Man arrested for wearing McCain/Palin shirt
An interesting incident occurred in Philadelphia during the post election celebrations. Here is the You Tube video of the event from start to finish.
It would seem a young man came to the celebration wearing a McCain/Palin shirt and was asked to leave by the police.
As an obligatory disclaimer, I will state it was fairly poor judgment to show up at an Obama post election celebration wearing that particular shirt.
That being said, he did have the right to wear it and no one has the right to tell him to remove it or himself from the proceedings, which were in a public venue, eg; the city streets. Police officers taking it on themselves to rough him up, cuff him and take him away, under arrest, in a police car with siren is over the top. Roughing up the camera man is, again, inappropriate.
Were the police protecting him from the crowd? Did they feel the crowd of "peaceful" Obama supporters were going to hurt this guy? What does that say about the Obama supporters? Failure to control the crowd was a failure on the officers part. They were permitting to crowd to get out of control.
Personally, I view this as a portend of things to come. Will supporters of Obama find rationalization for this behavior? Sure. They have done it by producing incidents of individuals being assaulted by other individuals because they supported Obama. Now, perhaps they can show me a case where police officers arrested an individual for wearing an Obama shirt.
(hat tip: Ace of Spades)
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