendation of mental health crisis intervention workers. He said the action was taken in accordance with the state’s emergency custody statute, which allows a magistrate to order the civil detention and psychiatric evaluation of a person deemed to be potentially dangerous. He said Raub was handcuffed because he resisted officers’ attempts to take him into custody.

Whitehead said Raub’s only act of resistance was refusing to allow authorities into his home without a warrant. A video of the incident shot by onlookers and posted on You Tube provides no insight because Raub was already in cuffs when the cameras started rolling.

Not that the OP's wasn't good, but this stood out to me.

Raub’s supporters are characterizing the detention as an arrest, complaining that he was handcuffed and whisked away in a police cruiser without being served a warrant or read his Miranda rights. But county and federal authorities say it was not an arrest because Raub doesn’t face criminal charges.

And now he is being detained for almost 30 days. How many more do they need to contain to make an example of? I guess we can throw away our tinfoil hats, because it's happening.

 

[Dave70968]

Dee Rybiski, an FBI spokeswoman in Richmond, said there was no Facebook snooping by her agency.

And, of course, the FBI would never be dishonest or try to manipulate public opinion.