Testing the integrity of The Bubble

May 20, 2008

As discouraging as Bush’s Bubble Boy policies have been, they have not gone unchallenged. In March 2005, for example, three Denver residents obtained tickets to a public town hall meeting on the president’s Social Security plan. Someone working at the event noticed an anti-war bumper sticker (“No Blood For Oil”) on their car, which prompted staffers to forcibly remove the three from the presidential event, despite the fact that they hadn’t done anything wrong. The group, known as the Denver Three, filed a lawsuit, and learned all kinds of interesting things.

Now, another similar lawsuit is about to get underway in Des Moines, Iowa. (thanks to reader B.D. for the heads-up)

A federal lawsuit filed by two retired school teachers who said they were handcuffed and strip searched during a 2004 campaign stop by President George W. Bush is scheduled to go to trial next week.

The case involves Christine Nelson and Alice McCabe, who were arrested at a rally at Noelridge Park in Cedar Rapids on Sept. 3, 2004. The charges were later dropped.

The lawsuit goes forward minus a couple of defendants. The Iowa attorney general’s office confirmed Monday that an out-of-court settlement is being finalized involving two state troopers named in the lawsuit.

The remaining defendants in the case include a Secret Service agent and a Linn County jailer who performed the strip search.

Of all the incidents involving the Bush gang’s efforts to protect The Bubble, this one has always been one of the most outrageous.

It’s been a while, so here’s a review of what transpired.

When school was canceled to accommodate a campaign visit by President Bush, the two 55-year-old teachers reckoned the time was ripe to voice their simmering discontent with the administration’s policies.

Christine Nelson showed up at the Cedar Rapids rally with a Kerry-Edwards button pinned on her T-shirt; Alice McCabe clutched a small, paper sign stating “No More War.” What could be more American, they thought, than mixing a little dissent with the bunting and buzz of a get-out-the-vote rally headlined by the president?

Their reward: a pair of handcuffs and a strip search at the county jail.

Local authorities said Nelson and McCabe “refused to obey reasonable security restrictions,” though that wouldn’t necessarily explain the need for a strip search. Regardless, Nelson, who teaches history and government, insisted that she was taken away because she “had a dissenting opinion.”

Given what we’ve seen, I’m inclined to believe Nelson and McCabe. After all, those enforcing Bush’s bubble don’t have a terrific track record.

I’ll let you know what happens.

as the tipster, and just to clarify in case anyone was going to make a pilgrimage to watch the trial, it is actually in federal court Cedar Rapids.

  • You are either with us, inside the bubble, or against us, outside the bubble, so speaks the uniter and spreader of democracy.

  • Goes to show how the Republicans view the situation (and us). Some of them seriously think that strip searching people is justified, probably as a way to discourage other dissenters from even showing up.

    This of course would be unacceptable to them if the show was on the other foot.

    Part of me wishes that president Obama would arrest a bunch of wingnuts for this type of “infraction” and then after the wingnut media went ballistic, sit everyone down for a national civics lesson, explaining why dissent is patriotic.

  • Perhaps off topic, but indicative of the bubble that we (or at least I) sometimes discover ourselves to be in: US Holding 27,000 in Secret Overseas Prisons; Transporting Prisoners to Iraqi Jails to Avoid Media & Legal Scrutiny

    And if you look at Guantanamo Bay, 270, roughly, as you mentioned, prisoners in Guantanamo, but according to the most recent official figures, the United States is currently holding 27,000 secret prisoners around the world. So that means that 99 percent of these folk are not in Guantanamo Bay. Now they’re in other prisons elsewhere. And as you mentioned, Bagram has 680. But there’s a huge number of people being held in Iraq, and one of the intriguing aspects of this that doesn’t get much reporting is that the US is bringing people into Iraq from elsewhere to hold them there, simply because that keeps rather annoying people like you, Amy—I mean the media—and also annoying people like me, lawyers, away from the prisoners so they can’t get any sort of legal rights.

    And when you look around the world, there’s a huge camp, Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, where a lot of people are being held. Diego Garcia, contrary to the past analysis of the British government, in the Indian Ocean has been used, in my belief, to hold people. And we’ve identified thirty-two prison ships, sort of prison hulks you used to read about in Victorian England, which have been converted to hold prisoners, and we’ve got pictures of them in Lisbon Harbor, for example. And these are holding prisoners around the world, as well. And there’s a bunch of proxy prisons—Morocco, Egypt and Jordan—where this stuff is going on. And this is a huge concern, because the world focus is on Guantanamo Bay, which really is a diversionary tactic in the whole war of terror or war on terror, whatever you’d like to call it. [emphasis added]

  • Bush I started all this nonsense in Wyoming years ago. I was there and saw the first “free speech zones.”

  • It’s outrageous of course when someone gets picked on when they do manage to get near one of these Nuremburg rallies – but where was the outrage in 2004 when a sitting president of the US held campaign event after campaign event, on the taxpayers’ dime (who do you think pays for the Secret Service to exclude Democrats), in which anyone who wasn’t pre-selected for attendance was aggressively excluded? Why were so many Americans so blind to how thoroughly un-American such behavior really is?

  • I don’t remember the exact year but it was the early seventies when some friends of mine, all anti-Vietnam war veterans, arrived in conservative Loma Linda California to greet Nixon who was to make a speech. They were dressed in their antiwar finest. Before Nixon arrived they were arrested and taken to jail for trespassing or some similar charge. After the speech they were released.

  • Why the strip search eh? 55y/os? “Ahaa…a scarf…why the scarf eh?…whom were you planning to strangle?…who else was involved in this assassination plot?…how many were you planning to murder…why the scarf?”

    Self-righteous justification by control freaks. Secretive has nothing to do with “our” security only those whose activities would not withstand the light of day. Those poisonous people who need the shadows to live, maintain their business with our guarantee of secrecy. More and more the light will find them out and this secret cabal will end.

  • Republicans are frightened little animals, so delicate and frail. Look at them, huddled in the corner, shaking with fear. It’s no wonder they do so many outrageous things. So so scared…

    I think if I were easily duped by the most obvious fear-mongering dictator, I’d be scared, too.

  • The modern Republican Party is the heir apparent to the National Fascist Party. Where old time conservatives (Barry Goldwater was the standard bearer) wished for less government and more freedoms for businesses, the new GOP wants government to enforce its specific brand of thought and morality. I could (and can) respectfully disagree with a true conservative. The New Fascists scare the living daylights out of me.

  • The end result will these two ladies will be paid a large sum of cash to be paid by the taxpayers. No one gets fired, reprimanded, or even scolded. They run around doing what ever they want and the US public is their liability insurance and their premiums are zero.

    I know I am getting a little off topic, but maybe agents of the state should have carry liability like doctors and instead of suing the state, people start suing the individuals who actually violated their civil rights. Once these agents feel it in the pocket book maybe they won’t be so quick to draw next time. We can price the repeat offenders right out of a job.

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