“Politicians really are ridiculous people.” — RB

“I am a bit taken aback by this comment, coming from someone who considers democratic politics legitimate.” — RWW

Thanks RWW, I wasn’t sure what to comment on this post. You nailed it.

They showed up to be assholes and prove that the majority could not get away with being assholes to the minority when the roles flip-flopped, and they were successful! Sadly, I fear that the lesson they walked away with is different than the one I did.

It also serves as a great reminder that what the police do when they are mostly getting it right is to uphold the moral standards of the populace. Those change over time; we no longer (often) hear of people being arrested for Fornication, for example. But in an area like Dearborn, those standards may change in ways uncomfortably to those used to being in the majority. The mature thing to do at that point is to wonder how much our majority status has been unfair to those outside it.

The festival has a content neutral anti-leafleting policy that they can enforce inside the festival but not in the “outer perimeter” ; see Saieg vs Dearborn.

Said order was issued on the 17th, incidentally, the day before the festival started. It looks most likely that either
a) They were inside the “outer perimeter”, which is presumably well defined in festival policies or documents filed along with Saieg somewhere; or
b) The cops hadn’t been acquainted with the order and were relying on the previous status of the law, where the injunction against enforcing the leafleting provision had failed entirely (thus barring the “outer perimeter” as well) instead of succeeded partially.

But this has nothing to do with “creeping sharia” or Muslims being allowed to enforce supposed sharia law against proselytizing. The festival banned all leafleting. It’s entirely plausible it’s garden variety cops acting in excess of their authority, or that the Festival shouldn’t be able to ban leafleting while it holds an event on public grounds anyway, but neither of these have anything to do with creeping sharia. Nor does the camera thing – if you’ve been following Radley’s blog at all, you’ll notice that cops incessantly ask for the cameras to be turned off, and even arrest people for filming police misconduct in a public place.

RWW | June 23rd, 2010 at 11:14 pm
On another note, what’s with the blatant threadjackings? Can’t you people blog somewhere else?

I think we’re approaching a meta singularity here.

I am a bit taken aback by this comment, coming from someone who considers democratic politics legitimate.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=606_1277087982

If Fred Phelp’s speech is protected, however offensive, why isn’t this speech protected?

The other 50% are doing it because their daddies did it.