Protester At Trump Event Kicked, Dragged From Room As Audience Chants ‘USA, USA, USA...’

Sara Jerde at TPM:

Crowd Chants 'USA' As Protestor Is Kicked, Dragged Out Of Trump Rally

A protestor attending a campaign event for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was dragged out of the event Friday and kicked by a man described by the Trump campaign as a rally attendee, reported an NBC affiliate.

The campaign rally, ... was interrupted by three groups who were "chanting pro-immigration messages," ...

The protestor, identified by the NBC affiliate as Ariel Rojas, can be seen in a video being dragged by a man who also kicks him while he's on the ground before police removed [him] from the room.

All the while, the crowd chants "USA."

...

There's a video with Jerde's article, linked above.

(Photo of immigrants protesting Trump,
credit: Business Insider.)

We have to assume the "USA" response is typical of Trump supporters because there were enough of them to get such a chant started in response to a legitimate if unpleasant exercise of First Amendment free speech. Police removing the protester from the event so it could continue was one thing; I can't blame them for that. But unidentified crowd members with no police authority literally kicking his butt and dragging him out rather than allowing the police to remove him was another altogether... and raucously asserting that doing so was a proper response in the USA was altogether outside the pale.

I trust Godwin's Law will not prevent me from observing that this behavior by Trump's supporters is painfully reminiscent of that of Hitler's supporters. Is Trump a Nazi? I seriously doubt it. But he is personally responsible for violent treatment of uninvited people voicing unpleasant speech at his campaign rallies, because he can exercise the weight of his personal influence with the crowd to stop the violence until the police arrive.

A couple hundred years ago, America's founders legalized and constitutionally protected vocal dissent... let's not tolerate its suppression at this late date.

Donald Trump And Religious Freedom

Sara Jerde at TPM succinctly summarizes Trump's problem:

During the town hall in New Hampshire, the audience member also said that President Obama was a Muslim. Trump was criticized for not defending Obama and Muslims to the audience member.

CNN "State of the Union" host Jake Tapper asked Trump on Sunday if he had a responsibility to "call out the hatred."

"Well we could be politically correct, if you want, but are you trying to say we don't have a problem," Trump said. "I think everybody would agree. I have friends that are Muslims. They're great people, amazing people. And most Muslims, like most everything, I mean they're fabulous people, but we certainly do have a problem."

Tapper asked him to clarify what the "problem" was.

"Well, you have radicals that are doing things," Trump replied. "It wasn't people from Sweden that blew up the world trade center, Jake."

I'm going to address Trump's problem... he's almost right when he says "we certainly do have a problem," but actually, HE "certainly do[es] have a problem" ... with an excerpt from Wikipedia on Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and his religion:

Jindal was raised in a Hindu household. He converted to Christianity while in Baton Rouge Magnet High School. During his first year at Brown University, he was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church. His family attends weekly Mass at Saint Aloysius Parish in Baton Rouge.

Raised Hindu; converted Christian in a magnet high school; baptized Roman Catholic and attends weekly Mass... now THAT is religious freedom, as protected in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. That Constitution does NOT say an American may practice "any Christian religion," nor indeed does it require an American to practice any religion whatsoever, or to refrain from practicing any religion whatsoever, as long as s/he does not violate ordinary secular laws (e.g., forget any notion you may have of engaging in ritual sacrifice of humans; that's still murder).

So Jindal, a stalwart Republican if there ever was one, gets to practice his religion... indeed, his long series of quite different religions over the years... and that's his right under the First Amendment. But according to Trump's audience member, uncorrected by Trump, a Muslim has no similar right: the audience member is certain that America's problem is specifically Muslims, not specifically terrorists.

The late great Thomas Jefferson would have been very surprised to hear an American citizen eliminate that right for Muslims (Jefferson called them "Mahometan," but demonstrably knew what and who they were), and with equal certainty intended the First Amendment to protect them. I guess Trump, like so many right-wing nutjobs, is only selectively fond of our nation's founders, and he disapproves of Jefferson and his liberality toward a wide variety of religions.

Religious Diversity in Symbols
(UU Flaming Chalice: 2nd row, 3rd symbol)

How do you know Trump, if elected, would not at some point disapprove of your religion, if you happen not to be Christian (as indeed I am not; I'm a Unitarian-Universalist)? What would he do about his disapproval? The question is not far-fetched: a few years back, an appointed elected Republican official in Texas issued an order removing tax-exempt status for Unitarians, whose membership historically included three or four American presidents. The order was quickly rescinded under considerable public pressure, but Texas GOPers would do it again in a millisecond if they had the chance.

What's your religious freedom worth to you? More to the point, what's YOUR religious freedom worth to Trump?

Federal Judge Gags On Idaho ‘Ag-Gag’ Law — This Is No Gag

Gosztola

Kevin Gosztola at Shadowproof reports a federal court decision that deems an Idaho law forbidding certain kinds of ‘whistleblower’ speech... specifically in this case, the documenting and revealing of animal abuse in an agricultural processing plant... to be unconstitutional. The law runs afoul of the First Amendment to the US Constitution: the whistleblower has the freedom to speak or publish information supportive of his/her assertion that abuse of the animal(s) does take place and may be criminal in nature; otherwise, there would be no point in whistleblowing in that context.

Something similar was attempted in Texas in 1996: some cattlemen sued Oprah Winfrey and a guest on her show for libel under the False Disparagement of Perishable Food Products Act of 1995 when Oprah and the guest discussed mad cow disease in beef cattle. (Wikipedia has a decent short summary.) The jury found Winfrey did not libel the cattlemen and did not owe them the obscenely high monetary damages they sought, but after the trial, Oprah got cold feet, refused to provide copies of the video of the original broadcast to interested reporters, repeatedly refused to speak in public about the incident, etc. Living in Texas, I can understand quite well why she might exercise such restraint.

But IMHO, those cattlemen were effing paranoid, and they certainly never had any legitimate basis for attempting to suppress speech about cows. The Constitution establishes for us all the right to defame all the cows we feel like, Texan or Idahoan, now or two decades ago, mad or merely a bit quirky. Of course it speaks more about the cowboys than the cow-critics, but the notion that any commercial product, agricultural, automotive or simply asswiping, is above public criticism is, um, fucking crazy. Let it be, pardners [sic].

What Freedom Of Religion? Two Daily Kos Posts That Make Me Glad I Just Renewed My ACLU Membership

The part of America's Constitution that we today call the First Amendment begins by getting right to the point:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; ...

This should be a
very small intersection indeed!

This isn't conceptually difficult: you (Congress, and through the Fourteenth Amendment, state legislatures) can't enact laws that require a government at any level to prescribe a specific body of religious belief which everyone must affirm, nor enact laws that use taxpayers' money to support such a belief, or support the activities of a religious institution or denomination.

But more and more members of Congress, state legislators, state governors, etc., all of them Republican, appear to be incapable of comprehending this simple prohibition: if it's religious, you can't use the government to compel it, prohibit it, fund it, etc.

A couple of examples turned up on Kos in the span of the past week alone. Please read them for a better idea of what these dominionists seem determined to do:

• House Republican introduces bill to require religious pledge of military cadets
• She's back! Arizona legislator suggests church attendance should be mandatory

You can say of these people that they are simply unclear on the concept expressed in the "free expression" clause of the First Amendment. I do not believe that. They understand it just fine; they simply don't like it... and they intend to try to violate it (or pretend to try to violate it), as a song-and-dance for their fundamentalist Christian constituents. In other words, they are un‑American.

Got that? Good! Now do what you can to put a stop to it. For example, I keep my ACLU membership up to date. When the great State of Texas tried a few years ago to prohibit my denomination from using its state tax exemption, which to comply with the First Amendment must be available to every religion, the ACLU set them straight. In court!

Watch Lists In Post-Constitutional AmericaHow Ray McGovern Ended Up On A ‘BOLO’ List, Though He Engaged In No Criminal Activity, And What It Took To Remove Him From The List

Peter van Buren at FDL has the story; here's an excerpt from the middle to familiarize you with the basic concepts and the specifics of McGovern's case, how he ended up on a BOLO (Be On the Look Out) list, and how he got himself removed from it:

...

Watch Lists in Post-Constitutional America

McGovern’s case has many touch points to the general state of affairs of post-9/11 government watchlists, such as No-Fly.

Ray McGovern
(NOTE: hair, beard vary
greatly across photos)

The first is that it is anonymous interests, within a vast array of government agencies, that put you on some list. You may not know what you did to be “nominated,” and you may not even know you are on a list until you are denied boarding or stopped and frisked at a public event. Placement on some watchlist is done without regard to– and often in overt conflict with– your Constitutional rights. Placement on a list rarely has anything to do with having committed any actual crime; it is based on the government’s supposition that you are a potential threat, that you may commit a crime despite there being no evidence that you are planning one.

Once you are on one watchlist, your name proliferates onto other lists. Getting access to the information you need to fight back is not easy, and typically requires legal help and a Freedom of Information Act struggle just to get the information you need to go forward. The government will fight your efforts, and require you to go through a lengthy and potentially expensive court battle.

We’ll address the irony that the government uses taxpaying citizens’ money to defend itself when it violates the Constitutional rights of taxpaying citizens another time.

...

The concept alone is enough to curl your hair: anonymous lists, compiled in secret, involving Americans who are not accused of any crime except that of offending someone in a powerful position, but subjected to surveillance as if they were the most heinous criminal... indeed, traitor.

How much worse can it get? How many of us are on such lists for what many of us consider ordinary political activity and/or speech? The short answer: we may never know.