Please note, from one of the links I provided:

http://www.ktva.com/ci_10026165

On Monday afternoon, the Joint Legislative Council, filled with Republicans and Democrats, voted 12 to 0 to formally call for an investigation against Governor Palin in a manner—that they are stressing—will be unbiased and done in a timely fashion.

...that I won't comment any more till I calm down.

About time society decided not to let troublemakers disrupt other people's gatherings. Enough of the noisy tiny minority who could care less about the rights of others.

So when are elephantman, shooter242 and tiberius going to be arrested?

(They are tiny, noisy, a minority, and they've amply demonstrated that they do not care about the rights of others.)

Remember when McCain had to lay off campaign workers because he was short of funds?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/us/politics/03mccain.html

(or click on signature)

July 3, 2007 : The presidential campaign of Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who once seemed poised to be his party’s nominee in 2008, acknowledged yesterday that it was in a political and financial crisis as a drop in fund-raising forced it to dismiss dozens of workers and aides and retool its strategy on where to compete.

-----

So you're dead wrong about the presidential campaigners - and that includes Obama - having no experience about having to meet a payroll.

Of course, if you're right about something ever, most of the elderly here will probably have heart attacks from the shock.

...and it showed Amy Goodman interfering with officers who were arresting the two Democracy Now! producers.

And what earthly reason would the the officers have to arrest the two Democracy Now! producers? You want me to believe they were rioting, or causing a disruption, or even demonstrating?

In the youtube of her arrest, Amy Goodman says something that ends "....from the convention floor". What was she saying?

Where I grew up in India, two years of my college life were ruined by the two-to-three days a week of "student protests", organized by some political-party affiliated student party or the other.

So in general, I have little sympathy for any except good-mannered protesters. I've seen too much stone throwing (albeit it was all on a minor scale - a bus window or two each time to bring the public transportation to a halt.)

The least objectionable to me, of all the things GG has posted, is the heavy police presence. The purpose is "obvious" - to deter miscreants.

Having said that, what I see on youtube, e.g., police firing teargas, seems to be severe overreaction by the police.

And the circumstances would have to be truly exceptional to arrest accredited journalists carrying their accreditations visibly around their necks.

Anyway, you want a police state, you got it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080902/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_convention_protests

or click on signature.

Excerpt:

Members of the Connecticut delegation said they were attacked by protesters when they got off their bus near the Xcel Center, KMSP-TV reported. Delegate Rob Simmons told the station that a group of protesters came toward his delegation and tried to rip the credentials off their necks and sprayed them with a toxic substance that burned their eyes and stained their clothes.

One 80-year-old member of the delegation had to be treated for injuries, and several other delegates had to rinse their eyes and clothing, the station reported.

Five people were arrested for lighting a trash bin on fire and pushing it into a police car, St. Paul police spokesman Tom Walsh said.

Of the arrestees, 119 faced possible felony charges, authorities said.

At least four journalists were among those detained, including Associated Press photographer Matt Rourke and Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, a nationally syndicated public radio and TV news program. Goodman was intervening on behalf of two producers for her program, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, when she was arrested, said Mike Burke, another producer.

St. Paul police spokesman Tom Walsh said Rourke was held on a gross misdemeanor riot charge. Goodman was arrested on a misdemeanor charge, Ramsey County sheriff's spokeswoman Holli Drinkwine said. Neither Walsh nor Drinkwine had information on the other two journalists.

“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.”

I've thought all along that "L.W.M." stood for "Little, Wee Monster".

Can't say for sure without reading their training manual but seems to me that once the police get into a certain mode, they're finite state automata. You should no more talk or argue with them than you should with a vacuum cleaner. If someone gets swept up by them, the correct thing perhaps is to go to the police station.

Video Essay: a Look Inside the RNC Protests

Thousands of protesters gathered in St. Paul, Minn., the site of the Republican National Convention. As tensions mounted between those gather and police, AP Photojournalist Evan Vucci was in the middle...

can't link to it, but you might be able to find it.

right-wing Pakistani journalist Ahmad Rashid,

Disagree with this characterization of him. Of course, that is an Indo-centric view.

E.g., “Washington is doing itself no favors by serving as Musharraf’s enabler. Indeed the Bush administration’s policy of sticking by Musharraf is fast becoming eerily reminiscent of the Carter administration’s policy of sticking by the Shah of Iran”.... from Ahmad Rashid is not characterizable as right-wing.

Idrees Ahmad tells us about Pakistan's tribal regions:

"Tactics have included Israeli-style collective punishment; wholesale demolition of recalcitrant villages; disappearing of opponents (mostly of the tribal homines sacri, not wealthy media figures of Rashid's stripe); bombing raids; extrajudicial killings. "

-- This has been the policy of dealing with that region since British times. India's to-be first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru suggested a change in policy, but the British pooh-poohed it and the Pakistani government inherited and continued that policy.