Sure, we can end it. No, I don't need to talk to someone else at you're suggestion. We just disagree. I find the whole mentality that gives rise to the silvered sunglasses, helmets, and "thump-em before they threaten our existence", in evidence in the cops and those supporting them to be very police state. You don't think so.

I am quite well aware that the protesters aren't going to be star chambered and shot. The mentality will lead to that if it isn't stopped, and the mentality is quite police state. Very carefully now: the mentality is police state. It already is, not, it will be someday. The society that goes with that mentality will follow if the mentality becomes pervasive. It builds over time. And first the people who disappear are few and far between, and have names like Padilla and Arar. Later on, everybody has a relative or knows someone.

Our prisons were cited by the Committee Against Torture in 2006 for some 30 violations -- those would be violations amounting to torture, or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Would you still like to say they can't ever be compared to a labor camp? People made a big deal of how many of the torture tactics came from the Korean War and the Communist Chinese. How many came straight from American prisons? Have you read any Stuart Grassian lately? He was studying Walpole, not Manchuria.

We've watched our civil rights eroding, with quite a sizable number of Americans cheering it on full throated, in full nationalist mode. German student protesters can call that what they like, as I recall my history class, the whole German population didn't see it coming when it happened to them. Still acted like nothing was wrong as they picked the bits of bone and blood off their coats and finished their beers. If their great-grandchildren want to laugh at me for trying to nip this one in the bud, so be it.

Police in the course of keeping order and making arrests cannot be distracted by questions, arguments, inquiries, and the like. They cannot become involved in debates about the First Amendment or anything else. If they act improperly, there are courts that decide what happens to them and their quarry, through criminal and civil suits. Amy Goodman believes that as a journalist she can distract the police because of her desire to obtain information to report. She is mistaken.

Good little lemmerican

If it is not on video, it must be a lie! Which is why the feds preemptively went after those who intended (and did in the past) to film events? If it is not on film it did not happen unless power said it did. That is how it works.

Amy Goodman then said that she had been pushed to the ground when she was arrested. But it appears to me, so far, that that was a lie. The video all of us have seen shows her NOT being pushed to the ground. So I ask whether Amy Goodman lied about being pushed to the ground, and whether she is lying about other aspects of this incident.

Is that clear enough for you?

-- Elephantman

Oh, yes, loud and clear. You've earned your ration of porridge.

-- voodooz

How about this? "OTHER THAN HER OWN SELF-SERVING STATEMENT, WHICH IS NOT SUPPORTED BY ANY VIDEO SEEN SO FAR, THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT AMY GOODMAN WAS 'PUSHED TO THE GROUND' AS SHE CLAIMS."

Oh, and this: I am not aware of "feds" having been involved in Amy Goodman's arrest. As far as I can tell, they were local police. Who charged her with misdeameanor obstruction of the local police.

Amy Goodman is on the Thom Hartmann show NOW! (Noon EST)

For a station near you, http://www.thomhartmann.com/

or to stream, you can go to Air America Radio or http://www.1480kphx.com, which I stream using iTunes.

Later you'll be able to go to the first address above for a podcast.

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.

Brendan Kiley (of Seattle's alt weekly, The Stranger) was also sprayed...

immediately after he ID'd himself as a journalist:

Tina explained all this. All journalist IDs are fake; anyone with a fake ID is a criminal; therefore, any journalist not recognized from TV news is a criminal.

Get used to it.

Now, take a deep breath, both of you anonymously courageous defenders of freedom.

I'm not advocating killing people, Kitt. That's just silly and hysterical. And perhaps if you use your real name, I'll speak further with you.

Ditto, Baldy. It's interesting how the moderate contributors are so much more willing to use their names than the ones who seem to mistake blogging for courage.

Just like the protesters who pull on black masks and disrupt legitimate protest and commit violent acts, knowing full well they'll get fulsome support from the very hysterics who imagine their opposition to "the man" in this forum denotes useful commitment to a cause.

Why do you think that Amy Goodman was not attmepting to intervene between police and the two producers? The two producers were arrested and have now been charged. The Dmocracy Now! program released a statement yesterday, saying that Goodman was attempting to "free" the two arrestees, who were claimed to have been "illegally detained."

Have you seen any statements from the police as to what happened to lead to the arrest of the two producers? Have you seen any video of what led to the arrest of the two producers? Have you seen any accounts, other than Goodman's of her attmepting to "free"(?!) the two producers as they were being arrested? Have you seen any video of Amy Goodman before she was arrested; in other words immediately prior to the video we have seen?