Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: Learning from Dear Leader:

I disagree with lots of things which Cindy Sheehan says but if the circumstances of her arrest last night at the State of the Union speech are anything like what she describes them as being (h/t Lis Riba), then her arrest is completely disgraceful.

I tend to believe her account because most of the facts she recites don't seem to be in dispute, and the accounts in the major news organizations, which apparently interviewed the law enforcement agencies involved in the arrest, are reporting much the same thing. In essence, Sheehan sat in her seat, took her jacket off, and was wearing a t-shirt which read: '2245 Dead. How many more?' As soon as she took her jacket off, she was pulled out of her seat, arrested, and taken out of the hall.

This is nothing more than a naked attempt to stifle dissent and to create a criticism-free bubble around George Bush. Presidents routinely use all sorts of propagandistic imagery at the State of the Union to decorate their speeches with an aura of regal patriotism. We always see weeping widows and military heroes and symbolic guests of all sorts who are used as props and visuals to bolster the President's message both emotionally and psychologically. The State of the Union speech is hardly free of visual messages and propaganda of that sort; quite the contrary.

But we apparently now have a country where the only ideas allowed to be expressed in our Nation's Capitol while the President is speaking are ones which glorify the Government and its Leader and where dissenting views are prohibited and will subject someone to arrest. Message cleansing of that sort belongs at a political rally in North Korea, not in Washington, DC.

Apparently, King George is not stopping at undermining the Fourth Amendment, he's now got the First Amendment firmly in his sights.

Impeach. This. Criminal. Now. Before. It's. Too. Late.