In July, a Montana company that makes Western-themed accessories stopped selling a "Don't Mess With Texas" belt buckle after the Texas Department of Transportation, which owns the federally registered trademark on the phrase, threatened legal action and told the firm to ship the offending merchandise to Austin.
Note the phrase "threatened use of force" in the above definition of terrorism, and then ask yourself what the guy with the assault weapon was doing, given the events of the past year or so.
It's a vaguely threatening phrase often used to admonish the more haphazard among us, like photos of houses with no clutter or socks on the floor.
The driver protested in ornate phrases that nobody was threatening anyone, that to speak of threats in this situation was unfitting, that he could tell from my smiling face that I was a good and trusting person, but that the world was an imperfect place, that some men were less like humans than like animals, and that it was best to send clear signals about what one was or wasn't looking for.
In that proposal, the United States removed the phrase "all necessary means" from the passage threatening Iraq if it failed comply with weapons inspections.
These phrases cut in all kinds of directions, threatening the exasperated truce that they establish.
In the dialogue between today's Congress and the White House, the phrase "exchange of ideas" always sounds a little threatening.
One reason global warming ranks so low on the list of environmental concerns might be the phrase itself: "global warming" just doesn't sound all that threatening.
The speech in question need not be extremely and imminently threatening to anyone or pose "a clear and present danger" (to use Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' phrase).
New words and phrases tend to make powerful people angry not because they are new, but because what they describe is modern and threatening.
