Watch what you SPRAY

[chucK]

... all you anti-Bushies,

Unless you want a visit from the Secret Service

[minx]

yeah go ahead and tell me about free speech now.

[Ratboy]

Remember: Ashcroft is always watching. If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide. Dissent helps the terrorists.

[minx]

i feel so warm and fuzzy and safe now. does ashcroft get to decide if i'm doing something wrong?

[badvoodoo]

Is Ascroft Santa? No wonder nobody ever gets their Christmas wish of peace on earth...

[Greg_W]

Remember: Ashcroft is always watching. If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide. Dissent helps the terrorists.

 

Secret Service is not D.O.J., it's Dept. of Treasury, and acts solely to protect the President. I seem to recall some other stories in years past about Secret Service responding to idle threats against presidents and shit.

[minx]

further proof that the presidency is all about the money.

[Ratboy]

I was waiting for someone to bring up the DOJ/Treasury thing. Mine was more contempt for the ever-watchful, ever-prying government we have these days, thrown together with a summary of Ashcroft's statesment before the Senate Judicary Committee. There have been numerous documented instances of law enforcement and/or government officials getting involved in such innocuous things as someone having an anti-Bush poster in their own living room. I fear what we are becoming.

[rbw1966]

Secret Service is not D.O.J., it's Dept. of Treasury, and acts solely to protect the President.

 

Greg you speak with such authority that someone might actually believe you. The Secret Service's mission is much more than "solely protecting the president". Its mission includes protecting foreign dignitaries, the vice president, their families, heads of states, investigating counterfitting, computer crimes, identity theft, etc.

[catbirdseat]

If any fault is to be found it lies with his teacher, followed by the administrator in that order. The artwork was clearly an effigy and was protected under the First Amendment. Apparently Teach was a Bushie.

[thrutch]

Secret Service is not D.O.J., it's Dept. of Treasury, and acts solely to protect the President.

 

Here is an excerpt I read a few days ago, I think it disproves GregW's theory and re-enforces the secretive nature of the Bush government. A quick google search can bring to light many other items related to all this. Granted you can search and find a similar amount of counter-information if you want, so choose which side you want and enjoy the ride.

 

Ashcroft Is Unprintable, and Glad of It

By Todd Gitlin and Jay Rosen

The Los Angeles Times

 

Thursday 25 September 2003

 

On tour, he bars the press and cozies up to local TV reporters.

 

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, who is continuing his tour of the country to promote the Patriot Act, has at several stops, including Buffalo and Philadelphia, refused to speak to print reporters. While television correspondents can often breeze right in, their newspaper colleagues are kept at bay by Secret Service agents doing the bidding of the nation's chief law enforcement official, who prefers audiences of handpicked enthusiasts and interviews with local television reporters.

[billcoe]

"The school district disciplined him, but district officials declined to say what the punishment was. Tolcacher said the boy was not suspended. Tolcacher insisted it was not a freedom-of-speech issue but a concern over the depiction of violence.

 

"From what I saw, (school officials) were right to be concerned," Prosser Police Chief Win Taylor said.

 

"If this 15-year-old kid in Prosser is perceived as a threat to the president, then we are living in '1984.' " Cravens said.

 

Not to try and re-align the spin you all have on this, but it has nothing to do with Ashcroft or Bush's policies. It is clearly about pysco-over the line violence depicted by a student. The school even diciplined him. Students can and have acted out violent fantacies. It is the job of the secret service to investigate these people. Like John Hinkley. Hey, occasionally they miss a few. I thank them for making my world safer.

 

Seems like Cravens never of the area just south of here where some young little pissant-asshole-shithead-fuckstain killed his parents and a bunch of classmates before being apprehended. I won't speak the little pricks name, but his initials are Kip Kinkel.

 

As a reminder, millions of regular kids have access and even outright ownership of guns and weapons of every sort on a daily basis. They do not abuse the right, it is, as a percentage of ownership, rare that accidents happen, but they do. The media blows these up bigger than they are in an attempt to sensationalise and make money on your fear. They are successful in doing this.

 

Having access to weapons it is one of the things which makes this country free. Investigating the occasional out of control asshole is mandatory. Please don't think I'm supporting government controls over the regular population, but having worked in a VA hospital for 4 years - with many mental patients in addition to the guys with legs blown off etc etc, I can assure you that not everybody out there is like you-all, some (and its a tiny percentage) need to be watched and controlled. If you have a better way to identify those folks, and ideas on what we should do to remain a free people, let me know. I'm curious what that would be.

 

Please note that they only talked to the kid. He's not under arrest, restricted or controlled in any manner. He apparently threatened violence on the President and yet he is still as free as a bird, able to go anywhere or do anything. This is as it should be as well IMO. If my son did this, I would want to hear about it as well.

 

I don't see a dark sinister plot from the government behind this: I see a good process, where individual rights of all (the Kids, the Preidents and others) are respected: sorry.

 

If it was you or a loved one, instead of the Pres, that this kid was focusing on, would you want the police to tell you to mind your own business and that the kid has the "freedom" to threaten your's or someone you loves life whenever he wanted and they wouldn't even talk to him about it??

 

 

[whirlwind]

they'd have a hellof a time in bellingham there are anti bush slogans everuy couple of blocks

[JoshK]

The SS (heh...ironic) is pretty uptight about that shit. In this case it's pretty absurd, but if you started spraying that you are gonna X the prez, then they'll certainly look into it. Free speach doesn't cover actual threats against the prez's life.

 

On the other subject, Ashcroft is a flaming pile of shit. The sooner that man is out of power, the better the world will be. he is the biggest single threat to civil liberties any person in power has been for a long while.

[billcoe]

On the other subject, Ashcroft is a flaming pile of shit. The sooner that man is out of power, the better the world will be. he is the biggest single threat to civil liberties any person in power has been for a long while.

 

Hey, wouldn't want to argue that one.

[Dru]

snoop dogg for prez.

[Figger_Eight]

If it was some whacked out Trench Coat mafia type kid...well, maybe he needs to be watched. Only the teacher and the school administrators know that. If the teacher is a paranoid, knee jerk reactionary - then it's a different story.

 

Either way Bush and company still suck.

[Jim]

Uptight teacher in Prosser. But you gotta wonder about the SS coming for a visit. Anything better to do guys?

[griz]

I think allot of you are over reacting to this story. The secret service is just doing it's job. If that kid shot the president two weeks later then everyone would be screaming how everyone missed all the tell tale signs...

 

Someone mentioned the Trench Coat mafia/ Columbine HS...exactly. Hind sight is 20/20 and foresight is just guess work and totally uncertain.

[gotterdamerung]

I think allot of you are over reacting to this story. The secret service is just doing it's job. If that kid shot the president two weeks later then everyone would be screaming how everyone missed all the tell tale signs...

 

Someone mentioned the Trench Coat mafia/ Columbine HS...exactly. Hind sight is 20/20 and foresight is just guess work and totally uncertain.

 

Exactly. The problem with liberals is they want it both ways or try to change the rules to suit their own ends.

 

Born and raised in sunny Colorado.

[Beck]

The bill creating the secret service was signed by Abraham Lincoln the day of or the day before he was shot, to combat counterfiters. Later given the task of protecting the president.

[lummox]

The problem with liberals is they want it both ways or try to change the rules to suit their own ends.

oh. i thought the problem with liberals was poor hygiene and a weak stomach.

[rbw1966]

The problem with liberals is they want it both ways or try to change the rules to suit their own ends.

 

This can be applied to both ends of the political spectrum.

[foraker]

Now I know why so many Republicans like guns.....to protect themselves from other Republicans!

[catbirdseat]

The bill creating the secret service was signed by Abraham Lincoln the day of or the day before he was shot, to combat counterfiters. Later given the task of protecting the president.

Are we talking about these guys?