Walk like A Republican
by digby
This is rich. Lieberman supporters are throwing ticketed participants out of campaign events because they recognize them as being Lamont supporters. Man, they really don’t get it, do they?
This was the Clinton speech, which one would think would be open to any American who had a ticket. He was, after all, the president of the United States for eight years and many people would like to hear him speak regardless of the circumstances. Yet Joe Lieberman’s pals kicked these people out of the event, something I would have thought they’d figured out by now isn’t in their best interest in this primary.
This seems to be a cognitive problem with the Lieberman campaign. They don’t understand that the reason he is being challenged is not his voting record, although there’s plenty to complain about. It’s that he acts like a Republican toward his fellow Democrats.
At a time when a number of Democrats are suing the Bush administration for exactly this kind of activity, you’d think that Lieberman’s people would know better. Salon posted this article just last week on the numerous cases pending in courts all over the country:
July 22,2006 | CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — When school was canceled to accommodate a campaign visit by President Bush, the two 55-year-old teachers reckoned the time was ripe to voice their simmering discontent with the administration’s policies.
Christine Nelson showed up at the Cedar Rapids rally with a Kerry-Edwards button pinned on her T-shirt; Alice McCabe clutched a small, paper sign stating “No More War.” What could be more American, they thought, than mixing a little dissent with the bunting and buzz of a get-out-the-vote rally headlined by the president?
Their reward: a pair of handcuffs and a strip search at the county jail.
Authorities say they were arrested because they refused to obey reasonable security restrictions, but the women disagree: “Because I had a dissenting opinion, they did what they needed to do to get me out of the way,” said Nelson, who teaches history and government at one of this city’s middle schools.
“I tell my students all the time about how people came to this country for freedom of religion, freedom of speech, that those rights and others are sacred. And all along I’ve been thinking to myself, ‘not at least during this administration.'”
Their experience is hardly unique.
In the months before the 2004 election, dozens of people across the nation were banished from or arrested at Bush political rallies, some for heckling the president, others simply for holding signs or wearing clothing that expressed opposition to the war and administration policies.
Similar things have happened at official, taxpayer-funded, presidential visits, before and after the election. Some targeted by security have been escorted from events, while others have been arrested and charged with misdemeanors that were later dropped by local prosecutors.
Now, in federal courthouses from Charleston, W.Va., to Denver, federal officials and state and local authorities are being forced to defend themselves against lawsuits challenging the arrests and security policies.
While the circumstances differ, the cases share the same fundamental themes. Generally, they accuse federal officials of developing security measures to identify, segregate, deny entry or expel dissenters.
