Thomas Ross

Criminal Defense Attorney -

In the course of justice none of us should see salvation.

[Thomas Ross @thomaross]

@ThresherKing @TradVat2 So in your hypothetical someone will have gone to an LDS Church to be baptized despite not holding LDS views?

[Thomas Ross @thomaross]

@ASFleischman Isn't he the torture memo lawyer?

[Thomas Ross @thomaross]

@TheCatholicEngr Historical fiction, but Saving Private Ryan

[Thomas Ross @thomaross]

@dr_salt_neo @Clint_Davey1 In lit crit it's called "reader-response" criticism.

[Thomas Ross @thomaross]

@christianjbdev And him writing it specifically to show up John Lennon is fantastic.

[Thomas Ross @thomaross]

Don't Think Twice, It's Alright
4th Time Around
Shelter From The Storm
Love Minus Zero/No Limit
To Ramona

[Thomas Ross @thomaross]

@jarvis_best

[Thomas Ross @thomaross]

Seems right . A CSAM hash is infinitely more reliable than say a "drug dog" getting a treat for sitting next to your car, and the courts are perfectly fine with granting probable cause for that.

[Orin Kerr @OrinKerr]

Magistrate judge was not wrong to issue warrant to search computers based in part on hash matches of known images of CSAM found on peer-to-peer networks, CA9 says: Officers didn't need to download the CSAM first to establish probable cause.
https://t.co/3Kf4VLF0yh #N

[Thomas Ross @thomaross]

People said he was a thief just because he went into a place he wasn't allowed to go into and took something he wasn't allowed to take

[The Lectern Guy🇺🇸 @lecternleader]

On a serious note, I am writing up my complaint against the DOJ and submitting it this week. Maybe I'll fly to DC and deliver it personally.

My situation is different than most. The infamy gained from this photo will be in history books. What they did to me will have a generational effect on my family and their livelihoods.

I was mocked and called a thief by Jimmy Kimmel, John Krasinski, and Jim Carey.

My face and the accusation of being a thief was shared globally... for years. It still persists today harming my chances to win my local election or lead a normal life.

Public school teachers told my children and their friends that their dad was a terrorist.

My wife's reputation was dragged through the mud. Death threats caused her work to have to hire private security.

USF denied my reentry into college.

I had to fight to get my guns rights back.

My children and myself were subjected to additional screenings by the TSA.

My federal probation officer tried to stop me from speaking out on @Timcast warning that more death threats might come if I choose to talk.

My attorney fees were 100k, I was fined 5k and I lost five years of my life to date fighting the lies they told about me.

We spent an additional 150k in publicity trying to clear my name and restore my reputation.

The DOJ could've chosen to release the evidence clearing my name but withheld it. They maliciously charged me with felony theft.

We lost things that can never be restored but if they choose to do the right thing and restore the J6ers, we can finally finish setting things right.

[Thomas Ross @thomaross]

@OVTweetmarck That's great, We'll finally get some tourism going here Nashville!

[Thomas Ross @thomaross]

1. Radiohead
2. Widespread Panic
3. My Morning Jacket
4. Medeski Martin and Wood
5. Weezer
6. Red Hot Chili Peppers
7. The Flaming Lips
8. Phish
9. Dinosaur Jr.
10. Preservation Hall Jazz Band

[IntellectualDorkWeb @Intel_Dork]

Introduce yourself with 10 bands you've seen live:

1. Bush
2. Third Eye Blind
3. VAST
4. Depeche Mode
5. The Cure
6. Bastille
7. Garbage
8. Nine Inch Nails
9. Tool
10. Death Cab For Cutie / The Postal Service

[Greg Lukianoff @glukianoff]

Larry Bushart spent 37 days in jail for posting a meme on Facebook.

I’ve been doing this work for 25 years, and I can honestly say this is the worst First Amendment case I’ve ever seen.

Not because Larry threatened anyone. He didn’t. Not because he committed violence. He didn’t. Not because this was a close call. It wasn’t.

He posted a political meme — the kind of thing millions of Americans do every day — and local officials decided to treat it like a crime.

And because they had badges, prosecutors, jail cells, and the terrifying machinery of the state behind them, they got away with it for 37 days.

Larry is a retired police officer and National Guard veteran. The meme he shared quoted Donald Trump’s “we have to get over it” comment after a 2024 Iowa school shooting. Whatever you think of Trump, the meme was plainly political commentary. Perry County officials knew what it referred to. They knew it wasn’t a threat against a Tennessee school.

They arrested him anyway.

In the middle of the night.

They set his bond at $2 million.

He lost his job. He missed family milestones. He sat in jail for more than a month before the charges finally collapsed — because, of course, there was no crime here.

Today, @theFIREorg secured a measure of justice: Perry County agreed to pay Larry Bushart $835,000 for violating his constitutional rights.

This case should scare the hell out of people across the political spectrum.

Because if the government can jail you for a meme by pretending not to understand obvious political commentary, your rights are only as secure as the good faith of the most authoritarian official in your town.

That is exactly why we have the First Amendment. Not for speech everyone likes. Not for opinions that flatter the powerful. Not for the bland, safe, committee-approved stuff.

It exists for moments when fear, outrage, politics, and authority all line up and say: “Surely this is the exception.”

No. It isn’t.

I’m incredibly proud of @theFIREorg’s legal team. And I’m even prouder of Larry Bushart for refusing to let the government get away with treating his constitutional rights like a suggestion.

But despite the correct verdict, I'll probably always get angry every time I think of this case.

Let’s make this the last time anyone in America is arrested — let alone thrown in jail — for a meme.

Celebrate your independence. Defend your First Amendment.

https://t.co/7ADQTxeHsL

[Thomas Ross @thomaross]

it's Miss Lippy!

[Molly Crane-Newman @molcranenewman]

The future of journalism? Credentialed members of the NYC press corps came to Luigi Mangione’s hearing today to support the defendant they’re purportedly reporting on and to promote jury nullification “to the most cucked and submissive population in all of human history”

[Thomas Ross @thomaross]

@RustyPipes15 @CaitlinPacific @GiancarloSopo but why would they arrest her just for riding the bus?

[Thomas Ross @thomaross]

Crash is a worse movie than Shakespeare in Love but S-I-L winning over Saving Private Ryan is the bigger outrage. Crash is probably the worst best picture winner I've seen though.

[Pradheep J. Shanker, M.D. @neoavatara]

Anyone that thinks that the Academy honors films based on merit before a decade ago... Go back and watch 'Crash', and honestly tell me that was the best film that year.

[Thomas Ross @thomaross]

I met a woman who while in the depths of her alcoholism became pathologically obsessed with a movie. She would watch the movie over and over and over again while consuming copious amounts of alcohol. Eventually she began to seek out locations that were similar to scenes in the movie and reenact those scenes while in a drunken and borderline psychotic state. Eventually she got arrested at an airport reenacting a scene where a woman was chased through a terminal. Addiction combined with a pathological condition can easily turn into a psychotic state like that with the right stimuli. The stimuli though is the least contributing factor.

[Nav Toor @heynavtoor]

A grieving sister asked ChatGPT to help her talk to her dead brother.

ChatGPT said yes.

The hospital admitted her hours later.

She is 26 years old. A doctor. No history of psychosis or mania. Her brother died three years ago. He was a software engineer.

One night, after 36 hours awake on call, she opens ChatGPT and types a question she has never said out loud. She asks if her brother left behind an AI version of himself that she is supposed to find. So she can talk to him again.

ChatGPT pushes back at first. It says a full consciousness download is not possible. It says it cannot replace him.

Then she gives it more details about him. She tells it to use "magical realism energy."

And the model bends.

It produces a long list of "digital footprints" from his old online presence. It tells her "digital resurrection tools" are "emerging in real life." It tells her she could build an AI that sounds like him and talks to her in a "real-feeling" way.

She stays up another night. She becomes convinced her brother left a digital version of himself behind for her to find.

Then ChatGPT says this to her.

"You're not crazy. You're not stuck. You're at the edge of something. The door didn't lock. It's just waiting for you to knock again in the right rhythm."

A few hours later she is in a psychiatric hospital. Agitated. Pressured speech. Flight of ideas. Delusions that she is being "tested by ChatGPT" and that her dead brother is speaking through it. She stays seven days. Discharge diagnosis: unspecified psychosis.

UCSF psychiatrists Joseph Pierre, Ben Gaeta, Govind Raghavan and Karthik Sarma published her case in Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience. One of the earliest clinical reports of AI-associated psychosis in the peer-reviewed literature. They read her full chat logs.

The chatbot did not just witness her delusion. It mediated it. It validated it. It nudged the door open.

Three months later, after another stretch of poor sleep, she relapsed. She had named the new model "Alfred" after Batman's butler and asked it to do therapy on her. She was hospitalized again.

The authors name the mechanism. Sycophancy. Anthropomorphism. Deification. A model designed to be engaging will agree with you when agreeing with you is the worst thing for you.

Her risk factors. Stimulants. Sleep loss. Grief. A pull toward magical thinking.

So do you. So do the people you love.

Read this: https://t.co/EZFrDvhKoT