When you physically resist an officer after repeated demands, you're asking to be tased.

Instead of a taser, it would have been an H&K MkIV 9mm submachine gun and the Mercs would just hose down the whole crowd with bullets until they were sure they got their man.

It's happening in Iraq right now.

It will happen in America in less than a year.

Wait and see.

This is very disturbing. Even Bush security hasn't tasered any of his outspoken audience members.

I don't know what's more disturbing, the video, or the fact that most of the comments on the YouTube comments page are of the "that little faggot deserved it" variety. Way too many Americans seem to *want* to live in an oppressive police state.

Trouble all around. The idiot was deliberately disruptive and resisting attempts to remove him, but I would think with handcuffs and multiple police, his removal was assured. Kerry is going to get criticized for his response, but who expects that? And how should he have reacted? I might think of a better way, but I'm getting time to think about it, not having it right in front of me right now with no warning. Somehow, I think Kerry will get blamed for the Taser, though how it's his fault I can't see. I bet if anyone turns on conservative talk radio, this is a main topic of conversation.

"When you physically resist an officer after repeated demands, you're asking to be tased."

Please, think about that statement. If the Florida student's greatest offense was to ask a rambling, incoherent question, animated by conspiracy theories, then he most certainly was not "asking to be tased." The responsibility of the officers was to show restraint and only use force when it became clearly a necessity. Based on the video evidence, the student did not demonstrate a clear physical threat to either Senator Kerry or other students in the auditorium ... or himself. Yet officers felt it warranted to 'tase' this guy because he shouted as he was being dragged from the building.

Go ahead and make the argument that given Virginia Tech and the general mood that pervades the country (War on Terror, blah, blah), police are prone to overreaction. They probably are. But if the university does anything other than issue a public apology here, they are in the wrong.

Seems like the student's greatest challenge at this point is to choose from the herd of lawyers assembling at this door.

There can be some real nut jobs on campus police forces. We had a student cop at my school who carried a loaded 9mm around to breakup student parties in the dorms. Student cops weren't supposed to carry weapons, and this guy was totally gung ho. fortunately, no one was shot.

Still, if you are resisting arrest, you shouldn't be surprised if you are tasered or hit with pepper spray. The guy made his point (at least the first one), and he should have gone quietly when it was obvious that he had lost.

I don't think this is as big a deal as people are making it out to be.

but am an American citizen, born in Florida.

I have to say that this piece of video disturbed me on several levels.

First, this young - perhaps too enthusiastic - student asked a few questions of Mr. Kerry ... and the Senator is clearly heard to welcome the queries. Exercising his free speech right, he's attacked by the police ... what the hell?

No one in the hall makes a move to help him.

Kerry sounds finally as though he's mocking the man as he is on the ground, smothered by police.

He's 'electrified' ... why? ... because he wouldn't shut up?

He certainly posed no physical threat to the mob of cops.

The whole scene reminds me of something I might see on tv from Putin's Russia, not from sunny, smiling Florida.

Excuse me while I go throw up.

Seems like everyone in this scene either overreacted or reacted very badly. When security started moving the questioner away from the microphone, it just looked like a typical case of security intervening with an audience member more interestd in being disruptive than in asking questions. Anyone who's ever been to one of these things shouldn't really have any problem with that. The kid seriously overreacted by hollering about how he was getting arrested; it looked like he was just getting kicked out of the forum. When he resisted, got tackled, tasered and handcuffed, that's when security crossed the line. And the audience clapping was more than a little unnecessary.

But the crowd, a bunch of sheep, let the Blackboots brutalize a man for speaking out right in front of their eyes and they did nothing. John Kerry did nothing.

We live in an ipso facto police state right now. This is what you must understand:

Some Americans still speak as though "we are losing our Constitutional rights."

If you are one of them, I've got news for you: Your Constitutional rights were taken from you a long time ago. What you are seeing all around you, every day, and in this glaring example, is that you only have the illusion of freedom, the illusion of rights.

You'll be OK, until the day you actually try to exercise your freedom. At that moment, you're going to get a boot on your neck and a Taser or truncheon in your kidneys by some blackshirt Gestapo in paramilitary gear.

All dead in 2007. Including that idiot Kerry who SHOULD have intervened and called for calm and called upon the police to let the guy have his fecking say.

The escalation was in PREVENTING a citizen from speaking, not the citizen's speech, for the love of god.

Good god, what have we come to?

I imagine things like the insane treatment of the student go on all the time, but seeing the whole thing as a video terrifies me. Since when has it been acceptable to remove someone and then shock them with a taser simply because they are speaking. Kerry's participation (by his silence) in this incident convinces me that he should not be a senator, much less a president. He was too cowardly to deal effectively with the Swift Boaters and he was too cowardly to intercede with the police to stop what was an assault by many against one. We are truly in trouble as a nation.