TexasCHLforum.com

Jim, you're right.....they're not ALL dangerous. The problem is, how do you know which one is, and which one isn't.......until after they've actually harmed or killed someone? Plus, living in fear of your stalker equates to harm in my book. It doesn't matter if you're a rich Hollywood star or a struggling single mother in the ghetto....your quality of life is diminished by the person who is stalking you. That is harm. In the end, it is irrelevant if there is a psychiatric diagnosis for this or not. At its mildest, someone else's neurotic (or psychotic) compulsion is harming someone who does not deserve it and criminal charges and a psychiatric evaluation are called for. At the very worst, the stalker is nuttier than a Mars Bar and actually kills their stalking victim. Can society actually afford to treat stalking like it's an essentially low order victimless crime?

I don't know. I know what I think. What I do know is that I am very tired of people on the left who think that any behavior is permissible to them as long as the targets of their behavior are conservatives......behavior which they would be absolutely aghast at if it were used against themselves.

Maybe that is the medicine that will make conservatives out of them.

In my book, any convicted stalker is by definition both crazy and dangerous. In addition to whatever criminal sentences they may merit (and whether nor not they merit any at all is arguable, if they are truly insane), they need to be confined for extended psychiatric evaluation and treatment, and then released into mandatory outpatient psychiatric care until such time as they are professionally adjudicated to no longer be a threat. Does "stalking" even exist as a diagnosis in the DSM? Maybe it should.

sjfcontrol wrote:Harassing a politico is one thing, but harassing an attorney? Not a good idea!

I don't even think that harrassing a politico is morally justifiable beyond a certain point, at least not within the context of a more-or-less functioning democracy. Send all the emails, witten letters, and hateful voicemails to their offices all day long, if that's what floats your boat, but their private property and private lives are off limits, and so are their off-hours. You take your hatred of my to my home, and now you're a threat to me and my family, and that's about when you and I are fixin' to go 'round and 'round. Yes, even elected officials have a right and reasonable expectation of some privacy. When I elect a representative, senator, or president, that give me no more right of access to that person's private life than an employer has of accessing an employee's private life. There are limitations to these things, and when people with no sense of proper boundaries or a functioning moral compass violate them, then there ought to be consequences, just as for any common stalker.