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:: 2.11.2004 ::
Quote of about a month ago that remains relevant today "I believe this is America. Whatever happened to 'I don't agree with you, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it'?"
- Pennsylvania District Judge Shirley Rowe Trkula, who threw out the disorderly conduct charge against 65-year-old retired steel worker Bill Neel. Neel wanted to greet the Bush motorcade with a sign proclaiming, "The Bush family must surely love the poor, they made so many of us;" he refused to go to the designated "free speech zone" located a third of a mile from where Bush was scheduled to speak that day, and was arrested. If only this was an isolated incident. You can read the full article at the Chronicle online. Thanks to Dave for the link (from so long ago - sorry it took so long to post this :)
Scary quotes from the above article: "These individuals may be so involved with trying to shout their support or nonsupport that inadvertently they may walk out into the motorcade route and be injured. And that is really the reason why we set these places up, so we can make sure that they have the right of free speech, but, two, we want to be sure that they are able to go home at the end of the evening and not be injured in any way."
- Secret Service agent Brian Marr, on NPR
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In a May terrorist advisory, the Homeland Security Department warned local law enforcement agencies to keep an eye on anyone who "expressed dislike of attitudes and decisions of the U.S. government."
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"You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that protest. You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act.... I've heard terrorism described as anything that is violent or has an economic impact, and shutting down a port certainly would have some economic impact. Terrorism isn't just bombs going off and killing people."
- Mike van Winkle, the spokesman for the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center, to the Oakland Tribune
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The FBI took a shotgun approach toward protesters partly because of the FBI's "belief that dissident speech and association should be prevented because they were incipient steps toward the possible ultimate commission of act which might be criminal," according to a Senate report.
[emphasis added] Yikes.
:: Deb 11:55 AM :: permalink ::
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