When Judge Katherine Forrest sentenced Ross Ulbricht, founder of the Silk Road website for black market goods, to life in prison without the possibility of parole, it did not go down well with libertarians who see him merely as a facilitator for those engaged in victimless crimes, such as narcotics use. Equally alarming is the heavy-handed way the government is going after those who posted critical comments about the judge’s decision, crass as some of those comments may be.

“Its (sic) judges like these that should be taken out back and shot,” commenter Agammamon wrote in the comments section of a Reason.com blog post about the Ulbricht case. In an apparent reference to a scene from either the “Rumble in the Bronx” or “Fargo” movies (or both), commenter croaker added, “Why waste ammunition? Wood chippers get the message across clearly. Especially if you feed them in feet first.”

Juvenile and gross as the comments may be, they clearly do not constitute specific threats to the judge – or anyone else – and are merely the extravagant rants of anonymous Internet users on a politically-charged court decision. But this has not stopped the Department of Justice from issuing subpoenas to Reason magazine for information about six of the commenters, including subscriber/account information, contact information, IP addresses and billing information.

The Justice Department’s actions should fill sites that espouse or permit the airing of views critical of the government with a sense of foreboding. “The real threats aren’t coming from the likes of Agammamon and croaker,” writes columnist Virginia Postrel, who served as Reason magazine’s editor throughout the 1990s. “They’re coming from civil servants in suits. Subpoenaing Reason’s website records, wasting its staff’s time and forcing it to pay legal fees in hopes of imposing even larger legal costs (or even a plea bargain or two) on the average Joes who dared to voice their dissident views in angry tones sends an intimidating message: It’s dangerous not just to create something like Silk Road. It’s dangerous to defend it, and even more dangerous to attack those who would punish its creator.”

This overreach of the DOJ’s virtually unlimited subpoena power goes beyond investigating legitimate threats against a federal judge, and smacks of bullying tactics meant to punish a forum for criticism of government actions.