A Florida man has pleaded guilty in connection with threatening to kill a Supreme Court justice.
The guilty plea from 43-year-old Neal Brij Sidhwaney of Fernandina Beach stemmed from a call he made to a Supreme Court justice in July, the Justice Department said in a news release Monday.
He faces up to five years in federal prison on one count of transmitting an interstate threat. A sentencing date has not yet been set.
Prosecutors said that Sidhwaney identified himself by name in an expletive-infused voicemail and repeatedly threatened to kill the Supreme Court justice, who is not named in court documents.
Sidhwaney warned that if the justice alerted deputy U.S. Marshals, he would talk to them and “come kill you anyway,” according to court documents, which did not indicate what prompted Sidhwaney to make the threat.
Florida AND naming himself in the threat?
Seems like a good opportunity to talk about a national mental health care plan.
Definitely this. Republicans love to blame “mental health issues” whenever a mass shooting happens or one of their base does something crazy. It’s much easier to just deflect to “mental health issue” than it is to talk about gun control measures.
And yet they also don’t want to boost mental health coverage.
So if we’re not going to get sensible gun control legislation, can we at least get some decent mental health care coverage?
Some of the most effective psychiatric treatments are currently illegal due to Nixon era drug policies. Thankfully, several of them are in phase three trials after decades of research and navigating DEA policies. And may reach patients as soon as next year.
My point is, mental health care reform is drug policy reform. Another thing the right refuses to talk about because the drug war serves their political ends by taking the right to vote away from people who use drugs.
And of course it goes deeper than this. The right actively promotes many systemic issues that contribute directly to poor mental health in a country’s citizens. Even if we ended the drug war and made mental health care free for everyone, millions of us would still wake up in despair as we watch the right sell our future to oil and gas lobbies, for example.
Mental health is pure deflection on their part. As I’m sure you’re aware. But I still wanted to get up on my soap box and explain how the drug war serves the GOP and obstructs mental health care in the U.S.
Oh, these things are definitely interconnected. The War On Drugs was started mainly for racist/political reasons. Nixon couldn’t say “let’s arrest all the black Civil Rights leaders,” but if he could find a drug that black people tended to use (either for real or stereotypically used), he could arrest them for drug possession/use and disrupt those troublesome groups.
And many mental health issues can have their root in money issues. To give myself as an example, I’ve recently been feeling a ton of anxiety over my job. I know I’m talented, but I’m plagued by self doubt and worry about being let go and needing to find a new job. At 48 years old and with a family to support, this can be a lot of pressure. The pressure increases my anxiety and which stresses me out in a feedback loop. Perhaps I could benefit from therapy, but that costs money which then gets added to my financial woes. So I’m stuck with “dealing with it” as best I can. Yay capitalism?
How I feel about this very much depends on which justice he threatened to kill.
I’m mildly surprised there hasn’t been more reactionary stochastic terrorism from the left. I guess we still have optimism while the right has had it beaten out of them every day by the news and, well, I have to assume they make their own daily lives pretty miserable anyway.
It isn’t happening as much from the left because we understand that the full power of the state will be used to crush the left violently and without remorse in a way that doesn’t happen to those on the right.
Imagine if the actions on January 6 were done by leftists. What do you think we would have seen play out instead?
There are crazy people on both sides. This isn’t about Jan 6, this is about crazies with weapons and no hope for the future.
But look, it’s not happening so clearly there’s something missing from the train of thought. Happily.
Edit: Stochastic violence isn’t an organized mob of people attacking the Whitehouse. It’s crazy folks shooting up gay night clubs or attacking brown people in grocery stores. Mental illness isn’t exclusive to the right wing and I’m not a both sides are the same guy.
Maybe the secret ingredient is human empathy. Not that crazies are unique to the right by any means, but the organized effort to dehumanize and attack segments of the population has gone disproportionately mainstream on that side of the spectrum. So many talking points involve a vaguely-defined “enemy” of some kind. It’s unfortunate that people get sucked into it, but you can’t really blame the individuals when the leaders they look up to are actively working to mobilize them in that way as a political strategy.
I guess the ideological space the left fills at the moment just isn’t one that requires that type of anger to support. There are certainly issues to get angry about, but in general it’s just taking that low-hanging fruit of giving your fellow humans the same respect you would want for yourself and your loved ones, even if they seem different or weird to you.
Is it??? Anyone calling public servants with death threats I’m gonna go ahead and disagree with
When the SC publishes ethical rules legalizing bribery, they’re inviting anyone with a sense of justice to take matters into their own hands.
Shit take. Anyone calling in death threats is ethically bankrupt at the very least. What justice is there in murder?
This guy would be advocating against killing Hitler in 1943 because he’s a “public servant”.
Insane that you could even draw a slight comparison. Among other things I am a fucking anti-racist, anti-fascist, leftist. What an idiotic thing to say to me.
The second we live in a fascist dictatorship feel free to go all operation Valkyrie on our glorious leader Brett Kavanaugh but until then you’re nothing but a keyboard warrior defending some psycho making death threat phone calls.
It was Roberts according to jail psych evaluations. Guy is on anti-psychotics for delusional thinking.
