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Originally posted by Superbelt
[B]Hmm, Bill of Rights, Article 1
I see no limits enumerated there. Bush is no king, he is an employee. He is our employee and we have the right to see him wherever he goes and to make our grievances known at all times. Where we have a right to petition him as much as possible, he has none to protect himself from such petitions.
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Pardon? Petition does not mean vocally bitch to the cameras and disrupt events. No one is stopping people from gong to proper channels. No one is saying you can't talk to your senators. No one is saying you can't assemble. All they are saying is you can't do it HERE.
pe·ti·tion n.
1. A solemn supplication or request to a superior authority; an entreaty.
2. A formal written document requesting a right or benefit from a person or group in authority.
3. Law.
1. A formal written application requesting a court for a specific judicial action: a petition for appeal.
2. The judicial action asked for in any such request.
4. Something requested or entreated.
No one is stopping it.
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See also that our government has NO CONSTITUTIONAL ABILITY to abridge the right of the people to peaceably assemble.
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Actually its the Congress that doesn't have the right, but again, people are allowed to assemble, they are not allowed to be disruptive. What they are afraid of is having a protest and no one covering it.
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Also the President is not questioned constantly, his staffers are. Our presidents have a poor track record of putting themselves in the line of fire for press questioning. At least compared to most other developed nations.
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The president needs to have time to BE president, not listen to an endless stream of complaints, which every president would get from Washington to Bush. Even so I've seen Bush answer a hell of a lot of direct questions, maybe you want the president to answer even more, I want him doing his JOB.
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Most protesters are not there to change the presidents mind directly. They are there to be seen and be heard by him and the press. The Vietnam war protests brought that war to an end much faster than it would have without them, and if Kennedy hadn't been shot, even quicker. The protests were instrumental in Kennedys decision to bring the war to an end, they were turning public opinion against him. Lyndon, of course reversed that.
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Pure speculation about Kennedy. He was afraid of being 'soft on communism' and I doubt he would have ended it. You vastly overestimate the protest movement if you think it was a big deal by 63. Kennedy might not have been as big a clusterfuck about it as Johnson, who was the worst president in modern history in terms of long term foreign policy and domestic policy, but ending it was far from a guarantee. Its also moot, because YOU CAN PROTEST ALL YOU WANT. If you were not allowed to protest I'd be bitching with the rest of you, but thats not what you are complaining about. You are complaining that protestors are not allowed to disrupt the president and get free camera time. You can still petition the government (note it does NOT say president), you can still assemble, you can go on tv, you can make adds that say Bush = Hitler, you can do whatever you fucking want, but you get to do it out of bullhorn range.
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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
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Nothing of the above has been violated. It may not be what you want, and what you want is 200 people shouting down Bush everywhere he goes.