Where are the boundaries?
Not where the "prosecute Sarah Palin for Incitement" groupies think.
2) In particular, the leading Supreme Court case, Watts v. U.S. (1969), held that the Constitution protects even the statement "If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J.," said at antiwar rally. Statements that place the President in a bullseye or a crosshair might thus be entirely constitutionally protected, if for instance the statement is in a Democratic or Republican party mailer urging people to give money to help defeat the President in the next election.
Under Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), speech may be restricted on such a theory only if it is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action” (emphasis added). Hess v. Indiana (1973) makes clear that speech doesn’t satisfy the “imminence” requirement if it is merely “advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time” (emphasis added). But in any event, it certainly can’t qualify for the Brandenburg exception to the First Amendment when it is not at all directed to producing lawless action, and the concern is simply that a few kooks or extremists might be moved to commit a crime at some indefinite time as a result of seeing the speech.
Nonetheless, the Court firmly concluded that even speech that specifically calls for violence, or even seems to explicitly threaten violence, is unprotected only if it fits within the narrow “true threats” or “incitement” exceptions — and, as I said, political maps with targets painted on them, the “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun” line, and the like certainly fall far outside those exceptions.
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