Judi Sohn

Reinventing myself one crisis at a time.

Unlawful conduct?

Come on, there has to be more to the story than this:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Peace activist Cindy Sheehan was arrested Tuesday in the House gallery after refusing to cover up a T-shirt bearing an anti-war slogan before President Bush’s State of the Union address.

"She was asked to cover it up. She did not," said Sgt. Kimberly Schneider, U.S. Capitol Police spokeswoman, adding that Sheehan was arrested for unlawful conduct, a misdemeanor.

Let me get this straight…the woman was invited to the room by a member of congress, so she had a right to be there. She didn’t scream, she didn’t disrupt the speech. She wore a t-shirt. A t-shirt?!? Oh, wow. That’s radical. I can see why they couldn’t have that in the rotunda. Goodness forbid anything on that t-shirt made someone pause before clapping thunderously after a line of rhetoric about the war that said absolutely nothing.

But to be fair, I give him this:

America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world. The best way to break this addiction is through technology…

Nice idea, but I’ll believe it when I see it. He also vowed to eliminate suffering from cancer by 2015, but in the face of across-the-board budget cuts NCI and NIH are receiving less money towards life-saving research then they ever have before. Next year or the year after when the money has to come from somewhere, let’s see what the Department of Energy’s new initiative actually has to work with.

Update 2/2/06: The Chicago Tribune has a little blurb on it today.

Sheehan’s T-shirt made reference to the number of soldiers killed in Iraq: "2,245 Dead. How many more?" 

And it’s good to know that we still live in a country where someone has the right to silently express their opinion in and through their clothing (as long as they’re wearing clothing of course, which is a whole ‘nother issue). The charges were dropped and the police apologized to her. If I were her, I’d thank the Capitol police. The message on her shirt is getting far more play than if they had just left her alone. 

Judi Sohn

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4 responses to “Unlawful conduct?”

  1. If you haven’t already (I’m sure you probably have) I’d like to recommed reading Tom Friedman’s book, “The World is Flat.” Among his many good points in the book, and his column of a few days ago, he suggests that President Bush should call for a national imperative to create alternative sources for fuel, as Kennedy did for landing a man on the moon.

  2. Pointing your bat in the sky only works if somehow it is believed that you can actually hit it out of the park.

    It makes a great speech, I’ll give him that. But it only works if two years from now the commitment hasn’t wavered. What happens when he has to find the money from somewhere for another tax cut? What happens when it’s time to actually fund No Child Left Behind? What happens when more money is needed for Iraq or whatever other country we need to police?

    What happens when energy isn’t the flavor of the month?