corrente

Yell at a delegate, or hijack a plane and fly it into a building and kill 3000 people. It's all the same to Mike:

(via NYT)

"It is true that a handful of people have tried to destroy our city by going up and yelling at visitors here because they don't agree with their views," Mr. Bloomberg said. "Think about what that says. This is America, New York, cradle of liberty, the city for free speech if there ever was one and some people think that we shouldn't allow people to express themselves. That's exactly what the terrorists did, if you think about it, on 9/11. Now this is not the same kind of terrorism but there's no question that these anarchists are afraid to let people speak out."

Some anarchist protest organizers, who had urged nonviolent civil disobedience and confrontation of delegates, said they believed plainclothes police officers had been following them and seeking to intimidate them.

They said strangers who knew their names tailed them leaving meetings and followed in unmarked sedans and sport utility vehicles similar to those used by law enforcement agencies.

Mayor Bloomberg has obviously caught a case of Bushspeak, because he seems completely unaware that his mouth has been taken over by a lunatic.

"Preventive policing" was on display in New York this week. This concept says that the way to prevent actual, Seattle-style window-breaking-looting-arsonizing rioting is to arrest people before they do anything. They keep them confined, without access to medical care, legal counsel, or their phone call, even in defiance of judicial orders to release them, until the event in question is nearing its end.

In evidence I present this comment from dKos. I don't know how to link to an individual comment but scroll down a couple-three screens till you get to a long post. This is a part of it. This is an eyewitness, handle of "rppa," whose daughter was arrested in one of the "preventative sweeps":

At about 1:00 pm a judge broke the detainees into three groups by time of arrest, with the first group of 120 ordered to be docketed by 1:30, the second by 3, the third by 4.

The Lawyers Guild (my new heroes) kept pushing these cases as there was no change in status. Note by the way that the court order granting attorney access had been granted around 10pm or 11pm on Wednesday. That access never occurred for a single prisoner. I think we heard about the fines around 5:00, when a judge yelled at the city attorney and demanded that the first two groups be released immediately en masse.

That, of course, didn't happen either.

There was also some skepticism about whether the city will ever pay this fine.

By around 7 pm the process of arraignment started to speed up slightly and for the first time my daughter (near the top of the list in group 1, held since 4:30 pm Tuesday) got a docket number. However, very few of those cases were actually heard. Her friend got an arraignment and dismissal. My daughter was released with a bench warrant with the mass release that finally happened around 7:30 pm. That means she has to travel back to NYC for the court hearing. Not a huge deal for us, coming from Philly, but some of the people in this group come from much farther away. In normal conditions, this bench warrant would have been issued Tuesday evening and she never would have been in a cell at all.

Bloomberg is congratulating his storm troopers for a great job well done. Wadda ya wanna bet he gets them some nice new uniforms as a reward? Brown shirts all around, Mike.

UPDATE "Destroy our city," quotha? Unbelievable. The Bush administration actually poisons New Yorkers by suppressing 9/11 health reports, and somehow that's OK. Then protesters exercise their First Amendment rights, and that's destroying the city. I guess Bloomberg was in Bush's suite when they were handing out the KoolAid... —Lambert