Jailed for the crime of sarcasm

James Buss, who teaches chemistry at a suburban Milwaukee high school, is also former president of his local teachers' union.

So one can imagine the attitude with which he approaches a conservative Web site such as www.bootsandsabers.com, where conservative Wisconsinites criticize the amount of tax money spent on the public schools, and the results produced.

Responding specifically to complaints that public school teachers are underworked and overpaid, Mr. Buss posted a comment there on Nov. 16, signing himself "Observer." He stated agreement with the teacher critics, commenting that teacher salaries make him sick because they are lazy and work only five hours a day. He then praised the teen gunmen who killed 12 students and a teacher before committing suicide at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999.

"They knew how to deal with the overpaid teacher union thugs," commented Mr. Buss. "One shot at a time!" Mr. Buss then added that the teen gunmen should be remembered as heroes.

At least one Wisconsin teacher decided he or she had been threatened. Before fainting dead away with fear, this delicate soul managed to phone police in West Bend, 40 miles north of Milwaukee and home of the blog's administrator. The blogger provided police with the anonymous poster's IP address, and police then traveled to Mr. Buss' home in Cudahy, where they arrested him.

The teacher spent an hour in the Washington County jail before being released on $350 bond.

Washington County District Attorney Todd Martens is considering whether to charge Mr. Buss with disorderly conduct or unlawful use of computerized communication systems. Police Capt. Toby Netko defends the arrest, stating that the complaining teacher was disturbed by the comments.

"What happens when you say 'bomb' in an airport?" the police officer explains. "That's free speech, isn't it? And people are taken into custody for that all the time."

Oh, please.

The First Amendment protects the right to say the word "bomb" at an airport. Some depraved zealots may think otherwise, but you can still conduct a full reading of Joseph Heller's "We Bombed in New Haven" while waiting for your flight, if you feel like it.

Given the fact that real life terrorists have blown up real-life airplanes, a supposedly limited exception has been made in airport secured areas, allowing authorities to take action if someone says something like, "I have a bomb in this suitcase." Most Americans agree that makes sense.

If police are now going to extend that limited "no-free-speech" zone wherever they see fit, this is clear evidence that the "limited exception" is no longer being treated as limited, and full free speech rights must be restored everywhere. The reason Americans have always been willing to risk their lives fighting for our form of government is that it is better for some Americans to die than to allow the vital freedom of political expression to be grabbed away.

If Mr. Buss really meant that he believes the young thugs at Columbine -- one of whom had been turned down when he tried to join the Marines due to the fact he'd spent most of the previous year doped up on prescription Luvox -- were admirable characters who should be regarded as heroes, he has every right to say that in America. Arresting and charging him would be an outrage even if anyone believed that's what he really meant.

In America, idiots are also allowed to praise Adolf Hitler, to say Pol Pot was a gentle agrarian reformer, and to condemn Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon for objecting to all the Soviet spies being allowed to run around loose in the Roosevelt-Truman State Department.

Mr. Buss never threatened to harm anyone, even in jest.

Capt. Netko should lose his job if he believes he and his men can arrest a fellow American for making a politically unpopular statement, anonymously or otherwise. When is he going after the guys who made that movie "V for Vendetta," whose hero blows up the houses of Parliament?

And prosecutor Martens should be closely watched, as well.

But on top of that, anyone of average intelligence can plainly see that Mr. Buss' comments were intended as irony. He was ridiculing the positions of the conservative bloggers. He has just been arrested, and now waits to see if he will be criminally charged, for the crime of sarcasm.

We'd like to see that statute cited.

(See what we mean? That was "sarcasm." We don't think they can cite such a statute, because we don't think there is one.)

Yes, in this day and age police must investigate any assertion that someone has posted an actual threat of violence. But most of the time -- and this is certainly one such occasion -- the correct response to such a complaint is, "Sir, it's a free country."

Whether Voltaire ever really said it or not, the time-worn aphorism is apt, here: It's unlikely we would agree with everything Mr. Buss chooses to say. But all Americans should be willing to defend to the death his right to say it.