Free Speech? Not in America

Cindy Sheehan was arrested for wearing a shirt that listed the number of American dead in Iraq. She was invited to hear Bush give his “State of the Union” address to Congress. You can read about it at AfterDowningStreet.org.

What a mockery Bush is making of America. It’s time for people to realize that our freedoms do not exist if we can not exercise them. Bush’s people are control freaks. They are afraid to hear any dissenting views and opinions. This is not new. There are many previous reports of people being screened from Bush events, like because they are Democrats or not willing to pledge loyalty to Bush.

In 2003 the ACLU cited a dozen examples where protestors were ordered to”ProtestZones” far away from Bush while supporters were not restricted.

James Bovard writes on The American Conservative website about how the Bush”Administration quarantines dissent” with its free speech zones.

And its not just war as the following instance written by Bovard points out:

“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.””