ner as to alarm and disturb George Sisk and provoke a breach of the peace.”

Humphrey, a Vietnam veteran, admits that he doesn’t have a normal attitude about political situations. When he came home from the military in 1972, he says, his first job was to put the past few years behind him. But he began reading about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and other current events and last year joined in conversations at American Everyman.

“I think talking is a proper alternative to fighting,” Humphrey says. “I think that’s what’s wrong in the world — there isn’t enough talking.”

According to Humphrey, people who blog on American Everyman are not allowed to make any type of threats. Swear words are allowed, he says, but not as a direct insult to another person.

On April 9, a week after Humphrey says he was first visited by the FBI, he found a rat in a trash can while working a part-time construction job in an area neighborhood.

Humphrey debated whether to kill the rat or to let it go, and relayed his decision to American Everyman at 6:05 p.m.:

“So, I stood there looking down at this…RAT…and pondered its fate. We all damn well know what rats are all about. They’re no f—g good…. Killing this rat f—k would serve in the best interests of society. Isn’t that right, George? See, everyone, George, agrees that I should kill this rat….

“Here is what I decided about the rat I had life or death over. It ain’t my f—n’ job to kill the rats over there.”

In addition to a second count of disorderly conduct for this post, Humphrey was charged with two counts of harassment through electronic communications. According to the state’s attorney’s complaint, he posted obscene written materials that implied that Sisk was a rat that should be killed. The state’s attorney also alleges that Humphrey threatened injury to Sisk, “knowing that Sisk viewed the Web site.”

Humphrey says he’s never met Sisk or spoken to him. When a reporter asks him if he intended to threaten Sisk, he responds: “I don’t know what a threat is anymore. I wrote a story about a rat. It’s a genuine story, and I can prove it.”

The Harassing and Obscene Communications Act, enacted in Illinois in 1998, was amended in 2001 to include harassment through electronic communications. The law criminalizes any obscene comment made with the intent to offend and any electronic communication used to threaten another person, among other measures.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois has openly opposed this law and its most recent amendment, the Cyberbullying Act that passed in 2008. This law makes it a felony for someone to harass another person using electronic means on at least two separate occasions or to create a Web page that harasses another person.

Harvey Grossman, the Illinois ACLU legal director, maintains that it’s difficult to attach criminal harassment charges to communication on the Internet. It’s more appropriate for one-on-one communication, he says, after someone sends an e-mail to a specific person or uses the telephone to repeatedly call them.

“One of the big questions that is frequently at issue, in cases in which people single out other people [on blogs or Web sites], is whether or not the communication is directed toward that person or directed toward third parties,” Grossman says.

To his knowledge, Grossman adds, the state’s harassment through electronic communications statute hasn’t yet been tested in court.

To determine if speech or expression is obscene, Helle says, it must meet all three of the following provisions: it must appeal to prurient, or lewd and lascivious, interest; lack literary, artistic, political or scientific value and be offensive according to community standards.

“What has [happened] to Scott is very scary in the abstract. It says things to people like me, well, be careful of what you say.

This is not a free country after all. You can’t just speak your mind.”

After considering Humphrey’s case, Helle doesn’t believe that the content in his blog posts qualifies as obscene. For that reason, he says, the posts don’t seem to fit the state’s charges.

“If what this person said constitutes electronic harassment,” he says, “then Rush Limbaugh ought to be in prison for life.”

Robert Cox, the president of the Media Bloggers Association, a New York organization that provides legal support services to bloggers who face legal threats, decides what constitutes harassing speech on a case-by-base basis.

“If someone is a public figure, and you’re writing nasty things, like you think they’re corrupt, I’m sure they wouldn’t like to be the recipient of it, but it kind of goes with the territory,” Cox says. “It doesn’t classify as harassing speech.”

In any free speech issue, he adds, there will be arguments between interested parties. As long as they’re not being threatening, he says, bloggers like Humphrey have every right to be expressive and colorful in their language.

“It’s not often that someone’s arrested for what they wrote in a blog,” Cox says. “It is an unusual case and should be a cautionary tale to anyone who sits down to use a computer.”

After he was arrested, Humphrey enlisted the help of his friend Robert Jackson, the former executive associate dean of the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. Jackson paid Humphrey’s bail and has now hired Springfield attorney James Elmore to represent Humphrey’s case. Elmore did not return calls seeking comment for this story.

Jackson first met Humphrey in the late ’80s and connected with him over model railroading and their shared military background.

Not only are the charges against Humphrey irrational, Jackson says, but they violate his constitutional rights.

“What has [happened] to Scott is very scary in the abstract,” he says. “It says things to people like me, well, be careful of what you say. This is not such a free country after all. You can’t just speak your mind.

“And even if you speak it in a non-threatening way, but a vigorous way, you could have the FBI coming down on you.”

Humphrey entered a plea of not guilty to all four charges and will appear in court on Dec. 7.

“The fact of the matter is,” Humphrey says, “I would have been willing to sit down with Mr. Sisk and drink coffee and talk.

“See what I mean? We can talk, but instead someone wants to do it the hard way.”

Contact Amanda Robert at [email protected].