Just the idea of being in a crowded movie theater fills me with dread.
The Senators elect who are heirs apparent to the Georgia seats will ensure Democratic control of the Senate as well as the House, so there will be fewer disturbances in those bodies politic. The new sergeants at arms will hopefully do a better job too.
That’s shitty. 
Having a protest on the National Mall with a defined area allowed for it? Standard operating procedure. Not too incendiary.
Instructing that crowd to go to the Capitol and to be wild? To show strength? Incendiary. A call for insurrection.
Plans to cause violence and to sneak in guns? Criminal.
Your argument here is terrible.
First, if a person is making an argument against free speech in the modern world, and their first resort is the hoary old “fire in a crowded theater” quote from the Schenck case, then you know that they basically have no idea how free speech jurisprudence actually works in the United States.
If you want to cite Holmes’ argument in Schenck, then you are aligning yourself with a pretty unsavory decision. Do you know what Holmes was doing when he wrote about fires in crowded theaters? He was upholding a prison sentence imposed on a guy for distributing leaflets encouraging people to oppose the military draft. It’s an absolutely terrible ruling, completely odious, and is understood as such by most modern constitutional scholars. Holmes himself effectively repudiated his own majority opinion a few years later.
Even more importantly, for legal purposes, Schenck was overturned by Brandenburg v. Ohio in the 1960s, and no possible interpretation of the free speech standards set by the courts would disallow a protest outside the houses of Congress, no matter what happened to be going on inside at the time. In fact, the first amendment to the constitution not only establishes broad freedom of speech rights, but it explicitly establishes the right to assemble and petition the government about your grievances.
The right to assemble does include the word “peaceably,” and if and when protesters become rioters they should absolutely be brought to account. Also, if someone makes a speech at the rally that is " “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action AND is likely to incite or produce such action” (the standard established in Brandenburg; emphasis mine), then they can also be charged for that. But the simple act of organizing and staging a protest is not, by itself, anywhere near the standard for unlawful speech.
I’m also not sure how the simple presence of a protest can reasonably “scare and alarm” the members of Congress. Unless they’re watching on TV, they wouldn’t even be able to hear the protest from inside their chambers. It’s a different story once people start actually trying to invade the building, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. You’re arguing that simply having a rally near the Capitol on the day that the electoral college vote was tallied should, by itself, be criminal, and that’s just nuts.
Do you realize what the consequences might be if we adopted your standard? I’m constantly amazed at how many people on my own side of politics apparently haven’t learned the lessons of the past. If you give government authorities the power to control and regulate and punish speech in the way that you are suggesting here, then as soon as people that we don’t like get in to power, it’s lefties like you and me who are likely to be the first ones in cuffs, or dragged in front of a committee and questioned about our un-American politics.
I guess I didn’t make myself clear. The goal (for want of a better word) wasn’t to have Trump certified rather than Biden, it was to prevent the joint session from certifying at all. Then the House would determine the next President, using the one-vote-per-delegation rule.
Or to use the tired old formula:
- Scupper the joint session (kidnapping/killing Pence & Pelosi is an added bonus);
- ???;
- Trump wins!!!
Whether this scenario plays out in the real world is beside the point; this is all happening in their fevered imaginations.
Notaries sojak! Potrzebie!
As a person whose cat had an unfortunate early morning, I can attest that feces are difficult to entirely eradicate.
It would probably also be wrong to shout “covid” in a crowded theater. But not outside it.
Part 2 is, America’s patriots jump up, say “By golly they’re right! Time for a revolution!”, grab their Second Amendment solutions, and rise up en masse (or is that ens masse?). Wow! 1776 and stuff like that there!
Schott’s Original Miscellany lists 51 examples of “compound plurals”. The coolest ones, to me, are daddies-long-legs, Doctors Who, men-of-war and passersby. I would personally use these terms but not go out of my way to do so, nor probably bother correcting someone less precise. I’ve never even seen a group of daddies-long-legs. Bonus if you can fit this in a debate about disillusioned or delusional “Patriots” acting on seeming advice from Trump or Guiliani.
/endhijack
You don’t live in the South then. During breeding season (I assume), they cluster in HUGE groups. I’ve personally seen one “cluster” that was 3+ FEET in diameter and in the middle you couldn’t see any of the wall they were on., they were piled so thick. I’m not scared of the little guys, but it was freaky to see that.
Canada, unlike Australia, is not exactly famous for nor conducive to arachnidae.
Batons Rouge?
I can just imagine the locker room talk that followed that:
Oh, man, I got laid so much last night!
Awesome, dude! Who’d ya make it with?
I - - I’m not sure…
Is that near Shrevesport?
Oh God yes! They are creeeepy MFs, although harmless. Unless you die of freaking out. I went to an event in the country one time where the bathroom was in a small outbuilding. It wasn’t an outhouse exactly-- the bathtub was in there, too, and a sink. But up in the corner was this ginormous, pulsating cluster of the little bastards. Very hard to concentrate on the business at hand. <shudder>
There is a link to a video in the spoiler box. Watch at your own risk. You will never be able to get this picture out of your brain.
/really the end of hijack
Not if you’re fixing the wiring.
Chairs longs!
(The Young Ones fans may get it.)
I was gonna link that same video; it’s one of the best DDL videos on YouTube.