iMatt :: The Blog of Matt Clare

Steven Howards, like many of us, is outraged with the Iraq war, and knew exactly what he wanted to tell the president and vice president. He got his chance when Dick Cheney made an unscheduled appearance at his local mall. Apparently the current republican administration’s reputation for an unwillingness to accept criticism with well earned: Howards was arrested.
Read more in the Rocky Mountain News article, Man files suit over Cheney encounter.

Howards was arrested for assault and hauled off and as he was hauled-off he pointed out that they had left his son there at the mall alone. The secret service agents callously replied “we’ll call social services”. Fortunately they passed Steven’s wife on the way out of the mall to lock him up. The charge was then lowered from assault to harassment, and finally dropped.

In a suit filed Howards recently filed he claims that he was arrested in retaliation for having exercised his First Amendment right of free speech, and that his arrest also violated his Fourth Amendment protection against unlawful arrest.

Mr. Cheney appears to be rather confused about these issues, he’s spoken some of the rare items of truth one shouldn’t legally speak (outing an undercover CIA agent) and he’s shot someone. One man complains to him about the death tolls in Iraq and he has him arrested.

I hope that Howards wins, freedom of speech is upheld, and I hope that this isn’t the last we hear of this!

This entry was posted on Monday, October 30th, 2006 at 20:39 and is filed under General, Headlines: True, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.