In the New Old Fashioned Way

We are taught from grade school on that one of the basic tenets of our democracy is the freedom to express our opinions freely, at home, on the phone, or in public. The archetype was the person standing on a wooden soapbox, speaking to an assemblage of passers-by in the town square. That's where we get the term "up on my soapbox."

I have several wooden boxes, but they are all full of other stuff, and I'm not about to haul one of them down to the town square so I can holler my opinions. This blog is my soapbox and I thank you for joining me here in the town square so I can tell you about a woman who failed to see the difference between speaking out against the new rules for parking meters, and fomenting revolution and illegally being inside a government building. One is ok, the other, not so.

The woman is Rasha Abual-Ragheb, a New Jerseyite who pleaded guilty to her part in the January 6 riot. She, for whatever deluded reason, preached that Civil War is coming last January, and now that she took her plea, she has to deal with the sentence: 36 months of probation, the first two to be served under home confinement.

Lipstick...eyeliner...mascara...stupid hat...

And here's the part you're gonna love - this self-appointed, self-proclaimed revolutionary who was willing to turn this country upside down to get the person who lost the election to be declared the winner, this modern-day Joan Of Arc or Abbie Hoffman or Bernadette Dohrn is now whimpering because home detention will make it impossible for her to "handle her holiday obligations as a mother to her children."

Ms Abual-Ragheb wanted to put off serving her easy time until January 1. She wants to move to a new home, and of course be with her kids for all the holiday hops and rocking around the mistletoe and dancing merrily in the new old fashioned way.

The Justice Department opposed her request and Judge Carl Nichols denied it formally, noting that the conditions of her probation don't stop her from moving while she's on home detention.

Abual-Ragheb did plead guilty to parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, and the government wanted her to cool her heels for 30 days in jail because if ever a pair of heels needed cooling, it's hers, because of her "violent rhetoric" before, during and after the riot, said the prosecutors.

As if to prove she didn't know where the line of free speech became the penalty box for sedition, as she encouraged people to "rise up"  and "bring your own guns" to the rally. "It's Trump or Civil War," she posted on social media two days before the riot.

After the riot, she gleefully posted a picture photo of herself, boasting that she "made history" inside the capital.  And although she claimed that America was headed for a civil war and that she would  be "happy to be a part of it," her attorney says she was "not prepared for a civil war nor intended to be a part of one."

Just to show what a great mom she is to her three children (two minors) Abual-Ragheb said she took part in the insurrection out of her belief in "stories about people's kids being taken by elected Democrat officials." She said on social media that that someone would have to "kill her before taking her children away."

Just where the children were on January 6 last, and under whose care, is not mentioned in her court filings.

All of a sudden she's Mother Of The Year, claiming that if she went to prison, "who would care for the children?" As it was, her children, for whom I hold immense pity and a firm wish that they come in contact with adults whose head and feet are on earth, were "ostracized and bullied at school," so she started to home-school them.  Oh, that is great. Just wonderful. They'll learn a lot from a genius such as she.

The judge was able to stop his head from spinning long enough to say he found she was genuinely remorseful and that he had "every expectation" that she will not protest in the Capitol again or commit other crimes. But, he agreed that there needs to be a deterrent, so you sit home and miss the March of the Sugar Plum Fairies, ma'am.