[QUOTE=Ethilrist]
Turns out it’s illegal.
[/QUOTE]
Quite right. It’s a hell of a criteria, though, given the sheer number of topics on this board that involve illegal activity.
You start in the BBQ Pit, wherein discussions of universally-condemned activities of sundry miscreants are minutely dissected and analyzed, with more than a few digressions into the nuts-and-bolts of the malefaction or into the how-could-someone-get-away-with-this sophistries (which might well aid someone in escaping the consequences of his crime), not to mention the inevitable “just let me at him” posturing that often explicitly describe, solicit, or even promise exotic forms of retribution that themselves constitute, well, crimes.
In Great Debates, some of our best brains use their knowledge and imagination to offer legal attacks on and defenses to various activities, thus, in theory at least, providing aid to criminals without having been retained as counsel.
In other forums, illegalities from plagiarism to stalking to public profanity to regicide are discussed with varying degrees of explicitness and honesty and sympathy, and turning the dials up or down on these categories is what makes the difference between historical accuracy and aiding and abetting.
So, the minute a thread involves illegal activity it’s shut down, except it really isn’t. Threads that draw attention to themselves by asking frankly stupid hypotheticals about “How would one…?” or “Undetectable poisons…” often die early. Threads that begin detailed discussion of extant or historical crimes mostly don’t, no matter how much or what kind of information starts popping up. The great exception is anything involving copyright and publishing law, which is a matter of some sensitivity to our good hosts.
The only grating thing is that the Chicago Reader is apparently much more protective of its own First amendment freedoms than of ours. Type the words “civil disobedience” into its search engine and you get 68 articles, and civil disobedience is necessarily illegal. Type in the words “assisted suicide” and you get 38 matches, one of which is a Cecil Adams column, which column mentions that, ahem, “In the U.S., suicide has never been treated as a crime…”
I’m less troubled about the Reader’s inconsistency than I am about its inability to form an editorial opinion and develop a spine to put behind it. If the right to die is worth discussing, it’s worth discussing here. It’s depressing to think that this board’s current administration would quash advocacy of disobeying Jim Crow laws the same as it would bank robbery, but there’s little evidence that it has the ability or inclination to make the distinction.