I Hope The Dept. of Justice Fucks Itself, Gets AIDS, and Dies a Horrible Lonely Gay Death In An Apartment Filled With Chihuahuas Who Then Proceed To Eat It's Rotting Corpse

Loretta Lynch Is The Head of a Corporate Body Known As The Dept. of Justice, Which Collectively is Totally Gay, and Probably At Least Half-Infected With The AIDS Spores, Meaning That If Said Corporate Body "Fucked Itself", It Would Get Full-Blown AIDS and Die, And That Is What I Want, Don't You?

Department Of Justice Uses Grand Jury Subpoena To Identify Anonymous Commenters on a Silk Road Post at Reason.com

From Popehat:

Are the Reason.com Comments "True Threats?" No. NO. AND HELL NO! "True Threats" are those threats that are outside the protection of the First Amendment; they are not mere political hyperbole or bluster. 

For instance, in 1967, when Mr. Watts said that if he were drafted the first man he'd want in his rifle sights was President Lyndon B. Johnson, that wasn't a true threat: it was conditional political hyperbole. 

In other words, it was mere angry bluster of the sort no reasonable person would take to be a serious threat. 

What of these comments on Reason.com, then? I submit that they are very clearly not true threats --that this is not even a close call. True threat analysis always examines context. 

Here, the context strongly weighs in favor of hyperbole... .... Consider this purported "threat": 

Rhywunl5.3l.15 @ 11:35AMIIt I hope there is a special place in hell reserved for that horrible woman. 

Is it the position of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York that a reasonable reader would conclude that "Rhywun" is in league with the Dark Ones, able to bring into existence a hot place in the afterlife for an errant judge? 

Ridiculous. 

If that's a threat, then so is "go to Hell." So: the government has used the grand jury to subpoena a news magazine for the identity of anonymous commenters who have engaged in political rhetoric that is clearly protected by the First Amendment. Can they get away with this?