Dadtodabone wrote:cb1000rider wrote:Dadtodabone wrote:
I agree that their activities highlighted some egregious gaps in security ops at Oak Ridge. And they're old...does that excuse what they did? They did trespass, yes and damage property in excess of $1000 X 2, yes, total damage was $8,500. That's 16 years. From the looks of all of them, still a potential life in prison sentence. Even the 35 years isn't a death sentence CB, no one is executing them, it's life in prison, leave the hyperbole to professionals like MSM journalists.
What about the sabotage charge? Did they have the means to damage equipment and impair production or safety? Tools like hammers and bolt cutters? As you noted, they stated(anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law)they went with the intent to damage, end, erase Y-12 production, the whole beating into plowshares thing. Their intent was sabotage, that they were not able or perhaps were not willing in the end to penetrate Y-12 doesn't change that fact.
I don't excuse them. The deserve some form of punishment.
Sabotage? Sorry, I don't buy it. Legally, their tools may fit enough of a description to make that charge, but I'd consider actual ability under the circumstances. They weren't attempting any more forward progress, which to me indicates no real
intent to sabotage.
Again, I've got no issue with charging them with trespass and destruction of property. They should be punished for the crime and responsible for paying for the damage that they did.
Running this up to 16 or 35 years in prison per person? Sure.. They did it. But really? Does that sort of punishment fit the crime?
Sorry, intent? What if my intent was to relax, have a few drinks after a tough day and then drive home? If I'm stopped and deemed intoxicated does my intent enter into it?
You know.....they were not just intending to sabotage an SUV or an irrigation ditch, they were intending to sabotage devices chock full of explosives and largish amounts of plutonium and refined uranium. The potential for an ecological radiation disaster making a large piece of land uninhabitable to mammalian life for 50,000 years was a significant risk.
I have no problem confining an 85 year old radical nun for the rest of her life for that. Being a religious functionary doesn't give you license to violate the law at will, without suffering consequences. Even the thief on the cross had to die that day. And by the way, I live my life according to biblical precepts too and I study the Word. It NEVER does to quote scripture out of context, which is exactly what this group of protesters has done if they are basing their justification on scripture. Breaking into the weapons plant is out of context with the meaning of Isaiah 2:4. If I may quote the whole passage for purposes of debate (using the ESV), it conveys an entirely different message:
1 The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
2 It shall come to pass in the latter days
that the mountain of the house of the Lord
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be lifted up above the hills;
and all the nations shall flow to it,
3 and many peoples shall come, and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go the law,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
4 He shall judge between the nations,
and shall decide disputes for many peoples;
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war anymore.
5 O house of Jacob,
come, let us walk
in the light of the Lord
Any Biblical scholar will tell you that this passage refers to
after the 2nd coming of the Lord. That passage says that,
after the Lord returns, HE will judge between the nations, and then those nations will no longer have need for weapons and they will beat them into plowshares and pruning hooks, because people will no longer lift their hands up against their brothers, and there will be no more war. It does NOT say that
if first we beat swords into plowshares,
then God will come back and there will be no more war. Theologically, this second viewpoint would make no sense, because it directly implies that WE can make GOD do something, and that he is therefore not sovereign. If you are an aging atheist hippie, then you don't even believe in this prophesy, so misquoting the prophet Isaiah is ridiculous on its face. If you are an aging nun who claims to believe in this prophesy, then you are quoting the Bible out of context, and shame on you for trying to use the Word of the Almighty God to deceive people with it, because A) the prophesy has not yet been fulfilled, and B) you cannot force God's hand to
make him fulfill it.
Even so, we have a secular government which is constitutionally barred from either establishing particular religious viewpoint, or preventing the free exercise thereof, and the religion of the accused cannot be included in determining whether or not to enforce existing laws (refusals to enforce the law being the Obama administration specialty) unless the law makes a specific and constitutionally unchallenged allowance for religion in its text. I'm pretty sure that the laws protecting America's nuclear arsenals do not contain that exception in the text.