You probably know Cindy Sheehan was arrested and removed before the President’s State of the Union address last night. That wasn’t really a surprise – the surprise to me was that a U.S. Representative, Lynn Woolsey, gave her a ticket. Sometimes the Left is really… Left, you know? Cindy was removed by Capital Police because, well, because it wasn’t a State of Cindy speech last night.
Cindy’s posted about her experience on Michael Moore’s website. I’m going to nitpick only a couple of pieces in it:
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At that time, I was wearing the shirt that said: 2,245 Dead. How many more?
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I had just sat down and I was warm from climbing 3 flights of stairs back up from the bathroom so I unzipped my jacket. I turned to the right to take my left arm out, when the same officer saw my shirt and yelled, “Protester.”
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I wore the shirt to make a statement. The press knew I was going to be there and I thought every once in awhile they would show me and I would have the shirt on.
These snippets show she still doesn’t understand why she was escorted out. The show wasn’t about her. The wife of Republican Representative C.W. Bill Young was also escorted out for wearing a t-shirt supporting the troops. I remember a man being escorted out during one of Bill Clinton’s State of the Union speeches. The President is required by the US Constitution to tell Congress about the State of the Union every year. It’s all about the President on that night.
I have lost my First Amendment rights.
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I have some lawyers looking into filing a First Amendment lawsuit against the government for what happened tonight.
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I don’t want to live in a country that prohibits any person, whether he/she has paid the ultimate price for that country, from wearing, saying, writing, or telephoning any negative statements about the government.
I think a lawyer would have a hard time proving that her First Amendment rights are being violated, especially when she’s posted everything she wanted to say the very next day. The fact that she can’t say it there and that particular time and be disruptive at a Presidential event is supported by a Supreme Court ruling placing a “reasonable time, place or manner” restriction on speech.
Read some of her ranting. Does she sound oppressed to you?
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