Crime and punishment at the State of the Union
So, you tell me—did they kick out Cindy Sheehan and charge her with a misdemeanor for the fact that she was wearing a "controversial" T-shirt OR did they kick her out for the fact preceding the question on the T-shirt she was wearing – "2245 Dead. How many more?" – is true.  Or was true prior to the speech—it's probably higher by the time I'm writing this entry. 

I can see why the police don't want to allow disruptive behavior during the State of the Union, but that said, my gut instinct is that she did nothing wrong.  She didn't launch an ad hominem attack on Bush; she just posed the question that our president should have answered in his speech but could not and did not try to answer.  Sheehan didn't get up and start screaming during his speech.  She wasn’t wearing a shirt filled with slander or obscenity.  Perhaps she committed a fashion faux pas wearing a T-shirt to Congress, but in this country, that's hardly a crime—especially compared to the real crimes that transpire on Capitol Hill.

What's really chilling is that Sheehan's ejection sounds so familiar—a lot like the president's approach to keeping dissenting voices out of his campaign events during the 2004 presidential campaign.  When it's Bush's campaign and he's paying for the events, to keep out any voices that disagree with you might be intellectually dishonest, but it's sort of his prerogative—it's his event.  When opinions are squelched before the State of the Union, a tradition dating all the way back to our first president, in the Capitol Building rather than on the campaign trail, it's more than a little unnerving.

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