Your patriotic blood should boil at this story of apparent official corruption by the Bush administration and the Republican Party and the Secret Service.

The story starts with three persons who held tickets for a publically funded Bush public forum. At such forums, when public funds are used, it is a violation of the US Constitution for peaceful persons to be excluded based on their political beliefs. Moreover, it’s just plain fascist or communist or totalitarian to exclude peaceful citizens from publically funded events based on their political party affiliation.

Bush uses public funds to arrange the forums, but then lets the Republican Party decide who gets to come. The Republican Party cannot OVERTLY demand that only Republicans can get tickets. HOWEVER, the Republicans have a workaround —- They look for signs and symptoms that ticket holders might actually be Democrats or other non-Bush supporters. Then Party Officials instruct the Secret Service to deny such persons admission. That’s illegal, and is a violation of our civil rights as Americans, as well as probably a violation of umpteen ethics laws.

That’s the story, and it’s utterly UnAmerican if true. I suspect it’s illegal. I’d rather see Congress hold hearings on Bush’s ethics than on steroids, but they don’t ask me.

I hope all moderate minded persons reading this are as offended as I am.

I invite anyone interested to defend the actions of Bush and the Republicans and the Secret Service, assuming the story to be true. I supect that even such defenders will know, in their heart of hearts, that this is just plain UnAmerican, whether they are willing to admit it or not.

Daily Kos :: Suppressing free speech: “Very rarely does the everyday public get a glimpse of what happens behind the scenes in a normally-secret Bush Administration.

But Monday, March 28, the Secret Service called three everyday people into their offices to discuss why we were kicked out of a presidential event in Denver last week where Bush promoted his plan to privatize Social Security. What they revealed to us and our lawyer was fascinating.

There we were - three people who had personally picked up tickets from Republican Congressman Bob Beauprez’s office and went to a presidential event. But as we entered, we were told that we had been ‘ID’ed’ and were warned that any disruption would get us arrested.

After being seated in the audience we were forcibly removed before the President arrived, even though we had not been disruptive. We were shocked when told that this presidential event was a ‘private event’ and were commanded to leave.

More astonishingly, when the Secret Service was contacted the next day they agreed to meet with us this Monday, March 28 to discuss the circumstances surrounding our removal. We had two big questions going into this meeting:

1. How is the Bush Administration ‘ID’ing’ citizens before presidential events?

2. Why was an official taxpayer-funded event called a ‘private event’ - leading to citizens being kicked out?

Most shocking of all, we got answers to both questions.

The Secret Service revealed that we were ‘ID’ed’ when local Republican staffers saw a bumper sticker on the car we drove which said ‘No More Blood For Oil.’ Evidently, the free speech expressed on one bumper sticker is cause enough to eject three citizens from a presidential event. (Similarly, someone was ejected from Bush’s Social Security privatization event in Arizona the same day simply for wearing a Democratic t-shirt.)

The Secret Service also revealed that ticket distribution and staffing of the Social Security event was run by the local Republican Party. They wanted us to be clear that it was a Republican staffer - not the Secret Service - who kicked us out of the presidential event. But this revealed something else that should be startling to all Americans.

After allowing taxpayers to finance his privatization events (let’s call them what they really are after all,) and after using the White House communications apparatus to set them up, Bush is privatizing the ticket distribution and security staffing at his events to the Republican Party. The losers are not just taxpayers, but anyone who values the First Amendment. Under the banner of a ‘private event’ the Republican Party is excluding citizens from seeing their president because of the lone sin of expressing the wrong idea on a bumper sticker or t-shirt. The question for Americans is - will we allow our freedom to be privatized?

Karen Bauer, Leslie Weise. Alexander Young
Denver residents”