Free speech checked at the door By Jim Spencer, Denver Post Staff Writer

The man near the entrance of George Bush’s nonpolitical, taxpayer-financed “town hall” meeting Monday stopped Karen Bauer and Leslie Weise. He directed the two Denver women toward a man in a smiley-face tie.

“You’ve been ID’d,” the second man told them. …

[S]miley-face-tie guy said the Secret Service was coming to speak to them.

Soon, a stocky man with a shaved head, an earpiece and a red lapel pin arrived. He never identified himself as a Secret Service agent, but he did have a message.

“He said we were allowed to go in, but if we caused any problems, we’d be taken to jail,” said Bauer, a 38-year-old marketing coordinator.

Bauer and Weise will meet today with Secret Service officials to discuss their removal from the Bush meeting.

“Freedom of speech, general assembly, they’re all guaranteed under the Constitution,” said Lon Garner, special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s Denver district. “We are not an enforcement arm to the president other than security.”

Garner said his agents don’t remove people from presidential gatherings unless they break the law. The Republican staff, on the other hand, may ask people to leave, Garner said. And like the Secret Service, they also wear lapel pins and earpieces. …

“This was an official White House event and not a political event,” Colorado GOP executive director David Wardrop explained.

Anyone with tickets could have attended, added assistant presidential press secretary Allen Abney.

“The White House welcomes people exercising the right to free speech,” he said.

The facts beg to differ. Bauer, Weise and Young had tickets. None acted up. …

George Bush and his GOP henchmen are living a lie.

The president constantly claims freedom as God’s gift to everyone. …

But societies that smother dissent are never free.

[via Colorado Luis]

The closest parallel I can think of to current American politics is Israel. There was a time, not that long ago, when moderate Israelis downplayed the rise of religious extremists. But no more: extremists have already killed one prime minister, and everyone realizes that Ariel Sharon is at risk.

America isn’t yet a place where liberal politicians, and even conservatives who aren’t sufficiently hard-line, fear assassination. But unless moderates take a stand against the growing power of domestic extremists, it can happen here. — Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: What’s Going On?” href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/29/opinion/29krugman.html?”>The New York Times > Opinion >PAUL KRUGMAN
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Bush “enjoys the stubborn conviction of the unreflective mind.” — Michael Kinsley

by Jeff Parker, Florida Today

Public Opinion Watch – Mar. 30, 2005 – Center for American Progress
Public Opinion Watch by Ruy Teixeira

Bush’s overall approval rating is just 43 percent, with 48 percent disapproval. In addition, his rating on Iraq is now only 39 percent approval/53 percent disapproval, and his rating on the economy is a stunningly bad 36/53, further evidence of growing public disenchantment with the economy.

Let us not forget Congress. In the wake of its handling of the Schiavo case, Congress’s approval rating has plunged to 34 percent against 49 percent disapproving.

Consumer Comfort Index Hits New 2005 Low (washingtonpost.com) By Claudia Deane, Washington Post Staff Writer

Consumer confidence has reached a new low for the year in the wake of soaring gasoline prices across the nation, with the latest Washington Post-ABC News Consumer Comfort Index standing at -13, down four points from last week and three points below its 19-year average.

The index of consumer sentiment was last in this territory in the summer of 2004, following a late winter and spring surge in gas prices that sent consumer confidence reeling until late June.

Monkey business
GOP legislators just can’t let well enough alone

Now that conservative Republicans have an edge at the Legislature, they can’t resist trying to gum up projects and agencies that are humming along just fine, thanks.

This does nothing to move Arizona into the future. …

Hey, team! You’re running toward the wrong goal line. …

Every legislative session sees its share of misguided proposals. But this year they have gone so far that you have to wonder, what’s next?

If you can stand one more compendium of hypocrisy, read The Party of No Principles by Ari Berman.

Ultimate irony: Schiavo simply sought thinness by Paul Campos

As I write these words, Terri Schiavo is being starved to death because she was once a chubby little girl.

Almost everyone has heard about how, 15 years ago, Schiavo’s heart stopped for several minutes, causing massive brain damage that left her severely disabled. What very few people are aware of, because it has gone largely unreported, is that Terri’s heart stopped as a consequence of an eating disorder.

Terri was a chubby child, in a culture that tells children that not being thin is both a disease and moral failing. And our children get the message: Fully half of all 9- to 11-year-old girls either are or have been on a diet.

Terri was one of these children. …

Indeed, the civil judgment that has paid for Terri’s medical care was based on the failure of her doctors to diagnose her bulimia, despite what should have been obvious symptoms.

Such diagnostic failures are caused by the same factors that have led the media to largely ignore this tragic irony at the center of Terri’s story. After all, Terri was merely being a “good girl.” She was fat, and she made herself thin – a transformation for which she surely received endless praise.
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Creators.com – Creators Syndicate by Molly Ivins

For your information, while he was governor of Texas, George W. Bush signed the Advanced Directives Act in 1999, which gives hospitals the right to remove life support in cases where there is no possibility of revival, when the family cannot pay, no matter what the family’s wishes are in the matter. In Texas, you can only live in a persistent vegetative state if you are accepted in one of the few institutions that provide such care or if your family is both willing and able to take care of you. …

The very Republicans who pushed for this arrogant, interfering bill, which if used across the board would take away everyone’s right to make their own decisions in these awful cases, are the same people who voted to cut Medicaid, which pays for the care of people like Terry Schiavo across the country.

That the main player in this fiasco is Majority Leader Tom DeLay — who is in the midst of yet another scandal himself — is enough to make anyone throw up. This is a man whose sense of morality is so deformed that upon being chastised three times by the House Ethics Committee, his response was to change the rules and stack the committee. …

Those who passed this bill are the same politicians who want to outlaw medical malpractice suits like the one that provided the care for Terry Schiavo for many years while she was in “a persistent vegetative state.” They are the same politicians who have just finished changing bankruptcy law so that it is now much harder for families hit by tragedies like this one to get out from under the staggering medical bills. How dare they talk about morality?