I can't help but wonder what would be happening, if only there were no police...

Consider why we have trials by a jury of peers ...

Which is how and why the policemen's trial was moved to Simi Valley ... where a jury of their peers aquitted them ...

It is possible for someone to be "100% honest and accurate"

about what they saw and experienced and believe and still be substantially "wrong" when measured against other accounts.

The cops have their reality.

even if you don't want to become a member you earned a honorable membership - that means after we have decided if this group really should have members!

@LWM

What's that bumper sticker? "Evil thrives when people who consider themselves neutral and objective just shrug and rationalize"?

Something like that.

-- Baldie McEagle

But it's an excellent choice for the problems with internet dialogue because despite all internet evidence and traditions to the contrary, Edmund Burke never said that. You can read all about it here:

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" (or words to that effect)

A study of a Web quotation

Martin Porter

January 2002

http://tartarus.org/~martin/essays/burkequote.html

As far as I can tell, the only people "overwrought" here are you folks. You remind me of the silly and spoiled little children over at Megan McCardle's and Radley Balko's who got all whipped up into a state of high dudgeon on Thomas Jefferson's birthday.

You can read about that, too..

http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/04/dancing_fools.php

http://www.theagitator.com/2008/04/13/so-about-that-tree-of-liberty/

Now you know why glibertarians want to privatize everything.

I think you should read this entire article:

Not that you would know that from the way the two convention sites are reacting. Denver City Council and governments in other metro cities and counties rushed to pass ordinances that criminalize the possession of a broad array of protest tools, including sticks that support signs. In St. Paul, meanwhile, the city council struck down such a law as overbroad and unnecessary, and Minneapolis actually passed restrictions on the types of crowd-control weapons that police can use on demonstrators.

If accurate, you are all angry at the wrong city and PD. If certain constitutional protections were violated and deficiencies in due process occurred in the preemptive raids, that is one thing. The place to sort that out is in court. The problems of surveillance and domestic spying are a separate matter of concern to all of us. But again. It doesn't get solved in the streets of St. Paul with balloons filled with urine or whatever stupid measures these amateurs attempted.

I stand by my claim that the St. Paul PDs actions vis a vis the violent protesters were quite measured and appropriate. Do a little research on the WTO Battle in Seattle in 1999. I have no problem with that kind of action. It was less violent and confrontational - on the part of the protesters - and came off quite well. It actually shut down the WTO. The police in Seattle may have overreacted, like they did in Oakland in 2003. Not here. TTheir response was appropriate and measured and it was only when provoked. These people (I won't call them actual anarchists) wanted a violent confrontation and they got it. There are many young Americans who have been injured and killed over the years because there were no restrictions on the types of weapons and measures the PD used in quelling riots and maintaining law and order, something you hypocrites bitch about everyday. I suppose that these kids were aware of this, even though none of you were, and took full advantage of it, knowing they couldn't get their heads blown off. I know some of the people who were seriously injured over the last 40 -50 years to get us where we are today. Perhaps that's why these "brave soldiers" didn't show up in Denver. And perhaps next time the police and powers that be will think twice about trying to go easy on the violent protesters. Those of us who sacrificed real blood, flesh and bone thank you in advance. One step up, two steps back. If you want an American intifada, perhaps you'll get it. It hasn't moved the Israeli's out. Maybe some of you will start strapping dynamite to yourselves. That's one way of thinning the herd.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to finish filling these balloons with my own urine. I'm not getting enough attention and I have a coffee house full of anarchists and iPod wearing glibertarians to urine bomb.

As I recall, your blood has the lowest boiling temperature of any creature known to modern science. This usually results in your being reduced to tears (which have a correspondingly low boiling temperature) at something you read, heard or watched on the internet, a newspaper or the TV. And her name is Beyerstein.

But you can call her Ms. Berenstein Bear if you like. You must be hell on your hankies and the linens at weddings.

There's the link I forgot.

Back to pissing in balloons.

http://www.westword.com/2008-08-21/news/police-and-protesters-look-to-the-1999-wto-protests-in-seattle-for-guidance/

"In other words, in addition to having been spared a bigger hurricane, you folks were spared a totalitarian media event. Maybe that's why they needed to show force in St.Paul/Minneapolis."

Not quite accurate.

We have most assuredly NOT been spared a political media event down here. While I can only grab partials of national news broadcasts due to the lack of electric power - I'm on a generator now, what we have been subjected to are hours upon hours of our very own GOP policy wonk, Governor Jindal (He Who Believes in Public Funding for so-called Christian Schools and all other Jesus Freak Dogma) and the Corpse (Sec. Chertof) reciting reams upon reams of data related to how many of this and how many of that assistance has been showered upon us. It's clearly evident that the GOP intends to utilize their response to Gustav as a means to get the electorate to forget their miserable response to Katrina. Just listening to this claptrap makes me hurl.

Bank on it. We will now see commercial after commercial bragging about how, under GOP leadership, there were no Superdomes, no Convention Centers, no lack of water or food...and that we should forget Katrina because, as we all know, had it not been for the Mayor of New Orleans (who, in actuality is a moron) and the Governor of Louisiana....Katrina would have been no more than an annoyance.

Just like 9-11, the GOP will use the tragedy of Gustav for their own political benefit.

Oh! By the way and on a different rant.......Harry Reid needs to IMMEDIATELY strip Holy Joe of any and all committee control. Let the chips fall where they may.