There Go Howmany Civil Liberties?
Cindy Sheehan was arrested at the State of the Union address last night because she was wearing an anti-war T-shirt. Holy crap.
posted by Madeleine Robins at 7:06 AM
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
About Me
- Name: Madeleine Robins
- Location: San Francisco
I'm the author of a bunch of books, including five Regency romances, a Marvel Comics superhero novel, The Stone War, a dark urban fantasy in which I blew up my home town, and Point of Honour and Petty Treason, the first two books in the adventures of Sarah Tolerance, Fallen Woman and Private Eye. I've also published a double-handful of SF and fantasy stories.
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- Five Easy Pieces (or is that Uneasy)
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5 Comments:
I understood that she was removed, not arrested. I also heard that a Republican woman got the boot for wearing a t-shirt. Sheehan, unfortunately, has seemingly jumped the shark as of late; there are better ways to get your point across than to hang with Hugo Chavez and call Shrub a terrorist, especially for people who inhabit the middle ground (understanding that the wingnuts will hate her even if she and James Dobson become best friends).
According to Sheehan (her report here) she was arrested. According (again) to Sheehan, she was not asked to put her jacket back on. I am fully aware of the Rashomon potential here--it's Sheehan telling Sheehan's story.
Still, I have to say that it is at very least a really bad piece of handling on the part of the authorities. If they'd just let her sit there without drawing attention to her, she would a) not have the potential for a civil rights lawsuit and b) would not have anything to complain about.
What did Delp's t-shirt say?
My mistake. I actually was just coming back here to note that very thing. The other shirt was pro-iraq war. She was told No protest shirts, and she pointed out it wasn't a protest, but they were adhering to the vaporous rules pretty fiercely. Not that she was arrested, mind.
D
Again, according to Sheehan, she wore the shirt to the PSOTU (People's State of the Union) address, then had to hurry over to the Capitol without time to change. Again, that's her story. Since I wasn't in the room, I can't verify it.
I think that becoming the Poster Child for Grieving War Mothers tends to go to one's head--posing with Chavez was a bad idea, imho. But I still think that the appropriate thing in all these t-shirt cases would be to ignore them; Free Speech is Free Speech, even, or perhaps especially, in the Capitol building.
Actually, as I recall, it wasn't Clinton who was doing the...no, never mind. I'm going to attempt to be a tasteful, well behaved topic host.
Read this excellent blog post, which makes me change my mind (although I think Sheehan consorting with Chavez, who is even more nasty than Bushco about stifling dissent, was a major error):
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/02/learning-from-dear-leader.html
D
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