Life Beyond The Bubble

Last Friday President Bush dropped by Dallas, Texas, to visit Townview magnet school, looking at moss through a microscope for a photo-op. The Dallas News reported "While 13 handpicked students shared a few memorable minutes with the president in a biology classroom, other students were locked in their classrooms as a security measure for the president."

Thankfully, no fire broke out in the building while he was posing for the media. Those children he feared enough to lock up were a particular threat. After all, one of them might have recalled the story about the Emperor and his new clothes.

The other pupils were not the only ones Bush's minions made sure he would not be exposed to. One teacher wrote "Notice he didn't want to have teachers protest, so they kept the visit quiet until the last minute!!! We can't take off because WE ARE TEACHING THE TAKS TEST!!!!!!!"

Outside, more voices were kept away by force. The News barely noticed that "Down the street from the school, a smattering of protesters stood outside in the rain Friday morning to await the president." One woman who was there wrote

Security, black cars and cops everywhere. We proceeded up the main drag in front of the school and started chanting about education for all. Cop #1 approached. "You can't do this here. You need to go to the 'free speech zone' at the bottom of the street or across the freeway way up the street, but you can't walk on this street. You have to go a block over." Okay. I rounded 'em up and off we went to the freeway.

Enter Cop #2."You can't do this here. You have to be down at the 'free speech zone' or I'll arrest you." "I'm sorry. We were directed to come here, sir." "I'm telling you you have to go back down the street or I'll arrest you right HERE." "This is infringement of our First Amendment Rights, but we wish to cooperate. Would you escort us down the street please?" So we SLOWLY marched down the street (again) in front of the school with our signs, chanting and singing and chatting with media who were filming us.

More frenzied cops every minute.We must have looked pretty scary, particularly the coeds. They shoved us about 4 blocks away from the school and held us for c. 3 hours with 20-30 armed agitated cops next to a cemetery behind trucks and motorcycles. No one could go to their car; no one could use the bathroom or go get water."

There was nothing special about this trip. All over the country this President has gotten authorities to herd protesters into those Orwellian-named 'free speech zones' so that he can't even see them. This detention being illegal is no problem to the man who claims he can ignore any law he disagrees with, like the Fourth Amendment or the Geneva Convention.

Even at his State of the Union address to Congress, security arrested Cindy Sheehan and forced one Congressman's wife to leave. Their offense was wearing tee-shirts with political messages. The charges were later dropped because the law specifically allowed such apparel there -- but by then the President had made his prime-time TV splash with no competing images.

Former Dallas Judge Ron Chapman passed this on:

"It starts with the highly contested election of an oafish yet strangely charismatic president, who talks like a "reformer" but is really in the pocket of big business.... The president, taking advantage of an economic crisis, strong-arms Congress into signing blank checks over to the military and passing stringent and possibly unconstitutional laws.... Eventually, he takes advantage of the crisis to convene military tribunals for civilians, and denounce all of his detractors as unpatriotic and possibly treasonous." Sound familiar? It's a review of Sinclair Lewis' novel It Can't Happen Here, written in 1935...

A growing number of people in both parties is finally recognizing the unprecedented danger to our institutions posed by this administration's claims to be above any checks and balances. One group educating the public to this threat is MoveOn, which has issued a new TV ad showing Nixon morphing into Bush. You can watch it, and read the evidence for their charges against him, at this website.

Even Republican Senator Arlen Specter has admitted that the remedy for lawbreaking is impeachment. As a sign of how seriously some people are taking this, Dallas Democratic Precinct Chair Tom Blackwell sent out links he found to impeachpac, impeachbushcoalition, and impeachbush.tv. To quote Patrick Henry, "... George III -- may profit from their example."