[PapaBear3625]

Part of the email:

Gerhart’s email demands that Branan give the measure a hearing, “or I will make sure you regret not doing it.”

“I will make you the laughing stock of the Senate if I don’t hear that this bill will be heard and passed,” the email said. “We will dig into your past, your family, your associates, and once we start on you there will be no end to it.”

Sounds like First Amendment protected speech to me.

[usconservative]

“I will make you the laughing stock of the Senate if I don’t hear that this bill will be heard and passed,” the email said. “We will dig into your past, your family, your associates, and once we start on you there will be no end to it.”

Sounds like what the NSA is doing to each and every one of us as I type.....

[Defiant]

I don’t see what is criminal about that threat. Every political consultant does what this guy threatened to do. How about if he said “I will hire someone as good as Lee Atwater to oppose you”? Last I checked, it’s not illegal to investigate a man, or his family, or his dog, so how can it be illegal to threaten to do so? This guy calling the cops is reason right there to get rid of him.

[headstamp 2]

What a joke. There is nothing in there that could be construed as a physical threat.

[B4Ranch]

>>“It just kind of got the hair up on the back of my neck,” he said. “It was not your normal email. He had woven family into the email. My two young children are out of bounds.”<<

I agree with the Senator. Family is out of bounds. He tried to blackmail him and deserves to be punished.

[RginTN]

Isn’t this what the media did to Sarah Palin?

[Travis McGee]

Shut up and be a good comrade. You know we have every email and phone call you ever made, and can search and mine and analyze them all in a nanosecond.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I think the sender is revealed as an obnoxious, threatening, thuggish, uncivil creep --- but that's now the normal level of intimidation in the United States of Alinsky.

If this type of pressure is illegal, a large percentage of political speech will have been ruled out. Maybe we'll all be the better for it.

But I doubt it.

I'm siding with the First Amendment on this one. Despite the fact that I think this particular TeePer has made an ass of himself.

[Colorado Doug]

the email said. “We will dig into your past, your family, your associates, and once we start on you there will be no end to it.”

The threat sounds kind of like what was actually done to Sarah Palin but not as bad.

[GeronL]

I am sure he gets worse threats from leftists on a daily basis