Republican lawmakers are less fond of public protest now that it’s not the Tea Party doing the protesting. In Arizona, the Senate just passed a bill that would “would open up protests to anti-racketeering legislation, targeting protesters with the same laws used to combat organized crime syndicates.”
The same bill would “allow police to seize the assets of anyone involved in a protest that at some point becomes violent.”
A Florida Republican introduced a bill that would make it easier to run over protesters with your car without being legally liable. North Dakota and Tennessee Republicans have done the same.
In Minnesota, Republicans are pushing a bill that would allow the police to charge protesters for the cost of policing their rallies and marches.
Not to be outdone, Mississippi Republicans want to make blocking traffic a crime punishable by a $10,000 fine and five years in prison.
There are also a bunch of bills coming out of states like South Dakota, Colorado, and Oklahoma aimed at greatly stiffening penalties for interfering in the operation of pipelines.
So far, none of these bills have become law, and most of them are unconstitutional. But they indicate a certain mood.
And I know that mood is shared by our new Attorney General, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III.
As Hunter S. Thompson might say, “that crazy f*cker is gonna come down on us like million-pound shithammer.”
Without that stolen Supreme Court seat, it’s going to be a bit harder to ease the pain.
AZ State Sen. Kavanaugh (whose actual legal name appears to be ‘Former Police Officer John Kavanaugh’ based on how he is invariably described in the news) is a relaibly authoritarian voice in the AZ legislature. He has already tried to make it a felony to block traffic, illegal to film police officers, and failing that a crime to film police officers within 50 feet, among other blatantly unconstitutional laws.
At the time of the debate over his latest bit of home-grown fascism, he noted that he ‘hoped law enforcement was infiltrating these protesters’.
Agents provocateurs. Sounds about par for the course. Since I seem to back in the practice of attending protests on occasion, I will gladly remind the younger attendees particularly to avoid violence as a rule. If someone is goading you into engaging in vandalism and so on, be wary. The person doing the goading is more likely than not to be an undercover cop. Even if not, the chances are good that the vandalism or other incidents of violence will get disproportionately covered, distracting the public from the message you wish to get across, and in all likelihood turning the public off from your message.
But yeah, I am not surprised that there are forces of darkness among the elected officials who are hoping that undercover cops are already infiltrating and attempting to stir up an excuse for a crackdown.
— JFK
If these bills are signed into law, and if not deemed unconstitutional, then we really are into an authoritarian police state. Such laws, combined with other antidemocratic measures such as further GOP suppression of the (Dem) vote, would make our alternatives rather narrow in scope, especially considering the upcoming shape of the SupCt.
Hate to say it, but the end-result outcome I’ve mentioned here for the past year — literal bloody civil war in the US by 2021 — looks more and more likely to occur.
But… The lesser of two evils won!? I mean that’s what we’ve all been repeatedly told around here.
Yes, because she was a piece of shit like you. Now think on what a turd she is that even Trump is better!
At least we’re the adults in the room. Remember how they needed to cut deals with Democrats to keep the government functional, and how that was going to split their party?
A debt ceiling increase is coming up…
Two words: John Adams
Wasn’t constitutional then, ain’t now.
Demonstrations by the resistance will be the least of their problems. Since the donald won, tourism is down 17%. Chaos in the streets will drive that number down and the unemployment rate will start on its way back up. Oh let us not forget the effect of letting our new Atty Gen loose on pot.
HP reports that they along with NYT, CNN and Politico were denied access to Spicers news conference. Freedom of the press is now under attack.
Full report on CNN:
http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/24/media/cnn-blocked-white-house-gaggle/index.html
Presumably they have their lawyers going into federal court as of this minute.
The Hitlerite impulse is simply undeniable at this point.
“Freedom of the press is now under expanded, more explicit attack.”
Freedom of the Press is freedom to print, not freedom to enter wherever they wish without invitation.
It is beyond banal to point out that all this rightwing frothing springs from deeply authoritarian and (dare we say) fascistic impulses.
As always, the comedy is pretty much right on the surface, as all today’s Law N’ Order Boyz always imagine that they would have been the first ones into the holds of the tea ships in Boston Harbor, circa 1773. Of course, Lord North and his monarch would have found much to commend in all these fine Tory…er, Repub bills.
But our valiant American “conservatives” have never had too much understanding of either their own personalities or the long run of history, haha. Water the Tree of Liberty, indeed, Repubs.
Finally it seems the protests that are really driving these Traditional Americans ape-shit are the Black Lives Matter roadway events and Native American effrontery in trying to protect reservation environments from the certainty of pipeline spills. The Law n’ Order hammer must always, always come down with disproportionate force on unruly uppity minorities and their (enraging!!) demands that This Shit Has Got to Stop. There can never, ever be any Caucasian compromise on this front….
Here’s a revolutionary thought – don’t block the fucking roads. Then you won’t get arrested for blocking roads or run over. You wanna play in the roads? Stuff happens. Yo mamma said DON’T PLAY IN THE STREET.
Blocking roads is the stupidest, most asinine tactic that is in use today. It annoys those who have nothing to do with the issue. It stops emergency vehicles and public safety vehicles and school buses from their routes. It stops people from getting to their appointments.
And again, the amazing notion is that you folks are all fulminating over this. Oh, fascism, racism, blah blah blah.
If the idiots in BLM would not have blocked the roads, this kind of law would not be necessary. Folks pull some bullshit tactic, there’s gonna be a response. This is the response.
If the idiots in BLM would not have blocked the roads, this kind of law would not be necessary. Folks pull some bullshit tactic, there’s gonna be a response. This is the response.
You’re so right. And those blacks who had the effrontery to block the road on the Edmund Pettus Bridge got exactly what they deserved, didn’t they?
Perhaps you should return under the bridge now, no? I’m afraid you’re blocking intelligent discourse. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Billy_Goats_Gruff
The title of this is “The Right Wants No Dissent”.
You are proving that the Left wants no dissent.
How the Frog Pond has changed. It’s now just a backwater of the Orange Ocean.
You are still allowed to protest by whining here, right?
Noone is making rules for you that makes your life harder, right?
Oh, you expected to whine and noone to tell you you are whining, and now you feel disrespected, nay even persecuted. Riiight….
Why look its another troll rating from the marduk piece of crap.
yeah, well here’s a troll rating from me.
What goes around comes around.
Oh, teh funny. It’s almost like you want to actually engage, but then I remember …. you’re a troll. B/c you picked on the one part of the fascist proposals, that is already partly implemented today. If you block a road during a protest, without a permit, in at least two states you’ll be arrested. Already. Already.
But you, you troll, just as you’re OK with extrajudicial killing of black people for no good reason at all (Philando Castile), you’re OK with extrajudicial killing of protesters for no good reason at all (by angry drivers). [I’ll pass over the many other things you obviously think are OK with these proposals, b/c this comment is already too long.]
Not a good look, dataguy. Check that picture of yourself you keep in the closet — I think it’s got tertiary syphilis. Oops, maybe I’m wrong — untreated leprosy is what it is.
Now now, is there no room for the opinion of freedom hating bigots on here?
Dont the arrogant superior xenophobes deserve a voice?
Maybe we should be more inclusive of people that normalize fascist and totalitarian behaviors.
I’m as much in favor of freedom as the next person. However, if you block the highway while I am going to work, or whatever, stuff may happen.
It’s not complicated. Except to idiots. Don’t play in the road.
Yeah, it totally should be legal to run people over if they are in the way of your killer metal body armor.
Its so easy to miss them on the road, and you might just be too late to brake. wink wink
What an asshole. People (and I use the term loosely) like you are stinking up this blog.
“…stuff may happen.”
Oh, so it’s explicit threats now.
I will tell you unequivocally that Black Lives Matter and the Dakota Access Pipeline demonstrators have far, far more to be angry about than you do. Yet nearly every single one of them have kept their heads well enough to avoid inferring that they’ll murder people who displease them briefly.
Your view that political demonstrators who temporarily block traffic are “play(ing) in the road” is in line with the disappointing display here.
You’ve got your boy in the white house, putting the boot in. Mass deportations, families torn asunder. Religious harassment at our airports, firebombed mosques. But still your thirst for the suffering of minorities is not slaked. If only there was some answer to your problem. Some sort of…
They don’t rational discourse, dataguy. They don’t want discourse at all. They want slogans and mo dissent. The Left are only interested in dissent when they are dissenting. They are no better than the extremists in the Tea Party.
Give it up. Find another blog where dissent is tolerated. Not here at the Green version of the Orange place. I have. I just come back here to talk with about a half dozen sane people, including yourself.
Sane people seem to accuse insane people of their own attributes.
Sane people seem to be talking only to convince themselves.
Sane people dont seem very interested in the insane criticisms they get.
Sane people seem to feel very sorry for themself.
Sane people never made less sense to me than right now.
FOAD
Dont vote down, Fuck Off And Die is a perfectly rational and sane way to react to a dissident of ones views.
So please, dont vote down, unless someone is really offensive.
The fascism and limitation of discussion is what the left does these days. No one can offer a possible reasoned comment without it being marked as “troll”. It’s not a discussion place anymore. Assholes are gonna be assholes. Marduk is simply a very stupid person and cannot reason so he dumps the donuts.
Well, wadda know. The marduk asshole is tossing around troll ratings. Marduk, you’re just a piece of shit.
freedom means
freedom for me to take
freedom from thee
Southern white supremacists in Congress were so scared of abolitionists’ petitions that they forbade them from begin delivered to the building.
This can and should be seen as evidence of their own recognition that the core of their scheme — white supremacy — was morally wrong. In other words, deep down, they knew what they were doing was wrong. That’s why they couldn’t bear to hear the inarguably truthful words which proved it.
And that’s why those who try to advance their argument by declaring certain areas as simply “off-limits” for reasons unrelated to their merits are in fact giving up the game:
Whenever someone turns from supporting their argument on the merits toward an appeal to a third party, or a claim of lack of standing, or a faint of what-aboutism — whatever it is — you know they’ve beaten themselves already. You just need to point it out to them.
This IS Things We All Know(tm).