Only if it's followed up with a petition to "return all taxpayer money wasted on egoic pranks". There was always a way forward to achieving Aaron's goals that

Only if it's followed up with a petition to "return all taxpayer money wasted on egoic pranks". There was always a way forward to achieving Aaron's goals that didn't involve sneaking around. Whether he was right or wrong, he knew on some level that what he was doing was, at the very least, inappropriate and potentially harmful. If not, then why attempt to hide his face? If not, why even do it at all? It's a sad and unfortunate fact that Aaron didn't found Demand Progress before he decided to do what he did. It's a sad and unfortunate fact that he will never have his day in court, or the opportunity to plead for mercy by showing that he'd learned his lesson and founded Demand Progress in an effort to take a better, more rational path to achieving his goals. And it's a sad and unfortunate fact that we are wasting time on silly petitions that single out individuals rather than investing all that time and effort into changing the laws they were using against Aaron so that this kind of abuse never happens again. Instead, a bunch of young people are going to go out and do rash and ill considered things in the defense of someone who did a rash and ill considered thing and likely end up facing a similar, if not worse fate than he did. It's a sad and unfortunate thing that, despite all of the collective intelligence on this and many other forums, there are very few adults willing to stand up and say "don't do rash and ill considered things unless you are willing to deal with the consequences". Young people are prone to making bad choices, we should neither encourage them, nor seek to punish them disproportionately.