A Reason Sheriff Keith Nygren Hasn’t Used to Fire a Deputy – Facebook “Liking” of Prim or Harrison

Reading the Chicago Tribune today, I discovered a sheriff had fired a deputy for liking an opposition candidate on Facebook.

“It is the internet equivalent of displaying a political sign in one’s front yard, which the Supreme Court has held is substantive speech,” wrote Justice William Traxler.

That was in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

    The headline of the article about a sheriff's deputy being protected for supporting someone running against his boss is "Court defends Facebook 'like' as protected speech, Deputy says he lost job for liking election page."

The headline of the article about a sheriff’s deputy being protected for supporting someone running against his boss is “Court defends Facebook ‘like’ as protected speech, Deputy says he lost job for liking election page.”

This is a Federal Appeals Court decision out of the 4th Circuit.

To the best of my knowledge, McHenry County Sheriff has not fired deputies who like the Facebook page of Bill Prim or Jim Harrison.

The Virginia sheriff whose 2009 firing decisions (three out of six) got overturned was Hampton Sheriff R.J. Roberts, who beat the opponent the deputies “liked,” Jim Adams.

One wonders if there is any punishment given to supporters of Prim or Harrison, not to mention whether there are inducements to deputies to support Nygren favorite Andy Zinke.

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Comments

A Reason Sheriff Keith Nygren Hasn’t Used to Fire a Deputy – Facebook “Liking” of Prim or Harrison — 14 Comments

  1. The good news in all these county elections, to paraphrase Will Rogers, is that only one of these characters can win.

  2. This post is quite literally – aside from it having no relevance to this blog’s mission as it is not mchenry county related, it is not illinois related, it is not even related politically in illinois.

    This is a purely editorialized title with a here-say connection and an appeal to emotion and ABOVE ALL this is a strawman and possibly a false cause.

    Cal, I believe this is a new fallacy record for you.

    Now, lets for the sake of argument say you were trying to be funny or saying this ingest: You make a better blogger than comedian.

  3. “@cal”- You are so out of touch with reality.

    Your statements clearly demonstrate you know nothing about Illinois or Mchenry County.

    Or, you are part of the Nygren Zinke entourage and you don’t want to admit to the truth..

    The fact is, the story is completely relevant to the Mchenry County Sheriffs office, and Illinois politics…

    The officers are always at risk for retaliation, especially if the speak about their preferred candidates and do not support the Nygren, Zinke entourage..

    You are the one living in a fallacy. Wake Up!

  4. @Cal – Sorry was a bit harsh yesterday. Was having a bad day, shouldn’t have taken it out on you.

    @DeputyDuncan

    Quoting your post: “Your statements clearly demonstrate you know nothing about Illinois or Mchenry County.”

    I’ll just let that stand for what it is – an attack on my credibility – and nothing more. But I relent. You actually used the false choice fallacy after that previous statement by stating “Or, you are part of the Nygren Zinke entourage and you don’t want to admit to the truth..”

    Quoting you: “The fact is this is relevant to Illinois politics.” Please tell me more about how an article from a Virginia Newspaper about a member of law enforcement who dismissed a deputy because of a facebook like is about Illinois politics. Please tell me more about that.

    “the officers are always at risk” – Sounds like YOU are the sheriff insider, not me. How else would you know about the well being of the deputies for speaking out against the establishment? Maybe you are a spouse of a deputy. Regardless, from now on, you will be known in my mind as Deputy Duncan.

    Finally, I have an incipient premonition that you have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to fallacies.

    How to respond to your point that “I’m living a fallacy.”

    Look up the definition of fallacy: A fallacy is an argument that uses poor reasoning.

    Unless you are trying to metaphorically say that I live in a world of lies – which I don’t believe you were trying to say – please check out this infographic of the most commonly used logical fallacies.

    http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.richardprins.com%2Fcategory%2Fscience%2Fpsychology%2F&h=0&w=0&sz=1&tbnid=MQJpeGOj2kTgnM&tbnh=189&tbnw=267&zoom=1&docid=9Yi9c05-oualYM&hl=en&ei=v188UujzJIL69QS0yYDQCQ&ved=0CAEQsCU

    Quite honestly, it may be a good idea for most readers of this blog to check this graphic out or just google image search “fallacy” – it’s the first thing that pops up.

    The more we have well reasoned arguments, the more we may be able to offer better policy ideas to our elected officials based on ideas from this blog instead of just having angry rants against each other like DeputyDuncan and Fukoku.

    I may not agree with you all all the time, but part of democracy is the continuing dialogue between citizens and their government as well citizens with each other.

    At the end of the day, though, you don’t need to get louder, you just have to get a better argument.

    If you don’t know what an argument is, it’s not a shouting match, it’s a well reasoned point about politics.

  5. Good Morning, you made my day.

    Politics in McHenry County is mob rule . . . getting wordy does not help your cause.

  6. Good Morning, why do you think Zinke is a shoe in?

    He is a shoe in alright, but you had better check where that shoe has been!

  7. Not a deputy and do not have any family members working for the Sheriffs Department..

    Though, I am familiar with corruption in Mchenry County and know a lot about how the Sheriffs Department is run..

    Not a good argument “deputy Good Morning”

  8. @DeputyDuncan – What about the four other paragraphs where I dissected your argument like a coroner?

    What have you to say about that good sir?

    @another watcher – Mob rule? Psh.

    Establishment candidates always have an advantage regardless of your mob mentality.

    Look at Quinn in the Democratic primary, Daley dropped out because Quinn sapped all the support from Springfield/Chicago.

    Read up on politics a bit more, you may learn something.

  9. Deputy Good Morning, a democracy is Mob rule, we are to be a Constitutional Republic. Educate yourself.

  10. Have been watching this Sheriff, county, situation from afar for a long, long time. Injustice rules & over-haul needed, big time.

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