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Editorial: Freedom arrested / A telling incident on the state of our Union Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | February 7 2006 Peace activist Cindy Sheehan, mother of a soldier killed in Iraq and an irritant to President Bush, was never everybody's favorite. Even some of those initially sympathetic to her, including this newspaper, must concede that the closer she has moved to the far left, the further she has gotten from persuading the moderate middle of America that the war is wrong. Too strident Ms. Sheehan may be, but that does not excuse what happened to her when she sat down to watch President Bush deliver his State of Union address last Tuesday on Capitol Hill. She was an invited guest of a member of Congress, Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a Democrat from California. She made no fuss, she did not unfurl any banners, just made the mistake of unzipping her jacket to reveal a T-shirt that bore a message about Iraq: "2,245 Dead. How Many More?" For this she was arrested and put in handcuffs. With supreme irony, she never did get to hear President Bush deliver a speech animated by the idea of America spreading democracy and freedom. If she had yelled out and then had been removed, that would have been an overt act of disruption and we would not be writing this editorial. But her crime was to assume that freedom would allow a T-shirt to speak silently for her. There is no defending this outrageous action and, to its credit, the Capitol Police issued an unusual public apology to Ms. Sheehan and another woman, Beverly Young, wife of Rep. C.W. "Bill" Young, a Florida Republican. Mrs. Young was asked to leave (but not arrested) for wearing a T-shirt with a political message of another sort: "Support Our Troops -- Defending Our Freedom." In applying their heavy undemocratic hand, at least the officers were equal opportunity offenders. Now the U.S. Attorney's Office has been asked to drop the misdemeanor charge against Ms. Sheehan. Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer said in a statement: "The officers made a good faith but mistaken effort to enforce an old unwritten interpretation of the prohibitions about demonstrating in the Capitol." This was a gracious and welcome response but the damage was done. Once more, Mr. Bush made his speech in a bubble, once more the point was made that no discouraging word -- not even on a T-shirt -- is allowed to intrude. Inadvertently, sadly, Cindy Sheehan showed that this is the real state of our Union. |
