Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joe Kovacs writes in a Sept. 29 WorldNetDaily article:
An Arizona man has filed a federal lawsuit against some of the state's top judges, claiming they're taking away his freedom of speech and right to own firearms, all because someone didn't like what he wrote on his blog.
"You can't suspend someone's constitutional rights [for blogging]," said Mike Palmer, who is bringing forth the legal action. "Everybody in America blogs or Twitters, so it's a First and Second Amendment issue."
The scenario started when Palmer, a 55-year-old Christian missionary from Phoenix, was online discussing "spiritual death" often referred to in the Bible.
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But, according to the suit, a woman from Prescott, Ariz., Melody Thomas-Morgan, complained to authorities that Palmer was threatening her with "death," keeping that word in quotes in her legal filings.
Palmer explains, "It is true that the blog, 'That Woman Jezebel,' talks about spiritual life and spiritual death. ... Spiritual 'death' as in 'The wages of sin is death.' (Romans 6:23) ... It is not true that the blog ever mentions the 'death' of Miss Thomas-Morgan."Kenton Jones, superior court judge for Yavapai County, went along with the woman's harassment complaint and ordered Palmer to surrender his guns.
As Kovacs is wont to do, he fails to report numerous crucial details -- like why a blogger would face having his firearms taken away. Turns out he's an online stalker obsessed with a woman who felt threatened by what he wrote about her. Nor does Kovacs quote directly any of the statements that led to the restraining order being issued against him. (Curiously, Kovacs doesn't use the term "restraining order" to describe what was issued against Palmer.)
According to Thomas-Morgan's statement to the court, Palmer is "close friends and spiritual mentor" to her ex-husband. She writes that Palmer sent her a "sympathy card (for my death, a 'self-inflicted head wound') ... as well as continual letters full of libel against me, sent to my pastor and family members." Thomas-Morgan also states that Palmer "makes sexual references" about her three young children in his blog. She continues:
In the past, Mr. Palmer, when visiting our home (pre-Dissolution), would oftentimes warn me not to make any fast moves around him because he might "accidentially" go into martial arts mode and do a quick chop to my neck and kill me. He also told women in our church that women breast feed for sexual pleasure (personally, never met a one); and told women in the congregation that they sould not wear deodorant because it could cause breast cancer. Obviously, this is NOT normal behavior.
Mr. Palmer's harrassment of me is continuous and must end. None of what he says about me is true. And what he does say about me and my children is harmful and fear-producing.
Kovacs quotes only from Palmer's appeal of the restraining order and does not quote from any other related document in the case, nor does he make any apparent effort to contact Thomas-Morgan for her side of the story.
This is who Kovacs wants to see fully armed -- an malicious online stalker who is trying to destroy a woman's life. This is who Kovacs wants to forward as a Second Amendment poster boy.
WND has a sad history of choosing poster boys whose disturbing pasts they have to disguise in order to make them palatable to their readers.
