A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

It all started when two people were removed from a public town hall meeting [1] hosted by President Bush in March 2005. They had not caused a disturbance or even entered the building; their lone offence was an anti-war bumper sticker on their car.

Alex Young and Leslie Weise, the victims, sued the two responsible event organizers, Michael Casper and Jay Bob Klinkerman (who also happened to be chairman of the Colorado Young Republicans). Their response? "The president's right to control his own message includes the right to exclude people expressing discordant viewpoints from the audience," [2] according to a brief filed by their lawyers.

In other words, George Bush's right to freedom of speech guarantees him the right to restrict yours.

But that's not all. A lawyer for Casper said it is permissible to exclude people from a presidential event for posing a mere "threat of being disruptive." This claim of seemingly unlimited executive power is all the more shocking because it is not being argued by the White House but by two volunteers who are completely unaffiliated with Bush himself.

Then again, Casper says [3] that it was two White House staffers who ordered him to eject Young and Weise. This assertion was supported by Weise in an interview with BuzzFlash. [3] "Other people had to have been involved," Weise said. "It could not have just been one 'overzealous volunteer' as the White House claimed."

If Bush wants to isolate himself, he should stay in his ranch or Cheney's bunker instead of hosting faux town hall meetings which, according to Wikipedia, are events where "everybody in a community is invited to attend, voice their opinions, and hear the responses from public figures." [4] The Colorado forum was taxpayer funded, and Young and Weise had tickets given to them by a Republican congressman.

The First Amendment does not allow the government to prevent people from "expressing discordant viewpoints" or physically remove them from a public event simply because of a "threat of being disruptive" based on a single innocuous bumper sticker.

This must have been what George Orwell had in mind when he wrote about "thoughtcrime" [5] in 1984.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

Technorati Tags: Analysis [11] freedom of speech [12] protest [13] bush [14] white house [15] secret service [16]