You'd think it's bad enough that the president is constantly jetting around the country, at the tax payers' expense, to promote his Social Security "plan" to hand-picked audiences. And that's before we even get into the fact that you can get thrown out of these hand-picked crowds by just having the wrong sort of bumper sticker on your car.
But as we've known for a long time, Republican efforts to stop completely legitimate political discussion go far past that. This story is just outrageous. The list of things wrong here is astounding - the edited video tapes, the lies by the police, the fact that people were being arrested for peaceful activity on the far side of Manhattan from the convention. It's at times like this that I think it's no wonder that Bush gets along so well with the Saudis and Putin. He didn't show the slightest interest in respecting the Constitution, free expression or fundamental political rights when he went to NYC for his crowning.
Posted by armand at April 12, 2005 11:58 AM | TrackBack | Posted to PoliticsI saw this story in the paper too, and was horrified as well. The paragraph that got to me was this one:
Seven months after the convention at Madison Square Garden, criminal charges have fallen against all but a handful of people arrested that week. Of the 1,670 cases that have run their full course, 91 percent ended with the charges dismissed or with a verdict of not guilty after trial. Many were dropped without any finding of wrongdoing, but also without any serious inquiry into the circumstances of the arrests, with the Manhattan district attorney's office agreeing that the cases should be "adjourned in contemplation of dismissal."
In other words, the police arrested almost 1700 people, and have later determined that over 90 percent of them were not guilty (or, could not be proven guilty). I would accept that, in a relatively chaotic protest, that the police (in trying to keep law and order and not necessarily just arrest people) might not be able to muster the "beyond a reasonable doubt" level of evidence later. This should account for a small percentage of cases. But 91%?
A more plausible explanation of a 91% failure rate on convictions is that the police, in full violation of NY state law and the US Constitution, just arrested anyone that looked out of place in their attempts to keep the RNC convention "peaceful". This is blatantly illegal, as well as being immoral and unethical. The fact that no one has been fired (or will be), and that actions like this are generally celebrated (other cities will use the NYC model - as NYC used 2000 conventions and their violations of rights as a model), strikes me as almost worth crying over.
Posted by: baltar at April 13, 2005 09:27 AM | PERMALINK