Monday, August 3, 2009

This is what a police state looks like

Spying For Bush: Bloomberg Used NYPD To Surveil Protesters

A word-for-word reprint of a reader response by orionATL on the TalkLeft.com site :

this is a really important issue,
a central constitutional issue
vis-a-vis the bush administration.
it may seem like a peripheral issue, compared to the iraq invasion, the u.s. a's problem, or the libby trial,
but it is not.
the bush administration has, for the entire 6 years of its existence, suppressed individual, citizen dissent against itself.
the administration has employed local police across the nation, not just in nyc, to harass demonstrators and objectors.
furthermore,
white house personnel have impersonated secret service agents to suppress dissent.
and i would be surprised if the secret service itself had not "co-operated" in the suppression.
at the president's command, protesters who voiced opposition, have been ejected from meetings or speeches for simply
wearing t-shirts with an anti-bush policy message.
this small, quiet scandal is deeply unconstitutional
these are presidential abuses of the CENTRAL free speech the our "founders" had in mind -
need i remind
that that central free speech those founders were focused on and determined to protect was
POLITICAL free speech,
not advertising
not movies
not gossip columns.
specifically,
the central protected speech was speech criticizing elected officials or existing policies.
in short,
the right to publicly disagree with the mayor, the sheriff, the governor, the senator, the president, or, historically, the king.
and NOT be imprisoned for having done so.
like other aspects of its insensitivity to proper public policy in a democracy,
the bush administration has trampled on this core right of american citizens for the entire six years of its term in office - six long years.
these bastards have not a clue about what a democracy is or how it operates.

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