Free Speech Zone - By James Bovard

[La_Serpiente]

“Free-Speech Zone”

The administration quarantines dissent.

On Dec. 6, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft informed the Senate Judiciary Committee, “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty … your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and … give ammunition to America’s enemies.” Some commentators feared that Ashcroft’s statement, which was vetted beforehand by top lawyers at the Justice Department, signaled that this White House would take a far more hostile view towards opponents than did recent presidents. And indeed, some Bush administration policies indicate that Ashcroft’s comment was not a mere throwaway line.

When Bush travels around the United States, the Secret Service visits the location ahead of time and orders local police to set up “free speech zones” or “protest zones” where people opposed to Bush policies (and sometimes sign-carrying supporters) are quarantined. These zones routinely succeed in keeping protesters out of presidential sight and outside the view of media covering the event.

When Bush came to the Pittsburgh area on Labor Day 2002, 65-year-old retired steel worker Bill Neel was there to greet him with a sign proclaiming, “The Bush family must surely love the poor, they made so many of us.” The local police, at the Secret Service’s behest, set up a “designated free-speech zone” on a baseball field surrounded by a chain-link fence a third of a mile from the location of Bush’s speech. The police cleared the path of the motorcade of all critical signs, though folks with pro-Bush signs were permitted to line the president’s path. Neel refused to go to the designated area and was arrested for disorderly conduct; the police also confiscated his sign. Neel later commented, “As far as I’m concerned, the whole country is a free speech zone. If the Bush administration has its way, anyone who criticizes them will be out of sight and out of mind.”

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“Free-Speech Zone”

[Rainbowreflect]

1. We must take back our country.

I want a real president.

[indepat]

4. Amerika: the land of the free and home of the brave?

[indepat]

6. Hopefully every future liberal President will exploit every GWB

precedent and literally excoriate the media each and every time they start to harp when they were silent when GWB set the precedent.

[xchrom]

2. it isn't that this happens that makes me so mad

it's that every american isn't hopping up and down with rage that makes me mad.
and at some point i stop blaming the media only -- and start looking at my fellow citizens -- with amazement.

[pnorman]

3. That's from the (Pat Buchanan) American Conservative web-page!

Here's the web-page of the author of that article: http://www.jimbovard.com/ He's a "libertarian".

That pretty well confirms what many here are saying; "Bush is a RADICAL, rather than a conservative!"

pnorman
STAND UP, KEEP FIGHTING http://shows.implex.tv/wellstone/

[JaySherman]

5. Interesting and informative up to the point where

the author says, "But the trend lines in federal attacks on freedom of speech should raise grave concerns to anyone worried about the First Amendment or about how a future liberal Democratic president such as Hillary Clinton might exploit the precedents that Bush is setting."

These conservatives just can't rid of their Hillary hard-on, can they? :eyes: