I swear, this is the last. At any rate, it appears my instincts last night were right (although some of you later tried to lead me astray), as well as Glenn Greenwald’s legal analysis today– Cindy Sheehan didn’t do anything wrong:
Charges against antiwar protester Cindy Sheehan, who was arrested after an incident involving a T-shirt she wore to the State of the Union address, will be dropped, officials told NBC News Wednesday.
U.S. Capitol Police took Sheehan away in handcuffs and charged her with unlawful conduct, a misdemeanor, when she showed up to President Bush’s address Tuesday night wearing a shirt that read, “2245 Dead. How many more?” — a reference to the number of soldiers killed in Iraq.
But Capitol Police will ask the U.S. attorney’s office to drop the charges, NBC News’ Mike Viqueira reported Wednesday.
“We screwed up,” a top Capitol Police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
He said Sheehan didn’t violate any rules or laws.
And the t-shirt saga will hopefully end here.
Steve
I think the fact that the Capitol Police admitted a mistake should dispel any lingering suspicion that they act on the orders of the Bush Administration.
MI
Hey John
In case you haven’t heard (can’t imagine how, living there) but just in case) Manchin has suspended mining in WV after the death of two more miners today.
MI
Two mine workers were killed in separate accidents in West Virginia on Wednesday, prompting Gov. Joe Manchin to call on all coal companies to cease production until safety checks can be conducted.”
sundaygazettemail.com/section/Breaking/000000108
Otto Man
Zing!
Pooh
In the further interest of fairness
So, even if the reg is stupid and unconstitutional, it appears to have been enforced in at least a viewpoint-neutral manner.
Pooh
Er my last post should indicate that Mrs. Young was also escorted out.
The Disenfranchised Voter
You know, it’s funny–I just watched an interview of Beverly Young and I’m not buying it.
I think her removal was staged.
I may very well be wrong, but something smells fishy…
rilkefan
demonstrate their eagerness to get out of the quicksand in the face of an impending wrongful arrest case.
Pooh, note the difference between being escorted out and being dragged out and booked.
rilkefan
Hey TDV, you’ve fled me down the comments and down the posts – I’m looking for a link to your spat with Kos.
Steve
Unless you’re a trusted user at dkos, there’s no point in reading that diary. Literally 2 out of every 3 comments have been troll-rated into oblivion. It was kinda cute when TDV went all Dick Cheney on me, of all people, though.
neil
I think her removal was staged.
It wasn’t staged, but they have all but admitted that they removed her because they couldn’t appear to be discriminating on the basis of shirt content. And once you’ve arrested and cuffed somebody, it’s hard to undo it.
rilkefan
Never mind, dravest you to ground in the other thread.
neil
An interesting thought. If Sheehan’s lawyer attempts to subpoena testimony on who ordered the arrest, and the administration was involved, they’re screwed: they can’t cite executive privilege without totally giving away the game.
Andrei
So Beverly was dragged away in handcuffs as well? News to me.
SmilingPolitely
“it wasn’t staged, but they have all but admitted that they removed her because they couldn’t appear to be discriminating on the basis of shirt content”
So it was staged. Mrs. Young ordinarily wouldn’t have been removed. If the media magnet, Sheehan, hadn’t been arrested, and it was, instead, an ordinary liberal peon, Mrs. Young’s staged removal wouldn’t have occured, because no one would have cared.
Sheehan generates too much heat. They fucked up getting her and knew they wouldn’t be able to get away with it.
“Oh fuck! We got Sheehan! Quick, get a Republican, now!”
Steve
I think I feel worse for the Republican wife than I do for Cindy Sheehan. There’s nothing that feels quite as unfair as being the victim of a make-up call.
The Disenfranchised Voter
LOL. What did I say? I lost my TU so I can see it.
The Disenfranchised Voter
*can’t
And the reason I think the Young incident was staged is because Young was adament on TV saying that they should arrest her now, that she will go there and get arrested.
She just seemed to be trying to equate herself with Sheehan.
Not to mention her husbands brow-beating of the issue in the House…
I think it smells really fishy…
Rusty Shackleford
It’s a sad comment on the state of our nation when a woman is arrested for wearing a political t-shirt. Wasn’t the first person mentioned in Bush’s SOTU Coretta Scott King? Who was she married to? Non-violent protest – anyone else recognize the irony?
Steve
For the record, while all this is in good fun, I think you are way way off when you say John Aravosis is all about one issue. Kinda reminds me of the people who complain to Andrew Sullivan that he only writes about one thing, although I can’t quite put my finger on the common thread.
John Cole
Thanks for the mining heads-up. I was watching the WVU game.
I don’t know if you guys know tihs, but I really like Gov. Manchin.
Joey
Irony? What the hell is irony? I know not of this “irony” you speak of.
kl
Gestapo!
SmilingPolitely
sh-sh-sh-shaw!
Kimmitt
I wonder if error would have been admitted if they hadn’t ESCORTED OUT A CONGRESSMAN’S WIFE in the process.
The Disenfranchised Voter
I do remember that now. Sorry for taking my anger out on you steve, it wasn’t personal. I just got reallllly pissed off when people started troll rating that “hot temper” comment. After that I think it was all downhill.
With that said, I am honestly proud of this comment:
Too bad more people didn’t get to read that. Heh.
The Disenfranchised Voter
BTW thanks for posting that Steve.
Gerard
Of course there will be no charges against Young or Sheehan, there never was going to be any charges because the cases are unwinnable. What we have here is the use of arrest to achieve a short-term political goal, namely the removal of protesters from a public event. Both Republicans and Democrats do it but is it right?
The Disenfranchised Voter
And I should clarify.
I don’t think Americablog is a one issue blog so much as I think John really only gives a shit about gay rights. As in, if the GOP were to switch their stance and give the a-okay to gay marriage before the Dems, John would vote Republican.
The Other Steve
Was Creative Responses waiting out in the hallway with press releases announcing interviews with her, and her friends?
Chefrad
So we have reached the point where a t-shirt is a threat to the republic?
The Other Steve
TDV… Unfortunately I no longer have trusted user rights cause I stopped posting. But I would have given you a 4 for that one. God those patsies will troll rate anything.
The Disenfranchised Voter
Heh, I appreciate it OS. Hey by the way, you say you lost your TU because you stopped posting–so TU is based on your more recent posts? As in will eventually my numerous 0’s go away after a while–or am I stuck with the zeros in my “mojo” forever?
Rationalist
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,183147,00.html
Slip sliding away
On that slippery slope
http://www.bend.com/news/ar_view.php?ar_id=18712
Not with a bang but a whimper…
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,153720,00.html
There are many more. We need to wake up – all Americans, conservative, liberal, moderate, Democrats, Republicans, Independents. This is not an isolated incident, a mere one-time mistake on the part of some overzealous defenders. There is a pattern here.
Civil rights are not a liberal issue. Freedom of speech is not a Democrat issue. Liberty is not a “Left” issue.
Bob Barr knows that. John McCain knows that. Hell, even Grover Norquist seems to have remembered that.
It’s government by, for and of “we, the people”, not “the King of America”. This is not the first time Presidents and/or members of their administrations have been tempted to abuse their authority and abuse our democratic republic.
To reduce this to partisan bickering is to do our nation a grave disservice – and it is the foolishness of those who refuse to learn from history, who will wake up one day to find that the train has left the station, and taken with it the bag full of our liberties.
Don’t let it happen in America.
Steve
No one quite knows how the TU system works, except that it apparently goes away after a while. I imagine the details are kept secret to prevent people from gaming the system, although really, it’s not exactly a godlike degree of power.
The Disenfranchised Voter
I see. Thanks anyway.
Pooh
That reason, among several, is why I spend very little time at dKos. There is a slightly freepish tinge, if you got my meaning. Not that I’d know anything about that of course…
BadTux
Personally, I don’t think there was any conspiracy by higher-ups here. I think what there was, was a fuck-up by the guy on the ground who made the call to take down Cindy Sheehan. They all but admitted that they were under orders to keep a watch on her because they were afraid she was going to disrupt the State of the Union address. When she started taking her jacket off, my suspicion is that some near-sighted flatfoot who couldn’t see her clearly thought she was unfolding a banner or something and yelled “Protester!” and pointed at her, and it snowballed from there. (According to Cindy and witnesses, she was grabbed while she was in the process of taking off her jacket, not afterwards as the Capitol Police originally claimed).
Once they screwed up with Cindy, of course they had to go track down a Republican wearing a political t-shirt, and got Beverly Young.
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately attributed to stupidity. In this case, my suspicion is that the stupidity started with the flatfoot on the ground who made the original call of “Protester!”, and snowballed from there. Not only does “Gresham’s Law” (as I’ll call it) apply here, it would also have been an utterly stupid call on the part of the Bushies, and the Bushies rarely make a stupid call when it comes to PR. There is no achievable political goal fulfilled by arresting Cindy Sheehan in this manner — all it does is get her and her little “mission from God” mentioned in the newspapers, which, of course is what she wants. Why would the Bushies give her what she wants? She’s not Osama bin Laden, after all!
Stupidity. Not conspiracy (unless you call the conspiracy on the part of the flat-foots to testi-lie about their screwup, a conspiracy that swiftly ran ashoal on the shores of shifting stories and witnesses saying it didn’t happen like they said). Stupidity explains everything, including the clumsy attempts by the flatfoots to cover up their screwup afterwards. That’s my call, and I’m stickin’ by it.
– Badtux the Stupidity-smelling Penguin
HH
So all the previous examples that were dug up are what, forgotten? Have the Sheehan fans (or non-fans, depending on the time of day and which dictator she’s kissing up to) made Mother Sheehan above the law? Looks like.
HH
“Beverly Young, the wife of 18-term Republican U.S. Rep. Bill Young of Florida, wore a shirt that read ‘Support the Troops.'”
Iran! American Taliban! The Constitution shredded!
Pb
John,
That’s just the story of your life, isn’t it, John? You’ve gotta start listening to the right people… :)
Hell no it hopefully won’t–it’ll end when the goddamned government stops imprisoning people in direct contravention to our fucking Constitution! That means this isn’t over yet, not by a long shot.
Steve,
I do–it’s all in the mojo, baby! Read up on Scoop, kuro5hin, etc.
BadTux,
As always, the cover-up is worse than the crime. However, it sounded to me like they were on the lookout for Sheehan, which makes it even more amusing that this guy apparently didn’t know who she was (?!).
HH,
As usual, you aren’t making any sense. FYI.
BadTux
Err, the law is pretty clear. Wearing a t-shirt is not a protest, and the Capitol Police have already been whanged in the D.C. District Court for violating this Supreme Court ruling (that dates back to 1971). The previous examples were examples of the Capitol Police violating the law too, HH, even the examples that happened during a Democratic administration. Thus the embarrasment of this police chief at having to admit that, well, he had no right to arrest Cindy Sheehan under the law.
Law is law, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans hold power. The fact that the current batch of Republicans are crooks in the Richard Nixon mold rather than men of principle in the Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan mold definitely has something to do with the current Republican culture of corruption… but the corruption belongs to the men, they’d be just as corrupt if they were Democrats. And indeed, there have been plenty of Democrats in the past who were just as corrupt. You simply can’t say “but it was okay when Democrats did it!”, because that’s not true. The law is not Democratic, it’s not Republican, it’s the law, and cares not about political parties.
– Badtux the Law Penguin
The Disenfranchised Voter
You’re the man, Pb.
Thank you.
Pb
TDV,
Aww, shucks, I’m blushing. I assume you’re talking about the whole Trusted User system thing?
Yeah, well, I only know about all this stuff because before Daily Kos was big, I hung out on kuro5hin for a long time, (after slashdot started to go downhill, heh) the Trusted User system is okay, but it’s not that hard to ‘game’ one way or another, really.
Scoop is sort of like Democracy–not perfect, but still the best system we’ve got out there. I’d be in favor of a more personalized approach, where each user has more control over the rating system and their own view of the comments.
The Other Steve
Oh, it’s easy to game the system. Go into any open thread and praise Howard Dean. The more you praise him, the more you’ll get 4’s.
Look for threads that “The Usual Suspects”, namely JJB, Eternal Hope and a few other “troll hunters” are 0 rating to death, and post “Man, this guy’s an idiot!”… instant 4’s.
In a Cheers and Jeers thread, post a picture of a cute kitten.
Never say what you really think.
And there you have dKos.
I love what kos has done, I just can’t stand about half of the posters.
The Other Steve
Actually slashdot has improved in recent years. Now when the idiots post an anti-Microsoft screed, most of the comments are about how pathetic the idiots are.
Used to be the place was just full of group think as well, and still is to some degree. But there’s been a wider array of interesting news in recent years as they moved away from their focus of trying to drum up Linux business for the companies that paid them.
As for gaming slashdot. Remember… When you moderate as ‘overrated’ or ‘underrated’, you won’t be meta-moderated. Otherwise, you can generally get high ratings by pointing out intelligent points and not engaging in flame wars.
(My uid on /. is 4 digits, been reading since 1997)
Biggest problem with Scoop as implemented by dKos is it doesn’t limit the number of times you can moderate. This results in a small minority controlling the groupthink. Seriously, if you go into the hidden posts, you’ll find it’s frequently the same 10 people troll rating everything.
I do think /.’s rating system is better. It’s just their “editors” are idiots.
The Disenfranchised Voter
Heh, you know Eternal Hope too?
Me and him (her?) got into a squabble before, I can’t stand that bastard.
He troll rated me for talking about how the Dems should be more open minded towards the second amendment.
Pb
The Other Steve,
That’s not necessarily saying much though. I do still look at it occasionally, but nothing like I used to.
Heh, I haven’t moderated in even longer, but I do remember that being the case back in the day.
Well, at least you can if you do it early enough.
Hey, me too! Were you around before they had accounts? (most people don’t realize that 4 digits or less means about nothing, it couldn’t have taken much longer than a day or two for the first thousand users to sign up once they started the accounts…)
Actually what I remember most fondly about slashdot was the trolls, a few of which I still keep in touch with. It all started with MEEPT!!, who was hilarious, and then there was sort of a golden age of slashdot trolling. The second wave was far less clever, and of course you started getting the crapflooders.
That’s actually Scoop’s biggest strength. And remember, for every three troll ratings (0’s), it only takes one 4 to unhide a comment.
I don’t. Slashdot’s rating system was and is horrible–overly simplistic, overly cryptic, nonsensical, restrictive, discriminatory, easily exploited, etc., you name it–and it’s one of the main reasons that Scoop was created the way it was in the first place. Of course, the other reason I moved to kuro5hin in the first place was because the slashdot editors are idiots. :)
kl
Which prison is she in?
Pb
kl,
Sheehan specifically spent four hours in two different jails for not committing a crime, and exercising her Constitutional rights. However, I was also addressing the practice itself–there’s an American citizen who is still in prison, and was for three years without even being charged with a crime.
Perry Como
If that person was innocent, they wouldn’t be in jail. You have nothing to fear as long as you support the government. You’re either with us, or you’re against us.
Rob
If this was an isolated incident, I really wouldn’t be too worked up. But this seems to be bubble boy’s modus operandi. What ever happened to the people ejected from the Colorado speech (social security I think). Seems to me if he only wants partisans at his events, he should pay for it, not the taxpayers.
Al Maviva
I think nobody in the Capitol gave a shit about Sheehan’s removal, but the CP’s attorneys probably pointed out that if Sheehan went, Young had to go too to maintain viewpoint neutrality. And I think nobody cared about that either, until the Republican representative got pissed about it, told the Republican-appointed Sergeant-at-Arms, who then made the Capitol Police backtrack.
Glenn’s analysis really overstates Bynum. First, it’s a district court case, and cases decided at that level have limited precedential value. Second, the facts are quite different, involving a private group ambling about the halls during normal hours (not a special congressional event) occasionally stopping to unobtrusively pray. Third, the court didn’t say no regulation of speech was permissible, as some seem to be interpreting it here, it just said that the way the Capitol Police’ regs were written was overbroad. The subsequent appellate history indicates that the regs stricken by the district court in Bynum were quickly re-written. Fourth and finally, another district court case, Lederman, spoke approvingly of Congress’ power to restrict speech and dictate *decorum* in its debate halls.
To arrest Sheehan, there would have to have been at least a valid regulatory basis. But to exclude her (and Young) from the chamber, could be done if it was within Congress’ discretionary power, through the Capitol Police, to do so. I believe Congress has the power to do so. If Congress does not have the power to do so, then not only should we prepare ourselves for t-shirted demonstrators in the galleries there, but the Supreme Court had better start admitting masses of t-shirted demonstrators into its oral arguments in controversial cases. That should be good, to have 60 or 80 T-shirted Operation Rescue folks sitting at the back, glaring, during the next abortion case. Just remember Glenn’s dicta, it’s not a protest, it’s just a T-shirt. Hell, I may dress as a coat hanger to go to the next one…
And Bad Tux, I’d love to see the Supreme Court cases you are citing. I found a few relating to demonstrations on the Capitol and Supreme Court grounds, but all of them related to demonstrations outside the buildings, which the courts seem to carefully distinguish from inner chambers. If you can point me to a case permitting demonstrations inside the debate halls of Congress, or inside the Supreme Court’s chambers, I’d really appreciate it and totally take back everything I just said.
ats
Time-tested Potemkin Village gambit. They lock up the miscreants until the Imperial procession rides by.
At least now they say they are sorry.
kl
Wow, that’s a longer “imprisonment” than James Frey!
Sherard
Man some of you are dense. Read between the lines. The law is there to support REMOVAL of an ass like Sheehan from the Capitol building. That doesn’t mean they are going to go forward with charges and try and put her in jail. Jesus. You’d think among all these people we’d have a COUPLE with some common sense.
You DO NOT have a right to make an ass of yourself at the SOTU and there is a law on the books that allows the police to remove idiots that try to do just that. Once the removal takes place, the intended result has been reached. The quoted DC police representative is just trying to save face.
W.B. Reeves
I was just going to note the absurdity of Al’s continued legal parsings in the face of the capitol cops admission that Sheehan’s arrest had no basis in law. However, this jewel is even more primo.
Right. Saving face by admitting that they acted illegally in arresting Sheehan. Let’s see, false arrest, illegal detention, assault & battery, violation of civil rights. Yes, the capitol cops looked pretty good right now but not as good as Sheehan’s grounds for legal action.
Pb
Sherard,
If there was a law on the books allowing a person to be arrested just for being an ass, then you’d be in jail right now. You aren’t, therefore, there isn’t, QED.
BadTux
Someone who confuses sitting quietly as an invited guest of a Congresswoman with demonstrating probably isn’t the kind of person I need to be getting law lessons from.
As the Capital Police later admitted, there is neither a law nor a rule prohibiting sitting quietly as an invited guest of a Congresswoman, whether wearing the T-Shirt of Mass Distraction or not.
— Badtux the Law Penguin
The Disenfranchised Voter
Wearing a T-shirt falls under the category of “demonstrations” to you?
Wow. What a fucking joke that is. I guess you would say she was protesting inside the capital as well.
A wearing political T-shirt is not equivalent to demonstrating or protesting.
The Disenfranchised Voter
*Wearing a
The Other Steve
That wasn’t the original intention of the founders when they wrote the 1st amendment.