Homeland Security Department issued a terrorist advisory for local law enforcement agencies to watch for home landers who have “expressed dislike of attitudes and decisions of the US government.”

At a Labor Day 2002 Pittsburgh picnic for Bush’s photo-op with work-people, a 65 year old retired steel worker was denied access for wearing a sign “The Bush Family surely love the poor, they make many of us,” though he was engulfed by other sign carriers in favor of Bush. The police arrested him for disorderly conduct. At his trial a detective testified that the local police was instructed by the Secret Service to confine people making statements against the administration. The judge threw out the case.

In St. Louis Bush appeared in 2003; sign protestors were shuttled off to a zone out of sight of the street where the President would be, and worse, the media could not cover the zone. The President visited Columbia, So. Carolina last year. Amid a sea of admirers some 200 yards away from the Bush, stood a brave soul, perhaps indiscreet, with a sign “No War for Oil.” He was escorted to a fenced in zone a half mile away because of the “content of the sign.”

Crawford Texas police believes that without a protest permit wearing a “peace” button would be considered violating city ordinance.

[Taken from The Nation reprint of Jim Hightower’s book, Let’s Stop Beating Around the Bush]