From last week’s visit to Albuquerque, New Mexico. mjh
Update 2/10/06: Look who came visiting and where they came from —
housegate10.house.gov (Information Systems U.s. House Of Representatives)Maryland, Oxon Hill, United States, 0 returning visits
Date Time WebPage February 10th 2006 07:32:32 AM www.edgewiseblog.com/mjh/index.php
www.madridforcongress.com/blog
Most reprints of the first story below titled it “Politicians are stifling dissent, critics say.” When the Albuquerque Journal published the following story, they titled it “A Trend Against Dissent?” and cut it in half, eliminating 15 paragraphs, including more specific examples of this trend. One wonders if they didn’t diminish the impact of the story in the process. mjh
Politicians are stifling dissent, critics say By Steven Thomma, Knight Ridder Newspapers
It’s a crime, punishable by up to six months in prison, to “disrupt” an event guarded by the Secret Service, which includes presidential rallies. (A proposed extension of the Patriot Act now being negotiated in Congress would broaden such prohibitions to other vaguely defined national events.)
Does a T-shirt “disrupt” an event? To the political operatives who ejected people on the basis of their shirts – or ordered them arrested – a shirt can be disruptive. …
The Supreme Court ruled in 1971 that it wasn’t illegal to wear an obscene anti-Vietnam war jacket in a California courthouse, despite a state law prohibiting such messages because they might incite violence.
“The state may not, consistently with the First and 14th amendments, make the simple public display of this four-letter expletive a criminal offense,” the court said. …
This trend has a chilling effect on those who disagree with people in power, analysts say.
“The long-term consequence is a higher degree of self-censorship,” O’Neil said. “Society is the poorer when deprived of the marketplace of ideas.”
TRIBUNE COLUMN By TONY MESSENGER
[T]his isn’t a column about the war. It’s not about the president. It’s not about party politics.
This is a column about free speech.
It’s a column about dissent.
It’s a column about the right in America to wear a damn T-shirt. …
During [Gov. Matt] Blunt’s State of the State speech last month in Jefferson City [, Missouri], Capitol police got into the censorship routine on their own. Tim Shaw was one of 11 people forced to either turn their shirts inside out or leave the House gallery.
Shaw is a member of Show Me ADAPT, a disability-rights organization that has been highly critical of Blunt’s Medicaid cuts, particularly those that negatively affected folks with disabilities. …
At Blunt’s speech, Shaw and 10 other members of the group were told they couldn’t watch the governor’s address while wearing their shirts. The reason? Capitol Police Chief Todd Hurt said the shirts were considered lobbying. …
Does either party really want to create a country where no dissent is allowed? A country where all forms of free speech that get in the way of political spin are somehow seen as subversive?
The thought scares Shaw, and he chooses his words carefully.
“It is reminiscent of regimes of power in world history that are not representative of our Constitution,” Shaw says.
President George W. Bush used the word “freedom” 17 times in his speech the other night. He used it more than any other word, and yet I wonder about its place atop the president’s lexicon.
ABQjournal: Bush Visit Lights Up Rio Rancho By Joshua Akers, Journal Staff Writer
The Rio Rancho Department of Public Safety reported one arrest during the event.
DPS spokesman John Francis said Robert Chavez, 56, of Albuquerque, was arrested after failing to obey a police officer.
Francis said Chavez was told to stay on the sidewalk three times. When Chavez stepped around a DPS officer and into the street, he was arrested around 9 a.m.
DPS did not have a crowd count for protesters or supporters outside the event.
I put a protest tarp up on my roof just a few hours before Duhbya got to town. I decided on the classic “BUllSHit,” which I coined for Poppy Bush so many years ago — like father, like son. On the deep blue tarp, I made the “BU” and the “SH” white and the “ll” and the “it” red. Very patriotic, like dissent.
Just my luck that the next 24 hours were the windiest of the year. No amount of bricks will hold a tarp flat on a New Mexican roof in a good stiff wind. But, though it wrinkled a bit, at least it didn’t fly.
Did Duhbya see it? Well, there is no question that a few years ago, his plane flew straight over my house, over my DUMP BUSH and No W tarps. Don’t know about this time.
Reading the anemic coverage about local protests and a blog entry about protests in Nashville, I decided to dust off my own story of protest just over 2 years ago — when I got within 6 feet of the presidential limosine.
[updated 2/4/06]
The first
casualty of this effort to make the Capitol safe for the president to expound about totalitarianism elsewhere was Cindy Sheehan, the
California mother of a soldier who was killed in Iraq as part of what Bush would describe as “the call of history to deliver the
oppressed.” Sheehan had the temerity to peel off her coat to reveal a T-shirt that said, “2,245 Dead. How many more?”
Sheehan was
hauled away in handcuffs and charged with unlawful conduct, a misdemeanor. Soon after, sharp-eyed police spotted Beverly Young, wife of a
Florida congressman — sitting near first lady Laura Bush with a T-shirt that said, “Support the Troops — Defending Our Freedom.”
Young was quickly ejected from the gallery. Despite an angry exchange with police — she called an officer “an idiot” for classifying
her T-shirt as “a protest” — she was not arrested. With the gallery cleared of “trouble,” Bush delivered his speech, with a tiny flag
pin on his lapel and the usual giant American flag backdrop.
“Every step toward freedom in the world makes our country
safer — so we will act boldly in freedom’s cause,” said Bush, to robust applause.
Police Apologize to Sheehan, Drop Charge
By LAURIE KELLMAN, The Associated Press
Capitol Police dropped a charge of unlawful conduct against anti-war activist Cindy
Sheehan on Wednesday and apologized for ejecting her and a congressman’s wife from President Bush’s State of the Union address for
wearing T-shirts with war messages.
Cindy Sheehan Released After Arrest for Wearing Shirt By David Swanson
HERE IS CINDY’S OWN REPORT:
As most of you have probably heard, I was arrested before the State of the Union Address tonight.
I am speechless with fury at what happened and with grief over what we have lost in our country.
There have been lies from
the police and distortions by the press. (Shocker) So this is what really happened: …
I was never told that I couldn’t wear
that shirt into the Congress. I was never asked to take it off or zip my jacket back up. If I had been asked to do any of those
things…I would have, and written about the suppression of my freedom of speech later. I was immediately, and roughly (I have the
bruises and muscle spasms to prove it) hauled off and arrested for “unlawful conduct.” …
I wore the shirt to make a statement.
The press knew I was going to be there and I thought every once in awhile they would show me and I would have the shirt on. I did not
wear it to be disruptive, or I would have unzipped my jacket during George’s speech. If I had any idea what happens to people who wear
shirts that make the neocons uncomfortable that I would be arrested…maybe I would have, but I didn’t.
[via guerillawomentn.blogspot.com via Coco]
Alito parts with conservatives on execution By James Vicini
New U.S. Supreme Court Justice
Samuel Alito disagreed with the court’s conservatives and refused to allow Missouri to execute a man convicted of
kidnapping and killing a Kansas City teenager 17 years ago.
Alito sided with the majority in a 6-3 vote that
rejected a last minute request to allow Missouri to carry out the execution of Michael Taylor, 39, by lethal injection at midnight, a
court spokesman said on Thursday.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas voted to let the
execution proceed.
[updated 2/4/06]
Here are a few reactions to Bush’s State of the Union.
On the far,
far right, calcified Cal Thomas notes that Mid-East oil is actually a pretty small part of our consumption and that we’ve been flapping
our gums about alternative fuels for 30 years. Along with a little echo of his support for, gasp, taxes to keep gas prices high, he’s
now calling for nationalizing the oil industry — kidding, here’s a defribulator — but almost as shocking, he suggest the Oil Rich help
subsidize research. How shall we get them to do that — taxes?
On the left, Dionne notes Duhbya’s hair-splitting and hair-raising
conversion. The old flip-flop.
Maureen Dowd points out Cheney’s direct role years ago in keeping us addicted to oil. Paul
Krugman sums it up, as many have, with “what did you expect?” mjh
The state of the union may be good � by Cal Thomas
Mr. Bush again
called for energy independence and trotted out the hydrogen car idea. He said America must free itself from its addiction to Middle East
oil. But imports of oil from the Persian Gulf make up less than one-fifth of all oil imports to the United States and just 12 percent of
total U.S. oil demand. What is needed is a reduction in consumption. That is unlikely to happen without a breakthrough with alternative
fuels, or until gasoline hits four dollars a gallon at the pump. In addition to hydrogen cars, the president promised more research into
ethanol as a petroleum substitute. Since the Arab oil boycott during the Carter administration, we’ve been hearing about alternative
energy sources, including ethanol, wind farms and hybrid cars. Maybe Mr. Bush should ask ExxonMobil to use some of its $36 billion profit
last year to lead the way.
Democrats after Bush speech by E.J. Dionne
Then there was Bush’s line about how his administration had “reduced the growth of
nonsecurity discretionary spending.” That’s cutting the budgetary salami mighty thin. A fiscally irresponsible president who sent the
deficit through the roof uses a gobbledygook phrase that excludes most of the budget � and then brags merely about reducing spending
growth in that little piece of territory. Feel better now?
On some issues, Bush simply went over to the other side. Having once
battled for tax giveaways to promote more oil drilling, Bush has decided that “America is addicted to oil.” Next, he’ll take out a
Sierra Club membership.
Man By MAUREEN DOWD
Conservatives were so gobsmacked by W.’s promise to have the government drum up nonpetroleum energy
options – Robert Novak huffed that it not only violated G.O.P. free-market philosophy, but it also had “a lengthy pedigree of failure” –
that the vice president had to swiftly lumber onto conservative radio shows to praise drilling and gas guzzling.
Asked by Rush
Limbaugh if drilling in Alaska was now out, Mr. Cheney said: “No, it’s not off the table by any means. We’ll keep pushing it because we
think it makes eminent good sense.”
Asked by Laura Ingraham if he agreed with Tom Friedman that the administration should impart
pain with a gas tax, Mr. Cheney demurred, “Well, I don’t agree with that.” He said that he and W. are “big believers” in the market and
letting the market work, and that people “make decisions for themselves in terms of what kind of vehicle they want to drive, and how
often they want to fill up the tank, and from the perspective of individual American citizens, this notion that we have to ‘impose
pain,’ some kind of government mandate, I think we would resist.” …
Back in the Ford White House, when Vice President Nelson
Rockefeller pushed a plan to have the government help develop alternative energy sources and reduce our dependence on oil and Saudi
Arabia, Dick Cheney helped scuttle it.
If he hadn’t, we would no longer be oil addicts. And Dick Cheney wouldn’t have to go to
the trouble of scuttling a new plan to have the government help develop alternative sources of energy and reduce our dependence on oil
and Saudi Arabia.
PAUL KRUGMAN
So President Bush’s plan to reduce imports of Middle East oil turns out to be no more substantial than his plan –
floated two years ago, then flushed down the memory hole – to send humans to Mars.
But what did you expect? After five years in
power, the Bush administration is still – perhaps more than ever – run by Mayberry Machiavellis, who don’t take the business of
governing seriously.
President Meant to Say By Dan Froomkin
The most memorable portion of President Bush’s otherwise largely forgettable State of
the Union address Tuesday night was his call for America to break its addiction to oil from the Middle East.
But it turns out
maybe we should forget that, too.
Kevin G. Hall writes for Knight Ridder Newspapers: “One day after President Bush vowed to reduce
America’s dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic
adviser said Wednesday that the president didn’t mean it literally.
It’s the Credibility, Stupid By Dan Froomkin
President Bush’s fundamental
challenge as he tries to regain his political footing is that most Americans don’t trust him anymore.
In the latest Washington
Post/ABC News poll, for instance, 53 percent of Americans said they do not consider him honest and trustworthy. A recent New York
Times/CBS News poll found 52 percent of Americans believe the Bush administration intentionally misled the public in making its case for
war in Iraq. Serious stuff.