Ocean City, MD (The Weekly Vice) - Rebecca McKimmie, an 18-year-old Ocean City woman was arrested early Sunday morning after she ignited and stomped an American flag on a busy roadway as motorist swerved to avoid hitting her.
According to Ocean City police, two officers were carpooling home early July 5 when they reportedly witnessed McKimmie attempting to set fire to a flag. The woman was standing in the middle of Philadelphia Avenue as cars swerved to avoid hitting her.
When the officers, who are both former Marines, asked her to explain her behavior - she explained that she was "Making a statement," according to the arrest report.
The officers swiftly escorted her to jail where she was charged with flag desecration and disturbing the peace. In Maryland it is a misdemeanor offence to mutilate, deface or trample the U.S. flag in a manor that disturbs the peace. She was arraigned and released without bond.
The Weekly Vice Opinion:
This article and the issue it covers really has little to do with a person's right to burn an American flag. It's more about someone acting like a fool out in the middle of a street - while trying to shove their views down everyone else's throat.
Have an opinion you want to share? Build a blog and blather all you want. Hold up a sign on the roadside. Tattoo yourself with any cause you want to support.
But if I see you out in the middle of the road trying to punish me with your opinions - be lucky I don't run your ass over.
Danny Vice
The Weekly Vice
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16 comments:
what an idiot. She really didn't know why she was out there either.
Vice is giving my advice.
"motorist swerved to avoid hitting her."
WHY?
My veteran ass would have drove my oversized SUV over your punk ass and left my carbon footprint on your permanently crippled body.
I'm an activist as well, but me and cars have this little understanding. They don't drive over my protests, and I don't make statements in their traffic.
Darwin candidate?
boy, she got that..crazy glare in her eyes...
Couldn't agree more Danny. I don't like morons. Morons are people who insist on abusing a symbol of our quite amazing country to make a point about freedom of speech.
Speak. Speak freely. Your right to free speech ends where mine begins. I have the right to detest your speech, you, the dirt you stand on and your entire family if you go out of your way to hurt me. That which I detest I avoid, if I am not allowed to bleach it from the planet.
Destroying the American flag is meant to do one thing and we all know it: offend.
Our Troops do NOT sacrifice and serve to protect some fool's abuse of them. They protect the Constitution in its entirety and we should make speech that acts like we're proud of them for doing so. Please remember that the military is entirely volunteer. You know, by choice. Meaning, if they didn't have high esteem for those who make them proud, they wouldn't.
You know what it feels like to be made proud. That sensation of feeling taller, heart swelling, face involuntarily smiling.
So Miss Moron who is so stupid that she can't verbalize her point needs to STFD and STFU until she can make her point. Otherwise, we will have to make fun of her even harder.
In her case, however, I doubt even with a point she would avoid ridicule.
The details of the incident are severely skewed, and the alleged quote entirely made up.
Wait until after the issue reaches the courtroom. You might find yourself more upset about officials lying, and news reporters trying to cause controversy and hate amongst Americans. Think before you buy into propoganda.
Good day
The details of the incident are severely skewed, and the alleged quote entirely made up.
Wait until after the issue reaches the courtroom. You might find yourself more upset about officials lying, and news reporters trying to cause controversy and hate amongst Americans. Think before you buy into propoganda.
Good day
OBAMA VOTER .
Sorry if this is long, but this is a touchy issue.
Forget the story specifics, and think about flag-burning in general:
I'm a third generation combat vet (Iraq) who is permanently disabled as a result of my service. I'm also a far-right Republican who has voted party lines my whole life.
I will be the first person to stand up and defend anyone's right to burn a flag or otherwise act like a moron in protest of whatever.
That doesn't mean I like it however. I personally would like to beat the crap out of those people, but I won't. If I am going to have the right to protest their actions, I have to be willing to defend theirs, even if I don't support them. That is what free speech is all about.
A lot of my fellow vets would have reacted strongly, and in my opinion wrongly, had they witnessed this. Until desecration of the flag becomes a crime nationally, we have to be willing to tolerate this sort of thing.
If you shut down one form of free speech, you shut down all of it eventually. There are plenty of countries in the world where these types of actions will at a minimum get you thrown in prison, at worst tortured or executed. Thank God we don't live in one of them. Do you really deserve to die for burning a flag? I don't think so - not when we have murders and rapists who need a bullet to the head clogging up our prisons.
That is a good thing. Everyone needs to remember that. Every veteran who served, especially combat vets like myself, should know that. Again, we don't have to like it at all, but we should be able to defend it. I don't like a lot of things people say, but I can ignore it instead of reacting to it.
The whole idea is the free exchange of ideas. The more rational and well-thought out arguments and ideas should win out in the end. If you are so insecure in your beliefs that you have to resort to violence to make your point, you have already lost the argument and let the other side win.
Food for thought. Freedom isn't free, but speech is.
This girl looks like she just popped out of the 70's.
That reminds me. I haven't listened to my Jonathan Livingston Seagull albume lately.
Peace
First, James E (no disrespect is intended but on the interwebs, a person must be a tad more skeptical than perhaps in person, but, if indeed you are a veteran, and I do not mean to sound scornful, not at all) thank you for your sacrifice and service to America.
Restricting free speech is not entirely the issue, the definition of what constitutes speech is the issue.
There is speech that is restricted now, so the "slippery slope" warning is not borne out by reality. A person cannot yell Fire! in a crowded theatre. Courts issue gag orders all the time. National secrets are largely protected by signing a voluntary agreement by those hired to work with the secrets.
Sliding every form of act or utterance under the "free speech" classification, renders refuge and comfort to corruption and criminality. That was never the intent of the framers of the Constitution and we know it.
If an American wishes to open his cake hole and spew whatever his little brain cell can imagine, then he is in fact engaging in speech. I am free to ignore whatever he spews. I am free to disagree with him and open my cake hole to let it be known. I do not have to defend him personally from the possible consequences of his wrecklessness, that is his responsibility. So he might get slapped around, he might get slugged. Someone might call slugging him free speech. We would say no it isn't.
The evidence is overwhelming that a different slippery slope has been our curse: allowing everything. Words can punch like a fist, the damage lasting a life time. Especially to children.
If we continue to avoid the hard choices of deciding where to draw the line, by asking helplessly rhetorically "but where do we draw the line?" then we continue to limp along, suffering the worsening of our society, the dumbing down of our discourse. Does this sound like the courage of America's Founders?
Every single time I hear anyone repeat the cowardice of the go along to get along bromide "Our soldiers give their lives to protect even the speech that hates them" I am compelled by my inate, bone deep sense of justice to speak out against that LIE.
Hate speech, and anyone who disrespects and abuses Our Troops IS engaging in hate speech, is a form of speech, it is not the principle of speech itself.
I do not worship at the Church of the ACLU. And as such, I do not have to obey their little interpretations of my speech. Nor should anyone else. For too long we have been using them as a crutch so we don't have to apply our own brain power to discerning what is protected, or acceptable speech and what is not.
The original intent of the Constitution is to protect political speech. Political speech. Not porn, not abuse, not hate, not desecrating the flag, not dressing in white sheets, not trying to get away with anything by self-labeling your malformed behaviour.
Because one of the consequences of allowing anything to be said by anyone at anytime in anyway they claim, is that it associates whatever they do/say with them and what they represent. Now, perfectly innocent and other uses of that "speech" is connoted to be something we do not mean it to be.
And, whenever we cheapen the speech to be whatever vomit we can wretch from ourselves, we render the value of Our Troops' lives to less than nothing. It is like pitching a penny on a Soldier's grave.
I also do not assume that Miss Moron was intending to make some sort of political statement, not based on what has been reported so far.
And even if she was intending to do so, my speech would be in response: you don't get the lazy way out of making your speech, you don't get to abuse a symbol of my country for your primal scream.
Anyone who defames our flag, encroaches MY free speech. Protected speech, expressed in OUR allegiance to the flag. Abusing it means you want to bury the free speech of Our Troops, of people like me, under yours.
Not while I'm alive.
I meant to end with the following agreement with you James E: freedom is not free.
Nor is speech.
Everything comes with a price.
why stomp on the flag? it has done nothing wrong...
stomp on the morons in washington... they are the ones who have DESTROYED this country with their greed and ignorance.
but leave old glory alone :(
BTW, when i say morons, i mean everyone except ron paul and barney frank :)
Lilmiss, I like you, therefore I will be good and withhold reply.
But Barney Frank? Yikes.
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