The New Police State
New Patriot Act Provision Creates Tighter Barrier to Officials at Public EventsAnd what is a National Special Security Event? Anything Bush says is an NSSE.
Monday, January 30, 2006
By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
FOX NEWS
WASHINGTON — A new provision tucked into the Patriot Act bill now before Congress would allow authorities to haul demonstrators at any "special event of national significance" away to jail on felony charges if they are caught breaching a security perimeter.
People were expelled from Bush/Cheney rallies during the last election for nothing more than wearing a Kerry T-shirt, and people in Colorado and elsewhere were arrested for protesting at speeches by the President.
Campaign appearances with security paid for by taxpayers' money, that by law are supposed to be open to the public, were restricted to the faithful, cleared by special admission procedures.
So we can assume any campaign (or other appearance) by Bush and Cheney are NSSEs. How about appearances by the Attorney General? Other Cabinet Secretary? The Senate Majority Leader or Speaker of the House? Who else?
According to Fox News, Senator Arlen Spector is the sponsor of this provision.
Click here to see the entire story.
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3 Comments:
Come on gentlemen. Republican protesters were ejected from and, yes, even physically assaulted last year at Kerry-Edwards events. Also, if you're promoting the free exchange of ideas, why does the blog author have to approve the comments before posting?
Thanks for asking. Just as newspapers do, we screen comments in order to prevent personal attacks and profanity from sneaking onto the site, as they sometimes do in forums like this. Fortunately, to this date (2/1/06) we have not yet had to refuse any comments.
If you read the comments that have been posted, most of the commentators disagree with what we have to say. That's the beauty of this kind of forum and one of the great strengths the American society. We hope to keep it that way.
As for the Kerry-Edwards event ejections and physical assaults, the only thing I could quickly find on the net was a story about a little girl's Bush-Cheney sign being torn up, but I am sure there are other instances. I witnessed some pretty bad behavior among a group of young anti-Bush (and presumably pro-Kerry) supporters when the President visited Mankato, Minnesota, in August of '04. Several of us tried to get them to stop, but I'm afraid we were unsuccessful.
This, of course, is inexcusable and we do not agree with it.
I appreciate your response. I note that last night not only was Cindy Sheehan ejected from the President's State of the Union address for violating the rules of the House barring protest, a wife of a Florida Congressman was also ejected from the speech for wearing a pro-troops shirt for the same breach of the rules.
We all agree that everyone has the right to free speech, but we don't always have the right to be heard -- especially when it interferes with the rights of others to speak.
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