Your argument, then, is what?

State-of-the-art, from the Boston Globe, October 22, 2004:
An Emerson College junior, drawn to Fenway Park to toast the first Red Sox pennant in 18 years, was killed yesterday, shot in the eye by a projectile fired by police seeking to disperse revelers who authorities said threatened to spin out of control.
Victoria Snelgrove, a 21-year-old journalism student from East Bridgewater, was struck by a pepper-spray-filled plastic ball at about 1:30 a.m., some 90 minutes after the Red Sox celebrated on the infield at Yankee Stadium, provoking an estimated 80,000 jubilant and mostly young fans to converge on Kenmore Square.

I am a former police officer, and I observed what happened in St. Paul. The police acted with restraint and professionalism. Riot control has become an art.

Your compatriots were *very* lucky to have had Minnesota law enforcement, and not have cops the way my department was trained for riot control. It would have been a phalanx of police in a flying v formation and nightsticks. The outcome would have been very different, with you on the losing end.

I was *very* impressed with Minnesota law enforcement. FWIW, you step into a war zone, expect to eat tear gas and get your head knocked in. That’s what riots are.

Tell those brave revolutionaries to stop whining and man up.

City councilman Dave Thune, during several pre-convention public meetings, clearly gave protesters the impression that they would be free to do as they chose.

Keeping in mind the limited comprehension skills of many of the players, Thune had the responsibility to make it clear that when he said the whole city was a “free speech zone”, that didn’t mean protesters would be allowed to throw human waste and chemicals at visitors, nor does throwing signs and sand bags onto busses from overpasses constitute “free speech”.

Thune knows these people well, he’s one of them. But he was also privy to the knowledge that the RNC would not be declared a free for all zone.

I understand why our local domestic terrorists feel betrayed; and I can well imagine that by the time they are released from prison, they’re going to be downright peeved.

I think you’re missing the point of Ann G’s comments.

Of course, Republicans should be able to assert their political rights without interference (assuming you are not defining “interference” to mean any and all dissent or protest), terroristic threats, or acts of violence.

However, what Ann G., who was there, is asserting is that the police cracked down with excessive force on persons who were merely protesting and who were NOT engaging in improper interference, terroristic threats, or acts of violence.

This article is as bad as any mainstream media article in its presentation in the first paragraph of the demonstrators as violent–the broken window is now like a broken record, and the tire-slashing–
two incidents where thousands of nonviolent demonstrators tried to exercise their civil liberties and rights.

The article itself is not much better–it makes the people who packed the courtroom sound irresponsible. Maybe they were in the great American tradition of “throw the bum out,” but the threat to our civil liberties is serious, and they know that.

And since all those demonstrators were there, why not interview some of them and make this a balanced article.

In other words, this coverage is business as usual. It’s all I would expect from the mainstream press. But from the Independent I expect more.

Sue Ann Martinson