On Brandon Raub

This is just one of those things that cause spontaneous face-palming.

On the one hand, we have Brandon Raub--a "former Marine," whatever that means. Did he retire?  Was he discharged?  If so, was it honorably or dishonorably?

Anyway, Mr. Raub was posting things to his Facebook account which caused such concern about his mental health that the authorities were called.

Video of the police taking him away:

From NBC12.  Excerpts:

A Chesterfield Marine was detained after concerns about his Facebook posts.

YouTube video shows 26-year-old Brandon Raub being taken away in handcuffs Thursday in Chesterfield, after police say the marine wasn't cooperating. That video has gone viral and sparked debate over everyone's First Amendment rights...

On August 14, Raub posted, "The revolution will come for me. Men will be at my door soon to pick me up to lead it." He then added his home address.

On August 13, Raub posted, "sharpen up my axe; I'm here to sever heads..."

An overview of the facts of the case by Fox19:

FOX19.com-Cincinnati News, Weather

I have no clue if all those things which prompted the commitment remain on his Facebook page or whether he's been doing some housecleaning, but here are some of the things remaining:

This is a picture of the government dropping Barium and Aluminum Powder from the air on American Citizens. (with a picture of contrails)--August 12, 2012

The Revolution is Upon Us.--August 9, 2012

This is the size of a Boeing 757 relative to the size of the hole in the side of the pentagon. (with a picture of the Pentagon post-9/11 and a superimposed image of an airplane)--August 8, 2012

There was nano thermite, a cutting explosive used by the military, found in the rubble of buildings 1, 2, and 3 of the world trade center complex. Interesting. (with a picture which appears to show thermite)--August 8, 2012

If you are my friend, you deserve to know the truth. This world is secretly run by a shadow organization of people who among other things enjoy raping children. Some of leaders were involved with the bombing of the twin towers. It was a sacrifice and a complete inside job. Also the Bush's are very sick twisted problems. I believe they have a secret Castle in Colorado where they have been raping and sacrificing children for many years. Think I'm crazy? Think again.--July 28, 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4g3uMdHSUk&feature=relmfu America my country, rise.--July 10, 2012

So we've got a guy with at least a creative relationship to reality. He could have been left alone with his theories, but no.  No, he was handcuffed and taken by the FBI, the Secret Service, and local police to be committed involuntarily to a mental health facility.  Because that's a brilliant way to disprove someone's conspiracy theories and debunk their paranoia.

However, it's far from certain whether this was all and only prompted by his Facebook posts.  From NBC12.  Excerpts:

...someone took issue with his mental health. Our legal expert says committing someone isn't done carelessly or without evidence.

"Nobody gets involuntarily committed because they posted something scary on Facebook," said NBC12 legal analyst Steve Benjamin. "The law doesn't permit that to happen. There has got to be additional information. There's got to be information that convinces a judge that this person has a mental illness and that this mental illness makes it substantially likely in the near future this person would pose a threat to himself or others."

...as our legal analyst points out, the bigger picture will come out in court.

"What we're seeing here is the system working exactly as it should," said Benjamin. "Should he not fill the criteria...then he should not be committed and his attorneys will demonstrate that. But if he is dangerous because of a mental illness, then he and the rest of us need to be protected and that's what the law is doing right now."...

It's worth noting- the FBI and police were involved in questioning Raub and taking him in.

In a recent article, the Richmond-Times Dispatch quotes Sean Lawlor -- a vet who says he was Raub's platoon commander in Iraq, as saying quote: "knowing the man that he is, I believe that he fully intended to act on the threats he was posting."

An ABC story has a fuller version of the Lawlor quote:

...The Richmond Times Dispatch quoted an Internet posting by a former platoon commander, Sean Lawlor, who served with Raub in Iraq. The paper said that Lawlor called Raub an “excellent Marine” but quoted Lawlor as also saying, “Knowing the man that he is, I believe that he fully intended to act on the threats he was posting…We may never know, but the fact that law enforcement intervened may have kept Brandon from doing something extremely destructive.”

A common quote from an FBI spokesperson throughout the news coverage states that this action was motivated in large part because of concerns about the recent series of shootings in the US and abroad, motivated by people taking matters into their own hands and shooting up people because of their political or other grievances--or, actually, because they had a very loose and creative relationship with reality.

Here's Raub and his lawyer presenting his side of the case:

At the end of which...I dunno what the heck to say. So I'll let Chesterton say something, instead.  Relevant?  Irrelevant?  Dunno.  The case just reminded me of it.

...Of the next frightful forty-eight hours in which the threat was carried out with all its consequences, Enid could never remember many details. But she remembered some nameless hour of night or morning that seemed but a part of a sleepless night, when she stood on the doorstep and looked wildly up and down the street, as if expecting her neighbours to rescue her from a house on fire. And there crept upon her the cold certainty, more cruel than any fire, that in this sort of calamity there was no hope from neighbours, nor any appeal against the machine of modern oppression. She saw a policeman standing near the next lamp-post, outside the next house. She thought of calling to the policeman, as if to save her from a burglar, and then she realized that she might as well call to the lamp-post. If two doctors chose to testify that Walter Windrush was mad, they turned the whole modern world with them--police and all. If they chose to testify that it was an emergency case, he could be taken away at once, under the eye of any policeman, and it seemed that he was being taken away at once...