Jokes can get you arrested in airports and, now, online gaming chat rooms

If you've been through an airport in the last dozen years you've heard automated voices over the loudspeakers saying you might be arrested for joking about airport security. Apparently online gaming chat rooms have the same de facto strictures, they're just not posted. From KVUE-TV in Austin (June 24):

Justin Carter was 18 back in February when an online video game "League of Legends" took an ugly turn on Facebook.

Jack Carter says his son Justin and a friend got into an argument with someone on Facebook about the game and the teenager wrote a comment he now regrets.

“Someone had said something to the effect of 'Oh you're insane, you're crazy, you're messed up in the head,’ to which he replied 'Oh yeah, I'm real messed up in the head, I'm going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts,’ and the next two lines were lol and jk.," said Carter.

“LOL” stands for “laughing out loud," and “jk” means “just kidding," but police didn’t think it was funny. Neither did a woman from Canada who saw the posting.

Justin’s dad says the woman did a Google search and found his son’s old address was near an elementary school and she called police.

Justin Carter was arrested the next month and has been jailed since March 27. He’s charged with making a terroristic threat and is facing eight years in prison, according to his dad.

“These people are serious. They really want my son to go away to jail for a sarcastic comment that he made," added Carter.

Unless there's more hard evidence than was represented in KVUE's report, as Stephen A. Smith would say, this is asinine, asiten, aseleven ... I'm not sure which recent example of abuse of power is more troublesome - this episode or the woman arrested for asking to see a non-existent warrant when police wanted to arrest her 11-year old.

MORE: From NPR, which reports that the kid was beat up in jail. His lawyer hopes to get his bail lowered at a July 16 hearing.