There has to be more to this story - no quotes from the police, DA or mall management.[/quote]
I agree.
“If Saddam Hussein fails to comply and we fail to act or we take some ambiguous third route, which gives him yet more opportunities to develop his program of weapons of mass destruction and continue to press for the release of sanctions and ignore the commitments he’s made; Well, he will conclude that the international community’s lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on doing more to build an arsenal of devastating destruction. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow. The stakes could not be higher. Some way, someday, I guarantee you he’ll use the arsenal.”
“We have to defend our future from these predators of the 21st century. They will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen. There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein.”
President Bill Clinton in 1998
“Look, we have exhausted virtually our diplomatic effort to get the Iraqis to comply with their own agreements and with international law. Given that, what other option is there but to force them to do so?’ That’s what they’re saying. This is the key question. And the answer is we don’t have another option. We have got to force them to comply, and we are doing so militarily.” Tom Daschel:1998
**Two things have changed since 1998:
\
- Saddam has had four years without inspectors to expand his WMD programs.
\ - A Republican is in the White House**
Well…so much for the freedom of speech. Its so nice to know that when the USA gets stressed our founding “rights” become optional. 
It will be a sadder time when a property owner does not have the right to have someone arrested for trespassing. That’s what the arrest was about, you know.
Oh, wait, I get it, the mall owner doesn’t have a right to his opinion but he’s forced to provide a venue for everyone else to express theirs on his private property.
That’s much more American!
John
Can they kick you out for hanging around the food court wearing a shirt with a picture of an aborted fetus? It’s happened before and strangely there was not any uproar about it in the press.
So, maybe, just maybe, Reuters and CNN aren’t showing us a picture of this shirt because it had similarly offensive graphics accompanying the innocuous slogan.
John
Was he, or was he told to leave because he was hanging around the food court wearing a shirt with offensive and disgusting graphics?
We don’t know, do we? CNN.com, which typically accompanies most stories with lovely pictures, hasn’t seen fit to post a picture of this particular shirt. Doesn’t anybody wonder why?
John
Now do you think this is a reasonable way to exchange opinions?
I’m sure you’d convey your ideas better if not flaring up. This is a fishy story probably, and we were all getting to agree.
you write:
The article mentions the caption on the shirt, which I think we’d all agree is pretty innocuous. However, there is no mention of what graphics were on the shirt, and I notice that there quite oddly is no picture of the shirt on picture-happy but liberal CNN.com. Gosh, maybe there is more to this story than we’re being told, eh?
Maybe the policemen didn’t know either? Maybe it was just a preventive strike?
Awmygad, maybe I’m being serious here?
Gee, does your school maybe have a dress-code that she’s enforcing?
Many schools disallow sloganed shirts of any kind, “rock-band” t-shirts, and so on because they are considered disruptive to learning.
Now, if this principal lets students wear “let’s kill Saddam now” shirts but doesn’t let people wear “give peace a chance” shirts you might have something to complain about 
John
Actually, I wrote the squishy-headed liberals thing intending to append a smile, then I saw the roll-eyes and figured it better fit the rest of the sentence 
Curiously though I must have overlooked all those posts where you admonished the much stronger bashing of conservatives and Christians…
John
Would you take that mask off? If I recall correctly your first posts with this persona were (intended to be) funny, but now you seem to be using it mainly for political contributions. Come out of the closet, please.
I live just a few driving hours from this mall, and it was reported on the local as opposed to the national news. It seems that sometime before this “incident” took place, a large group had protested the war in the mall, causing a rukus, wearing the T shirts, and that the management did not want to become a protest site. It does sound nuts, but a mall is not really a public place like a town square. I guess if I had someone plant a political poster on my lawn, I would rip it out, especially if it was the party I enjoy not liking. And I don’t think that the mall owners necessarily disagreed with the protesters, they are just businessmen out for the rent money from the stores, and don’t want anything to interfere with this cash flow. The original draft constitution said “life. liberty and property” and that is what they always meant to say, but “life, liberty and the pursuit of hapiness” sounded more enlightened, so that is what we have. I am pursuing happiness by collecting as many whistles as I can afford, and those whistles, by golly, are property. 
i’m a little surprised nobody has brought up the incident in Maine, from last week. seems some teachers were confronting kids in grade school whose parents were known to be in the military and telling them that their parents were bad people. does that bother any of you americans out there?
hey, geek4music, i think i understand where your coming from, but i have a bit of a problem with it. i believe that a nation, to be a nation, can’t just be an empty vessel: the vessel being woven from a fabric of rights, a receptacle to be filled with any acts or speech we feel like pouring into it. i believe a nation has to stand for something substantive. samuel hutchinson from haahvaahd has a lot of stimulating things to say about that in his book: the clash of civilizations. he thinks we need to recover our civilizational roots if we are to maintain ourselves in a dangerous world. kinda like: the 1st amendment was never meant to protect madrassahs from teaching little kids (and there are some of these outfits in the us-of-a) that if they blow themselves up with a bunch of infidel passers-by they’ll get their pick of some fine virgins in paradise (well, ok, technically “dark-eyed houris”).
actually, i think i’m on fairly good legal ground for the nonce: a never overruled but little noticed supreme court case actually held that the us-of-a is a “judaeo-christian country”–whatever that means these days. mind you, i’m not predicting that the supremes will cite that case (it came up in the context of utah’s initial attempt to become a state) if the pledge case ever comes their way.
i’m still wondering whether i’m making a fool of myself. is this all an elaborate code for discussing whistles, and i’m the only bozo on the bus who’s taking it literally?
assuming i’m on the right wavelength here, i can’t help wondering whether those black people in sudan (where black people are sold into slavery in huge numbers by devotees of bush’s “religion of peace”) might like to have a horde of rich war mongering christians descend upon them–those types can come in mighty handy in a pinch. or those sad stories about filipina domestics who get beheaded in saudi for owning a rich war mongering christian bible. usually several sides to everything.
The part of the story CNN “forgot” to mention…
A statement released by the mall painted a different picture of what happened.
“Crossgates Mall security received a complaint regarding two individuals disrupting customers. The individuals were approached by security because of their actions and interference with other shoppers,” the statement read.
“Their behavior, coupled with their clothing to express to others their personal views on world affairs, were disruptive of customers.”
The story goes on to mention that the son removed his shirt but Steve Downs, a 61 year old lawyer, refused. When asked to leave he told them they would have to cuff him, so they did.
John
FYI–And it happened again:
Excerpted from AP Online (March 6)
HEADLINE: Mall Wants to Drop Peace T-Shirt Charges
Police said managers from Crossgates Mall called and asked that the complaint against Stephen Downs be withdrawn. Police Chief James Murley said he would support the mall’s decision.
Earlier Wednesday, about 100 anti-war demonstrators marched through the mall to protest the arrest. They told a mall manager they would stop only when charges against the shopper were dropped and when the mall outlined its policy.
Little John
I’d have to agree with you, Jim. The whole premise of this thread was nasty and I got caught up in it. I wish someone would lock the darn thing.
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He won’t, Steve: He is American and knows that he’ll be blacklisted for speaking his mind, or what ever they call it under the Patriot Act. Stand beside her, and guide her…
We know what YOU took out of the library last week, TubeDude…
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Hey touw/cranberry: You haven’t been around very long, either in life or on chiff & fipple. Sit back and listen and read back a bit. You may well be right, but I don’t think you quite see where people are coming from. It’s just a suggestion, of course, I wouldn’t want to quell youthful enthusiasm.
I also think it’s funny that you call yourself a “true” liberal. I hope that your views are more interesting than this suggests, or can you really be squeezed into the folkloristic US dichotomy of conservative/liberal? (The “true” cynic in me wonders what you’ve read and haven’t read, of course.)
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