Workout notes 2200 yard swim; 500 of back/free, 500 of side/free, 500 of drill/swim (fins). Then I tried some 100s on the 2: 4 in 1:39, last in 1:42. I just “didn’t have it”. Then 200 cool down.
Next, weights (no squats; still sore); dumbbells: curls: 2 x 10 with 25, military 10 with 35, 8 with 40, bench press: 10 with 50, 8 with 55. Then lat pulls (2 sets), pull ups (5 reps, two sets).
Then 12 minutes running on the treadmill (1.2 miles), 12 minutes AMT (1 mile), 10 minutes elliptical (1.15), 10 minutes stairmaster (1.05).
I also did some light stretching and yoga.
I can’t make too many excuses as Sunday’s swim was faster; the weights went ok though, as did the run. My blood volume is still down from the donation; I can tell because my hands get cold easily.
Injury wise: I was stiff after the run section but the AMT loosened it up.
Other Stuff
Those who know me and have known me probably remember this:
(background: go here)
Well, the person behind this didn’t bother me further but ran into trouble with the law. First, he was taken to Chicago to face federal charges (for intimidation of a juror in the Matthew Hale case); those charges were eventually dropped. He then was taken to Roanoke, Virgina to face other charges.
You can read the whole series of articles here. None of this involved me.
Well, this time a jury found him guilty of 4 of seven counts:
Done in by his own words, Internet hatemonger William A. White was convicted Friday of threatening people from Virginia Beach to Canada.
The verdict, however, was not a total repudiation of White’s assertion that the First Amendment should protect his incendiary speech. Of seven counts against White, the federal jury acquitted him of three.
White, who will be sentenced later, could face up to 35 years in prison. [...]
From the defendant’s e-mails, letters, telephone calls and online postings, the jury heard time and time again the graphic and racist rhetoric that spewed from the 32-year-old’s home computer and cellphone.
Dressed in the same black, three-piece suit that he had worn throughout the trial, White showed no emotion as the verdicts were read.
At least for now, the convictions will silence a man called “possibly the loudest and most obnoxious neo-Nazi leader in America ” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups.
They also were met with “a sigh of relief” from a community that has been dealing with White’s campaign of harassment since 2004, said Brenda Hale, president of Roanoke’s NAACP chapter.
“At last, justice has been served,” said Hale, whom White once referred to as a “n—-r in need of lynching.”
In closing arguments to the jury, Justice Department attorney John Richmond spent more than an hour recounting the personal attacks and death wishes that White leveled against a bank employee from Missouri, a nationally syndicated columnist from Maryland, a university administrator from Delaware, a small-town mayor from New Jersey, a human rights lawyer from Canada and two tenants of an apartment complex in Virginia Beach.
“Defendant White does not get the last word,” Richmond told the jury. You all do. And the last word is guilty.”
However, White was found not guilty of making threats against Leonard Pitts, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Miami Herald, and Charles Tyson, the former mayor of South Harrison township in New Jersey. [...]
The third count that White was acquitted of was a charge of threatening a bank employee with the intent to extort. While the jury convicted White of threatening Citibank employee Jennifer Petsche, it found the evidence lacking on a second charge alleging he did so to resolve a dispute with the bank over his credit card account.
During the eight-day trial in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, the jury heard testimony about six incidents that fit the following pattern: White would learn of a controversy that involved race in the news, look up the telephone numbers and addresses of the people involved, and then send them e-mails with hateful commentary calling for their demise in one way or another.
He often followed up by posting the information on overthrow.com, a Web site with a following of like-minded racists.
For example, when White became enraged about a diversity awareness program at the University of Delaware, he called the office of an administrator and identified himself as the commander of the American National Socialist Workers Party. He them told the assistant who answered the phone that anyone who thinks the way Kathleen Kerr did should be shot, and that he would hunt her down.
And when black residents of a Virginia Beach apartment complex filed a housing discrimination lawsuit against their white landlord, White waded into the dispute with a letter to the residents addressed to “Whiny Section 8 n—-rs.”
“You may get one over on your landlord this time, and you may not,” he wrote. “But know that the white community has noticed you, and we know that you are and never will be anything other than a dirty parasite — and that our patience with you and the government that coddles you runs thin.”
One resident of the apartment complex testified that White’s comments frightened her so badly that she packed her belongings in 15 minutes and fled her home.
Interestingly enough, it appeared to me that the jury took into account the reaction of the victims more than what the defendant actually did; that is why the conviction on the apartment complex issue surprised me a bit.
Bottom line: there is a line between making threats and free speech. What the defendant did to me (passing out flyers) was clearly free speech; after all, I do much the same thing when I work on a political campaign (though I hope that what I pass out isn’t full of lies and falsehoods, as this flyer was.)
In case you are wondering what the line is, here is the set of instructions from the judge to the jury:
Jury instructions for true threat definition:
For you to find the defendant guilty of each count, you must find that the communication issued in that count contains true threat. The First Amendment does not protect true threat. Whether a communication in fact contains a true threat, is determined in accordance with the interpretation of a reasonable recipient familiar with the context of the communication.
The government does not have to prove that the defendant subjectively intended for the recipients to understand the communication as a threat. The speaker need not have intended to carry out the threat or have the ability to carry out the threat. The government does not have to prove that the person who received the threat was actually placed in fear of harm.
On the other hand, a statement does not become a true threat simply because it instills fear in the listener. You may, however, consider the reaction of any recipient in determining whether a reasonable person would consider the message a true threat. A true threat is a serious expression of an intent to injure the person of another or to commit an act of unlawful violence against a particular individual or a group. A true threat is a serious threat as opposed to mere idle or careless talk, exaggeration or something said in a joking matter.
A true threat is more than mere political hyperbole or vehement caustic and unpleasantly sharp political attacks or crude offensive and abusive methods of stating political opposition. Identifying and providing personal information on a Web site standing alone, while it may be offensive or disturbing to those listed, is protected by the First Amendment. The mere advocacy of the use of force or violence does not remove speech from the protection of the First Amendment. To be a true threat the communication does not need to be directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action.
You may find that a particular statement is a true threat if you find that the statement was made under such circumstances that an ordinary reasonable person who was familiar with the context of the communication would interpret it as an expression of an intent to injure the recipient or injure another person.
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