Americans really should be able to be in the same vicinity as the President, regardless of what’s on their clothing.<\/p>\n
I recently noted<\/a> the ordeal with Nicole and Jeff Rank, who were literally arrested for attending a Bush speach while wearing anti-Bush t-shirts. (A judge later threw out the trespassing charges<\/a>.)<\/p>\n As it turns out, these kinds of incidents happen way<\/i> too often. Dan Froomkin<\/a>, for example, noted yesterday that Jayson Nelson, a county supervisor in Appleton, Wis., was thrown out of a presidential event, despite having a ticket, because — you guessed it — his t-shirt wasn’t supportive of Bush<\/a>.<\/p>\n Nelson attended a John Kerry for President rally in Fond du Lac earlier in the day before taking his spot in line outside the Bush campaign venue. The event was part of a daylong Bush campaign bus tour through eastern Wisconsin, including the Fox Cities.<\/p>\n Nelson said he was ejected after being caught sporting a T-shirt endorsing the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, though he said it was fully hidden beneath a heavy cotton button-down shirt. […]<\/p>\n Once exposed, the female election worker who singled Nelson out snatched the VIP ticket from his hand and called for police, he said.<\/p>\n “Look at his shirt! Look at his shirt!” Nelson recalled the woman telling the Ashwaubenon Public Safety officer who answered the call.<\/p>\n Nelson said the officer told him, “You gotta go,” and sternly directed him to a Secret Service contingent that spent seven or eight minutes checking him over before ejecting him from the property.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Once again, citizens in pro-Bush t-shirts can listen to the president speak; citizens in anti-Bush t-shirts have to be kept in a separate “zone,” away from the president, or face arrest and criminal charges. Americans are, apparently, no longer free to protest their president — even silently — anywhere near the man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Americans really should be able to be in the same vicinity as the President, regardless of what’s on their clothing. I recently noted the ordeal with Nicole and Jeff Rank, who were literally arrested for attending a Bush speach while wearing anti-Bush t-shirts. (A judge later threw out the trespassing charges.) As it turns out, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}