If They Didn’t Agree With The President They Couldn’t Hear Him Speak

A political scandal continues to unfold in Colorado where it turns out that the chairman of the Young Republicans was apparently among those who booted three people from a speech by President George Bush. Their sin: they had an antiwar, anti-Bush bumper sticker on their car.



Part of this scandal also includes allegations that the person who actually ejected them claimed to be a Secret Service agent — when he wasn’t. Now it turns out, according to the Rocky Mountain News, that a Republican staffer actually threw them out. Some details remain under dispute.

But let’s do an exercise. First, read some of these details, and then ask yourself — whether you’re a Democrat, Republican or independent – a series of questions. The details:

The chairman of the Colorado Young Republicans was one of the people involved in a March 21 incident in which three Denver residents were forcibly removed from a speech given by President Bush because of a bumper sticker.



Jay Bob Klinkerman, leader of the state group for Republicans ages 18 to 40, admitted in an interview that he was at the gate of the Wings over the Rockies Museum when the three people were stopped.

Klinkerman also was identified as being involved in the incident by Karen Bauer, one of the three removed. She confronted him about it at a Young Republicans event Tuesday night.



Two of the three who were removed, Bauer and Leslie Weise, said that Klinkerman is the event volunteer who was wearing a magenta shirt and smiley-face tie that night, and told them, “Secret Service is coming down to talk to your group.”



Then a man who looked and acted like a Secret Service agent arrived and threatened them with arrest. He allowed them to enter but then found them 20 to 30 minutes later and forced them to leave.



But Klinkerman, 31, of Thornton, told the Rocky Mountain News that he never said anything to Bauer and Weise about the Secret Service…



The real Secret Service says the man who ousted Bauer, Weise and Alex Young from the president’s speech was actually a Republican Party staffer. The Secret Service has told the three that the man admitted to an agent that he ousted them because they arrived in a car with a “No more blood for oil” bumper sticker.



The service is investigating that man on possible criminal charges of impersonating a Secret Service agent. He was wearing a dark suit, earpiece and lapel pin.

The ejectees, meanwhile, want to sue the man who tossed them out for violating their freedom of speech. And then, the paper’s report says, there’s this:

On Tuesday night, Bauer introduced herself to Klinkerman as one of the three in the incident, and said she had questions that she would like to ask him. Klinkerman replied, “I won’t talk to you about that without a lawyer.” He declined to give her his attorney’s name and refused to talk to her further. Bauer said she would have asked, “Who trained him? Did the White House train him? Who was he working with? How were we ID’d?”

Our Questions 4 U:

–Do you think this would have happened 20 years ago when Ronald Reagan was President, or when Jimmy Carter was President, or Gerald Ford? Or at any time time in the 20th Century?

–What has so radically changed our society so that having a bumper sticker expressing opposition means you are physically escorted out of a taxpayer funded event where the President speaks? Taxpayer funded implies that everyone’s taxes went to pay for this appearance.

–Did the men and women who died in our wars over the centuries fighting for America and what was perceived during each war as America’s interest ever imagine that citizens in our democracy would be ejected from hearing their President speak if either volunteers or operatives from any party learned that the citizen disagreed with them?

–Is there a danger if this is allowed to stand and there are no consequences that supporters of a future President from EITHER PARTY can weed out political foes by using things such as bumper stickers or data base investigations to ensure that onl like-minded or at least passive citizens can listen to a President speak live? And if a precedent has been set and is allowed to remain, is it therefore OK for Senator Barbra Boxer to do this in California, Joe Lieberman do this in Connecticut, Rep. Tom DeLay to do this in Texas? Are these the new rules of the game?


OUR VIEW: As a college student journalist I covered a Richard Nixon for President rally in Syracuse New York in 1968. Nixon’s balloon drops were truly works of art and so were his crowds. They weren’t totally selected and pruned but his people packed public events with enthusiastic supporters.



Crowds heartily cheered Nixon’s stock campaign lines. Some who didn’t cheer or booed were simply overwhelmed in that sea of supporters. One student screamed out an anti-Nixon slogan and was shouted down by the crowd. On TV, in fact, it made the demonstrator and those with him look dumb. But it was always a “given” that anyone could hear him speak at a public event.

Being able to go to rallies and particularly taxpayer-funded Presidential events — even those headlined by figures with whom we disagree — has been a traditional freedom in this country. When did THAT freedom suddenly disappear from American life?