State of Reality
The Webster Retort
By Stephen Webster
Investigative Reporter
Publication date: Feb. 3, 2006
State of
Will somebody pinch me, please? I think I've died and gone to dystopia. As I write this one day after this year's State of the Union speech, I find myself having a difficult time wrapping my mind around the full gravity of what just happened.
Around 8:15 p.m., Cindy Sheehan was walking into the House Gallery and taking a seat. She was attending the State of the Union speech as the guest of Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey of
At 8:30 p.m., Sheehan unzipped her jacket, revealing her t-shirt. The very guard who helped her to her seat spotted the shirt and yelled, "Protestor!" The clothing in question read "2,245 Dead. How many more?" She was not asked to cover her shirt or zip up her jacket. Nobody said a word. An officer named Mike Weight grabbed Sheehan by the wrists and literally dragged her out of the room and up a flight of stairs. He gave little merit to the fact that he had physically hurt her in the process.
"Well, you were protesting!" he asserted, as though it were some sort of justification. "I did not wear it to be disruptive," she contended. In reality, if she really wanted to ruffle the president's feathers, she would have unzipped the jacket during the speech, with the eyes of the media upon her. She did not.
As our entire House of Representatives, Senate and Supreme Court watched, the mother of a boy killed in
Just moments before his most important speech this year, Bush's political opponent was arrested and charged with "unlawful conduct," a misdemeanor that carries a penalty of one year. Her crime was wearing a t-shirt and sitting quietly in a room as a guest of a member of our federal government. Not a single member of Congress or the court said a word. They just sat and watched this grieving mother being treated as a criminal for the offense of wearing a shirt with a message that the president does not wish to acknowledge.
The makeup of the Supreme Court had been altered six hours earlier with the narrow approval of Samuel Alito. A man who argued that it is within the law for a police officer to use lethal force against a fleeing, unarmed suspect makes it past the most corrupt Congress in our history, and the administration's first move is to arrest a political opponent for exercising a right guaranteed by the Constitution? A man who argued that it is okay to strip search an adolescent girl because her father is a drug dealer gets approved to the highest court in the land, and our government's first action is to brazenly circumvent the First Amendment in his presence as he smiles and applauds?
In 1971, the former Supreme Court ruled that a man who was arrested for wearing a shirt that read "F*** the Draft" was within his rights. The case was Cohen vs. The State of California, and Mr. Cohen won. How short a time after the court's makeup changed that our government once again encroached upon the rights of its citizens.
Pardon me for saying so, but that arrest sets the tone for the remainder of this year much more loudly than the thunderous applause offered upon Bush's entry. Let us hope it does not serve as precedent for what is left of this man's time in the White House, be it one more year or neigh-three.
I am utterly disgusted and honestly a little afraid. No government likes criticism, least of all the Bush administration. They go to great lengths to choke off dissent by implementing enormous security perimeters at "events of special national significance" that, if breached by protestors, allow for felony charges and the use of violence against peaceful dissenters. They erect "free speech zones" with chain-link fence and barbed wire, often miles away from the people's antagonist. And they shout down those who would stand up for their values, branding them to be "Terrorist Sympathizers" and "America Haters." Now the full assault has begun with a renewed campaign of shock and awe.
Am I an "America Hater" if I wear a button that reads, "Support the Troops: Bring them home"? Am I in league with Osama bin Laden if I refuse to surrender my rights for a false sense of security? The answer is simply NO! I am mad as hell, and I am not going to take it any more! How can we continue to justify this theft in the name of security?
During the speech, the Republican-nominated members of the court stood and applauded Bush at all those key moments. Their newly outnumbered associates abstained from such open partisanship. The arrest of Cindy Sheehan just before the president's address is nothing short of a statement of intent, guarded by this man's powers as the new retainer of the judiciary. Any member of our society who values their inherent rights as an American should be concerned.
What is the State of our
It is time to stand up again,
Stephen Webster is an Investigative Reporter and Syndicated Columnist with The News Connection, a Staff Columnist with George W. Bushs hometown weekly The Lone Star Iconoclast, and a former Contributor to The Dallas Morning News Science & Technology section. For more of Websters musings, visit GonzoMuckraker.BlogSpot.com.
