Category Archives: Civil Liberties

After the police smothering of anti-trade-liberalization protests in Miami, and of the anti-GOP protests in New York, it's harder than it used to be to assert that we have a meaningful right to assemble and protest in this country.

Stories like this don't help:

Videos Challenge Accounts of Convention Unrest: For Mr. Kyne and 400 others arrested that week, video recordings provided evidence that they had not committed a crime or that the charges against them could not be proved, according to defense lawyers and prosecutors.

Among them was Alexander Dunlop, who said he was arrested while going to pick up sushi.

Last week, he discovered that there were two versions of the same police tape: the one that was to be used as evidence in his trial had been edited at two spots, removing images that showed Mr. Dunlop behaving peacefully. When a volunteer film archivist found a more complete version of the tape and gave it to Mr. Dunlop's lawyer, prosecutors immediately dropped the charges and said that a technician had cut the material by mistake.

How convenient.

I have been puzzled and perturbed by the comments on my most recent post in which I quoted from a description of the reception of a polite but hostile questioner at a Coulter speaking event (note that this is ostensibly a lecture, not a brownshirts rally we are talking about) and suggested they sounded proto-fascist.

Here's the key quote:

At the same moment, several Republicans hurled obscenities at my wife, a Navy veteran, and one threatened her with physical violence, stating he would kick her in the head if she didn’t “shut up,” when she was asking Coulter a question.

Hissing questioners you disagree with is, I believe, quite appropriate. Booing I can understand although I think preventing people from being heard usually is an error in judgment. Even screaming “shut up” is tolerable. But threatening to kick you in the head?

Yet my readers – whom I choose to think are likely literate and well-educated – are trying to excuse it. One writes that this comes from both sides of the political aisle and has been happening for years. Rubbish. Another says that complaining about threats of violence is somehow a cheap shot on my part, and suggests that life in the ivory tower has made me forget about the rough-and-tumble of real life. The writer then equates a threat of physical violence with (unnamed) professors being verbally tough on students!

Another commentator says we should not call it “fascist” until “thugs show up”. To which I offer the following deal: how about we'll call battery fascist and mere assault — defined, please recall as “an unlawful threat or attempt to do bodily injury to another” — merely proto-fascist.

Yet another commentator says they were asking for it! (And when the Coulter fans whose rally they were at told them to shut up (did they really find this surprising?), our narrators became offended. That falls squarely into the category of “those who actively seek to be offended will usually be successful.”) Yes, those poor shrinking violets, both military veterans, had their feelings hurt…when someone threatened to kick them in the head.

We are indeed in parlous times when the articulate people — intellectuals — are providing cover for, and thus encouraging the thugs. It's enough to make you think that David Neiwert is on to something when he warns about the ill effects of eliminationist rhetoric and the rise of pseudo-fascism.

Another disturbing sign of the times: no one is allowed to dissent:

First Draft – More from the Mail Bag: My wife and I, both veterans of the U.S. military, found out the truth about Republican support for veterans at Ann Coulter's lecture last Tuesday. After I, a former Marine infantry sergeant, asked Coulter how she defended her promotion of the war, based on lies, which has sent 1,500 of my brothers and sisters to their deaths and 100,000 Iraqis to their graves, she responded that, “you're even stupider than I thought.” This received an abundance of applause from the party that claims to “support our troops.”

At the same moment, several Republicans hurled obscenities at my wife, a Navy veteran, and one threatened her with physical violence, stating he would kick her in the head if she didn't “shut up,” when she was asking Coulter a question.

Sound proto-fascist to you? It does to me. (But subversive performance art is not the answer.)

Many people have blogged the New York Times's account of the would-be pilot who can't fly because the government has put him on a secret list he can't get off. But none of the blogs I read has noted the most insidious and evil aspect of the story in With Watch List, Pilot's Career Is Stalled.

Yes, it's very very evil that this man has been denied not just due process, but any process at all to remove this serious impediment to his chosen career. His freedom is compromised.

And the article paints him as a nice, sympathetic guy, a victim, who just happens to have helped a 9/11 terrorist by giving him a ride to flight school, and also helped him move some furniture one day. I have no reason to doubt that Juan Carlos Merida is innocent of any crime, and is as nice as the quoted people say he is.

But look at what the circumstances of being trapped in this Kafkaesque vise did to Mr. Nice Guy:

In his eagerness to prove his loyalty and win over the F.B.I., Mr. Merida said, he readily agreed to agents' requests last year to supply confidential information on other flight school students. But that has gotten him nowhere, he said.

That's right. Mr. Nice Guy was so desperate to get off the US government blacklist that he became an informer on his fellow students. And even that wasn't enough.

So we have secret arbitrary blacklists that make you berufsverbot. We have people crawling to the secret service offering to be informers to save their careers. Will the next step will be secret denunciations. Almost certainly. If it goes on long enough then, in time, stoolies will have to meet their quotas for denunciations or get in trouble. Yes, I've seen this movie before. It wasn't pretty. But last time the actors had Russian and East German accents.

These people got ejected from a Bush “town hall meeting” on Social Security because of a bumper sticker on their car: Secret Service investigating removal of three from Bush visit. What's interesting here is that it's possible the Secret Service didn't do it but someone else, possibly pretending to be a Secret Service agent did the evictions. (See also this fuller account at Daily Kos.)

• If the Secret Service had anything to do with this, it violated the law and the Constitution

• If the evictions were by private citizens misrepresenting themselves as government officials, they committed a crime

• If the evictions were by private citizens being intimidating, it could be a crime or civil offense (e.g. assault, threats, depends on state law)

• It's conceivable that there might be a way for private citizens to artfully mislead people and give the impression they are secret service agents without actually making actionable mis-statements (“Sir? Could you please come this way? I need to talk with you. I'm sorry, but you will have to leave. Security. I'm sure you will understand.”) I just don't know enough about the relevant law to be sure.

Update (3/30): The Washington Post has more on the story:

As described by Recht, a man in a blue suit told the three they had to leave and “in a physical, forcible way” escorted them out, refusing to explain why. Mackin said local law enforcement is in charge of policing civil disobedience at such events, although the Bush advance team is often seen asking disruptive people to leave.

Slate, Evan Eisenberg: Important Changes to Your Citizenship Agreement – Please read and retain for your records.

Ouch.