Freedom of assembly isn't a factor when individual people show up and bitch about stuff. If the gathering is organized, for instance to hear speakers, only then is it an assembly. One person yelling is not. The city, by corralling yelling individuals into pens, is creating the assembly.

So, your argument fails as soon as one person shows up, on their own, to bitch about stuff and is kenneled.

As for the city and it's police force being the perp of this offense to the constitution, they're just playing foot soldier to the DNC.

As for private organization on private property, go read up on quasi-governmental actors. It was really popular back when shopping malls and stores wanted to exclude blacks. Private parties can't violate constitutional rights, only the government can. Then they invented the classification "quasi-government actors" so they could force desegregation into formerly private venues.

As such, I call shenanigans on your argument that private groups on private property (eg Staples Center and the DNC) can universally exclude, corral, and pen one group of people (PEACEFUL protesters) unless you also believe they can exclude other groups, like blacks, women, the handicapped, etc.

it's really an exercise in futility anyway. There are far more effective ways to make a political point, and to get the people in power to actually give a shit. Much of the time, I just can't help but think that mass protests in this country are actually nothing more than mass mental masturbation parties.

Are you quoting Gandhi?

Think about, you'll get it.

I'm kinda sad for you. You believe that the people yelling can only make a difference in other countries, at other times. Very sad.

Perhaps you're a dc lobbyist. You advocate against direct action and for a little financial grease and face time. Do you take paypal?

from your previous post:

some people think they should be able to go wherever they want and do whatever they want. Well, they're not. And never will be. G(row)TFU.

You did so well keeping things non-personal.

Regardless, I am sad for you. Sincerely saddened. Not as an attack or an affront. If you told me this stuff in a bar, I'd buy you a drink. I just find your outlook ... sad.

We can all make a difference. Even as individuals. Sure, a demonstration may feel like mere spectacle, but that's how some change starts. Amongst the few things I regret in life is the times I didn't go march. Sometimes ya gotta suck some tear gas to establish your bonafides, even if only in your own heart.

It's also fun to ask politicians if they enjoyed the demonstration. They really squirm.

Oops, beware of the trap. We've let them relabel "free speech zone" as "protest zone". If we let 'em set the vocabulary, they've nearly won.

no harm no foul

Trust me, I fight to keep my faith in American democracy. But (imitating richard gere), "I got no where else to go!" I've traveled around and, except for the last 7 years the US has been the best deal. Every other place has had just as seamy an underside.

As for the current state of the US and citizen complacency, I look back to the old Roman maxim: Food and Circuses.

I always thought manjoo was a light weight. Sweet, sincere kid, but no real depth when it came to machinist type material.

Then Denise becomes the new girl on the beat and writes: "I've never encrypted a file ..." Oh wow, I thought. Here we go again. Except maybe Joan tapped a broadsheet blogger for this post. swell (By the way, check out truecrypt and Bruce Schneir).

Well, with this post, ya got me. I'm buried in tech all damn day every day. Seeing how that tech gets embraced outside, or even at the fringe, is inspiring.

Thanks Denise (you've earned capitalization of your name today). Maybe I'll build something today instead of waging corporate war.

One major weak spot in all the various extrapolations predicting the outcomes of an obama presidency is that they assume that he'll follow through on his words. After the FISA and offshore drilling votes, I'm very uncomfortable with that assumption.

It would be smarter to try and glean obama's tendencies from his voting record. That includes his votes as a local politician. It would be indicative of what he actually believes. Reasoning that his beliefs have changed recently is too cynical because it infers that his moral compass spins to match the polls, his aspirations, or his corporate sponsors. I, for one, am not quite ready to write him off as a morally malleable political hack.

It reminds me of the old adage to judge a man by what he does, not by what he says.

A little googling for numbers and some simple math. The numbers are a little rough, but everyone's exact figures are going to be different anyway. Here goes:

A gallon of gas contains about 10 kilowatt/hours of energy.

Average plasma tv consumes 350 watts

Average rear projection and LCD consume about 215 watts.

So, a gallon of gas contains enough energy to run an LCD/rear projection TV for about 2 days or a plasma for 1.2 days.

Fudge factor time. Divide by 2 for electric line loss and by 2 again because it's a "big screen" not an average screen under consideration. (Note: TV power consumption scales with area, not the length of the diagonal)

So burning a gallon of gas in your vehicle roughly equates to watching a big screen plasma for 7 hours or a LCD/rear projection for 12 hours.

It appears that a sound government energy policy is to subsidize big screens and increase unemployment. Now those stimulus checks make sense.