Details here:
"Sue Niederer, 55, of Hopewell, N.J., got handcuffed, arrested and charged with a crime for daring to challenge the Bush policy in Iraq, where her son, Army First Lt. Seth Dvorin, 24, died in February while attempting to disarm a bomb.
"She came to a Laura Bush rally last week at a firehouse in Hamilton, N.J., wearing a T-shirt that blazed with her agony and anger: 'President Bush You Killed My Son.'
"Mrs. Niederer tried to shout while the first lady was delivering her standard ode to her husband's efforts to fight terrorism. She wanted to know why the Bush twins weren't serving in Iraq 'if it's such a justified war,' as she put it afterward. The Record of Hackensack, N.J., reported that the mother of the dead soldier was boxed in by Bush supporters yelling 'Four more years!' and wielding 'Bush/Cheney' signs. Though she eventually left voluntarily, she was charged with trespassing while talking to reporters."
UPDATE: Orin Kerr (Law, George Washington)--one of the two or three sane posters at the Volokh Conspiracy--collects additional details about this incident here. For reasons not fathomable by a simple soul like myself, he thinks this additional information shows that she was not arrested for protesting Bush's Iraq policies, the policies that killed her baby boy. But here is what I learned via Professor Kerr:
"[A]s soon as she started shouting 'it became chaotic and I was pushed and shoved.' '[Secret Service agents] engulfed me. It wasn't plain, ordinary folks, but people in suits with earphones.' The Secret Service agents escorted her to the exit of the building. Once near the exit, Niederer 'refused to leave,' according to this CNN.com report: 'As the Hamilton police and Secret Service agents surrounded her and reporters pressed her with questions, she held her ground, claiming "I had my ticket" to attend the speech by the first lady.'
"Police subsequently handcuffed her and she was led away to a nearby van. As she was escorted, she repeatedly shouted "Police brutality" and demanded to know her rights and the charges.
"Later, she was charged with defiant trespass and released."
According to this account, the only new piece of information here is that, contrary to Dowd, the protester declined to leave voluntarily from an event she had a right to attend, when the stormtroopers tried to oust her for challenging the charade on the stage. One can have no doubt that no similar disruptions were tolerated at Nuremberg either. (Don't get excited, now: I'm sure the disrupters at Nuremberg ended up dead or imprisoned, where as in the freedom-loving United States they are merely pounced upon by federal agents who send them away and file criminal charges. This difference, while welcome, is hardly edifying.)
Why Professor Kerr--who is, I am told reliably, a scholar of the first rank in his fields--thinks his additional research sheds any relevant light on what transpired is, alas, mysterious. But as I said, I'm a simple soul: if you challenge a war that killed your son, and as a result are assaulted by federal police and charged with a crime, I'm inclined to think "fascism" is a word that correctly comes to mind.
(Addendum: those interested in why some are worried about nascent fascism in the United States, do visit here for an extended discussion.)
UPDATE: And still more from Jimmy Breslin.
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