Bush Appointed Judge Wendell P. Gardner, Jr. Does His Part to Censor Free Speech

Pardon my passion, but this pushes a big button in me. In an act that I can only define as despicable, Bush-appointed Judge Wendell P. Gardner, Jr., sentenced several protestors to jail time on May 30 for exercising their First Amendment rights at the Supreme Court. How dare they! According to one of the protestors, Michael Foley, a history professor at City University of New York (interviewed by Common Dreams):

When a few people attempted to unfold a banner, and others attempted to expose their Shut Down Guantanamo t-shirts, the police went wild. It was mayhem, as they literally pounced on a whole bunch of people who had not yet said a word. I saw several officers tear the banner out of someone’s hands, even though it never got unfolded so you could see what it said. After all of this started to happen, about a dozen people on either side of the Great Hall knelt down — maybe to avoid being knocked over, maybe to pray — while others read a statement. I know I saw Susan Crane and Bill Streit try to read statements after the arrests began, but the police just snatched the statements out of their hands. There was so much noise from the police and their radios, though; one could not hear anything being said. I saw Nancy Gowan who had knelt down get practically body-slammed by a police officer and dragged away.

And further:

We were not disruptive in any way. And who knew that free speech would be restricted just steps from the Supreme Court chamber? You know, I teach the U.S. Constitution to undergraduates, and if you told me that an American could be arrested or exercising the right to free speech just twenty feet from where the justices decide First Amendment Cases, I would have said you were crazy.

True to form, the D.C. police acted brutally and without regard to human rights, Constitutional provisions, or anything else that might redeem them and make them appear less than the gangsters they really are.

As for Judge Wendell P. Gardner, Jr., he was utterly predictable.