For at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention, teams of undercover New York City police officers traveled to cities across the country, Canada, and Europe to conduct covert observations of people who planned to protest at the convention, according to police records and interviews.

...But potential troublemakers were hardly the only ones to end up in the files.  In hundreds of reports stamped "N.Y.P.D. Secret," the Intelligence Division chronicled the views and plans of people who had no apparent intention of breaking the law, the records show.

These included members of street theater companies, church groups, and anti-war organizations...the bulk of the reports covered the plans and views of people with no obvious intention of breaking the law.

...The war resisters publicly announced plans for a "die-in" at Madison Square Garden.  They were arrested two minutes after they began a silent march from the World Trade Center site...
--"City Police Spied Broadly Before the G.O.P. Convention," Jim Dwyer, New York Times, March 25, 2007

The police detained hundreds of political opposition members in an attempt to thwart nationwide protests planned for Monday to denounce Gen. Pervez Musharraf's suspension of the chief justice...
--"Pakistani Police Detain Opposition Members Ahead of Protest," Salman Masood, New York Times, March 26, 2007


On my desk I have two framed photographs.  One is of my son, dressed in full combat gear, taken during the now-historic Battle of Fallujah in November of 2004, where he was fighting with the Marine Corps.  He is wearing a "terrorist belt" and holding an AK-47 which he had confiscated from an insurgent before taking him into custody. 

In the photograph, Dustin has not shaved for five days, because for five days, he has been in combat.  He's got a goofy grin on his face, partly due to exhaustion, and partly because it was a rare moment where he COULD goof around.  During that battle, he had slipped a disposable camera in his pocket, which he pulled out whenever he could, documenting things that do not make you smile.

I am proud of my son in that photograph.

Facing that, there is a photograph of my daughter, taken at a massive anti-war protest staged during the Republican convention of August, 2004.  A small, wallet-sized photo of her brother in dress uniform is pinned to her shirt and visible in the photograph.  Her shirt says, Stop bitching and start a revolution. 

Around her neck is a peace sign that I sent to her to wear in the peace march.

Before the protest, Jessica had said, "If my brother is willing to die for his beliefs, I should be willing to be arrested for mine."

I am very proud of my daughter in that photograph.

She did not get arrested in New York City, but she sent me chilling e-mails at the time about friends who were.  Rather than being served with a simple misdemeanor summons, they were rounded up and dragged to jail.  And rather than being released after a few hours, they were held for TWO DAYS--two crucial days, I might add, to the Republican convention.

Need I mention that the mayor of New York is a Republican?

When I read the Times article about how New York cops had, after conducting Internet searches of anti-war groups, then fanned out across the country and infiltrated those groups, kept files on them, and then, during the peace march, arrested some of them BEFORE THEY HAD EVEN DONE ANYTHING, I was pretty appalled.

Then I read that the dictator--excuse me, the president--of Pakistan had done much the same thing recently.  And that's when I got REALLY disgusted.

Now, I must say--very loud and clear--that I am very pro-law enforcement.  I've written ten suspense thrillers and one true-crime in which I had the cooperation and assistance of law enforcement officers all across this great country, many of whom have become my friends.  I love cops, and I always feel honored and privileged when they love me back.

And I understand, from an Intelligence perspective, that it was prudent to try and see if anyone might be planning violence during the convention, and to try and shut it down before anyone could get hurt.  That's just good law enforcement/security sense.

And if they'd just stopped there, I wouldn't be writing this.

But no.  Once they found out that an anti-war group was mainly middle-aged Vietnam vets or whatever, they STILL surveilled them and kept them on file.  And when one non-violent group wanted to stage a peaceful, non-violent protest, they arrested them before they had even started.

The fact that the charges were dropped is irrevelent.  First ammendment rights have been vigorously defended in our courts for centuries, and the last time I checked, this was not a police state.  The land of the FREE, right?

This wasn't about protecting the city.  This was about media control.  Had those protesters made it to the Garden and laid out on the parking lot in their die-in, why, the TV cameras would have fought for coverage.

And we couldn't have anybody reminding this country that the war was killing people, not during the Republican convention, could we?  Of course not.  We had to save the media coverage for happy Republicans, waving the flag and wearing their "Purple-Heart Band-Aids."

Keeping hundreds of innocent protesters jailed during the duration of the convention was nothing less than Fascism.

Shame on the Republicans and shame on the NYPD.  Shame on the lot of them.

Many times during the past 12 years, when I have literally cried in despair over what these paranoid, hate-filled right-wingers were doing to this country, my moderate Republican husband would say, "Don't worry.  Things will swing back your way.  They always do.  Believe me, the Republicans may control the White House and the Congress, but they won't be content to be benevolent dictators.  They'll go too far.  Wait and see.  And things will swing back your way."

And, it looks like he may be right.


At this point 2004 looks like an aberration, an election won with fear-and-smear tactics that have passed their sell-by date.  Republicans no longer have a perceived edge over Democrats on national security--and without that edge, they stand revealed as ideologues out of step with an increasingly liberal American public.

...In 2002 equal numbers of Americans identified themselves as Republicans and Democrats, but since then the Democrats have opened up a 15-point advantage.

Part of the Republican collapse surely reflects public disgust with the Bush administration.
--"Emerging Republican Minority," Paul Krugman, New York Times op-ed, March 26, 2007

This was, after all, an administration intent on terrifying and demobilizing most Americans...all so they could create a Pax Americana world and a Pax Republicana "homeland."

It was a mad dream, now in ruins.
--"Demobilizing America:  Outsourcing Action in an Imperial World," Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.com, March 25, 2007


Tom Engelhardt's thoughtful essay is a morose study of how under-involved most Americans seem to be in stopping this war.  That although they poll over and over again as wanting to see the war end, they don't turn out to make their voices heard as was done during the Vietnam era.

Part of that is because there was a draft back then, and everybody had to face going to war just because they turned 18--that was a large part of the street-mobs.  But part of it, I think, is that in the age of the Internet, most of that outrage is channeled through newsgroups, protest websites, and blogs like this one.

They're raising their voices, all right, and the elections this past November are evidence of that.

From the White House on down, from torture sanctions to spying on Americans, from politicizing federal prosecutors to lying about the war, from arresting peaceful protesters to ignoring suffering war-veterans and dying New Orleansians, from Ann Coulter taunting 9-11 widows to Rush Limbaugh mocking Michael J. Fox--people are getting sick of this party, their rule, and their bullshit.

Like Paul Krugman, I don't think the Republicans in power GET it.  I keep hearing how they think they need to get MORE conservative to regain their power.  It is yet one more example of their disconnect with their own people.


Republicans...are still wallowing in nostalgia--nostalgia for the days when people thought they were heroic terrorism-fighters, nostalgia for the days when lots of Americans hated Big Government.

Many Republicans still imagine that what their party needs is a return to the conservative legacy of Ronald Reagan.  It will probably take quite a while in the political wilderness before they take on board the message of Arnold Schwarzenegger's comeback in California--which is that what they really need is a return to the moderate legacy of Dwight Eisenhower.
--"Emerging Republican Minority," Paul Krugman, New York Times op-ed, March 26, 2007