To\u00a0the editor:<\/p>\n
Florida\u00a0has a new law, HB 1471, dealing with terrorist\u00a0organizations. It raises some serious concerns.<\/p>\n
FYI, I am a card-carrying member of the\u00a0Libertarian Party of Florida (LPF), which believes generally\u00a0that government should get off\u00a0our\u00a0backs\u00a0and out\u00a0of our\u00a0pockets;\u00a0We urge people to\u00a0\u201cLive Free or Die\u201d\u00a0(and to do so peacefully and without violence, thank\u00a0you very\u00a0much).\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Lee affiliate of the LPF holds\u00a0regular meetings at the Crowne\u00a0Plaza\u00a0Hotel\u00a0at the Bell Tower in Fort Myers.\u00a0We send emails to each other and to others. We make phone calls. We write letters to the editor (q.v.). In other words,\u00a0we engage\u00a0in a shameless\u00a0and ongoing\u00a0effort\u00a0to convince others to join our conspiracy.<\/p>\n
Under this new Florida law, should I be concerned about my organization being designated a \u201cterrorist organization\u201d\u00a0by some ambitious prosecutor or some time-serving bureaucrat? Should I anticipate being arrested?\u00a0For that matter, should I prepare\u00a0a \u201cGo Bag\u201d for when they come for me?<\/p>\n
The real point of this letter is to voice concern about the\u00a0scope\u00a0of this law, which enables prosecutors or bureaucrats to come up with fever-driven definitions of what constitutes \u201cterrorism.\u201d I mean, some of the\u00a0letter-writing members of my Party are more ferocious than Patrick Henry himself (He\u2019s the one who said \u201cGive me liberty or give me death\u201d) and their ferocity could really get things going here.<\/p>\n
Our precious First Amendment freedom of expression is at risk here.\u00a0See y\u2019all\u00a0at the Barricades.<\/p>\n
Larry Gillis, Cape Coral<\/p>\n
Director 2, Libertarian Party of Florida<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To\u00a0the editor: Florida\u00a0has a new law, HB 1471, dealing with terrorist\u00a0organizations. It raises some serious concerns. FYI, I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-235223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}