5 Years for threatening Bush? The defendant is mentally ill and still got 5 years.

[bermudat]

I wonder why the Dems always capitulate to bush, he of the 23% approval number. bush is like

Robert Mugabe in that you can believe what you want, but he will do what he wants with impunity.

No one will stop him, especially not any Democrats.

<Associated Press - June 25, 2008 2:03 PM ET

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - A mentally ill homeless man will serve 57 months in federal prison for threats he made against President Bush.

Timothy Wade Pinkston threatened in August to go to Washington and shoot Bush. At the time, the 48-year-old was committed to a hospital psychiatric unit.

Court records say he repeated the threat to Secret Service agents, saying he didn't like the president's foreign policy or his handling of the war in Iraq.

Pinkston told a federal judge in Tampa on Wednesday that he is HIV-positive and bipolar and has a substance abuse problem. He said he'd been taking drugs and drinking when he made the threat and didn't know what he was saying.

He was previously charged with threatening the president in 1991 and also sent threatening letters to the governor of Georgia.>

He probably did it so he could have a roof over his head, 3 squares a day, and receive medical care.

[ComtesseDeSpair]

1. I Hate This World

Unbelievable. So if you're mentally ill and you make a drunken threat against Bush, you serve prison time... yet a Fox News correspondent can openly state that she wishes that Obama were assassinated, and that's ignored? Yeah, I see how the world works.

[Fovea]

3. Welcome to DU.

I think the world is as good or bad as we decide to make it.

We can, and I believe will prevail again against the corporatists.
But getting there won't be pretty, I suspect.

Again, welcome!

[Fovea]

2. I wish Bush a long life

in a small concrete cell without a window, at Spandau.

[Ilsa]

8. It would be a lovely deal if Bush* was Pinkston's cell mate. nt

[depakid]

4. It's difficult to make any generalizations for anything coming out of Florida

The state has collectively insane.

[undeterred]

5. " he didn't like the president's foreign policy or his handling of the war in Iraq"

He sounds pretty sane to me.

[bdamomma]

6. seems to me he was pretty capable in telling the truth.

[coalition_unwilling]

7. Do you have any experience with the mentally ill or with bipolar

individuals? If so, you would immediately realize that your statement "He probably did it so he could have a roof over his head, 3 squares a day, and receive medical care" imputes to bipolar people far more volition than many of them have.

The thing that gets me about this is the unbelievable cruelty in this sentence. I guess the U.S. Constitution's strictures against 'cruel and unusual punishment' no longer is a consideration.

The jails and prisions are full of people with serious mental illnesses, many if not most untreated. (This may be the most cruel legacy of the years of Reagan-Bushism.)

[bean fidhleir]

9. Kings must NEVER be threatened. Just ask any king.

The severest punishment must always be meted out to those failing to accept the divine right of kings to do whatever they want to us peasants.