I don't goddam CARE if the cops think protests are dangerous. I don't fucking CARE if the feds are worried about safety. There are (allegedly) still laws in this country and there are still rights. The First Amendment rights, i guess i've always assumed were part of the FIRST amendment because they were seen as very important and had to be added to the Constitution quickly (ok, what passed for quickly back in the 18th century.) (that's probably simplistic but it's been too long since college, where I'm sure I studied this stuff.)

Of all the shit i read about the arrests of protestors and reporters at the Republican convention (oh yay, the Republicans can now take their proud places with the Daley/Chicago cops of 1968!) the most frightening sentence I read in Amy Goodman's report of this monstrous event was

"I repeated we were accredited journalists, whereupon a Secret Service agent came over and ripped my convention credential from my neck."

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/377611_amyonline04.html?source=mypi

I've been reading similar stories in Molly Ivins' Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch's Assault on America's Fundamental Rights where she discusses the various, and rather constant, abuses of the Bush White House and Bush staffers when it comes to free speech. it sucks that she's not here.

As an anti-war, anti-nuke protestor, in the 70s and 80s, I saw this egregious behavior often. I saw cops hide their badges and tape over their name tags during protests at Livermore Lab. Yeah, i was there. I witnessed it. I heard cops refuse to identify themselves to people in Berkeley, when they were rousting people in People's Park, just for jollies. i witnessed it.

I've heard from friends who crashed here during the WTO protests about cops screaming at people to disperse and then 10 seconds later, attacking those people who had no place to go.

It's no exaggeration to say that reading Goodman's column made me physically ill. Made me sick to my stomach. THE SECRET SERViCE? There might be an argument that some reporter was interfering. I don't see HOW since no candidate or politician under protection was at this location. But there's no way in any interpretation of anything that i will be convinced that the Secret Service's job depending on depriving a reporter of her floor credentials in a violent, blatantly abusive act of force.

The abuse of our rights and their power goes so deep that i wonder what it will take to restore these rights and freedoms.

Jesus CHRIST, people.

I won't even go into the whole "soccer mom/pitbull" analogy thing. Anyone who thinks that was funny or a show of positive strength on the part of the vice presidential choice. ANYone who can explain how John McCain can, with a straight face praise Palin as "a Washington outsider" when he has served in Congress for HOW many years? And anyone who thinks that there is legitimacy in his argument that Alaska is the US's "biggest state" and its proximity to Russia gives her special skills, take three steps back.