Cliff LyonUpdated: Police State? Student Tasered for Asking About Bush Impeachment
Update II: I’ve seen enough. Here’s a video from before the one below. The Pinkerton Rent-a-cops MUST BE PUNISHED!
As the cops grab the kid, Kerry says, “That alright. Let me answer the question.”
This is outrageous!
A University of Florida student from South Florida was Tasered and arrested Monday when he attempted to speak at a forum with U.S. Sen. John Kerry after the question and answer session had ended, university officials said.
Andrew Meyer, 21, asked Kerry why he did not contest the 2004 presidential election, which he lost to President Bush, and why there had been no moves to impeach Bush.
”He apparently asked several questions — he went on for quite awhile — then he was asked to stop,” university spokesman Steve Orlando said. “He had used his allotted time. His microphone was cut off then he became upset.”
Update: Here’s a Longer Video of the whole incident
I’m checking other blogs to see if there are any witnesses who are defending the police. Will advise and link.
September 18th, 2007 at 7:05 am
It’s not about removing our illustrious leadership or evven Kerry’s role in it all. It’s thaat the young mans allotted time had expired! Get me the taser…
September 18th, 2007 at 7:10 am
Although I support the impeachment of George W. Bush, I suspect that it was very indirectly related to this student’s support for impeachment that he was tasered.
September 18th, 2007 at 7:11 am
The video is shocking. Everyone just sits, watches, and waits. Were a dead people. Wouldn’t it have been something if the entire crowd had turned on these freaks, held them down, and tazed the shit out them their own weapons.
…and some people think the 2nd amendment is about hunting and trap shooting. The video aptly describes the elimination of the 1st amendment. The 2nd is so We the People, get to insist on the first.
Get real everybody, ask the Sunni insurgency what the 2nd amendment means to them. Freedom from tyranny.
September 18th, 2007 at 7:12 am
Our would be President, and his no doubt present personal security detachment, stood and looked on. I think this inaction pretty much answered the victims question for him.
Skull and Bones indeed.
September 18th, 2007 at 7:50 am
The victims’ name is Andrew Meyer, 21, American, Patriot. (fried wiener for sure).
Let him become a rally point. It is beyond obvious where we now ARE! Let Andrew be the Crispus Attucks of our new Rebellion.
Time for the Johnny Starks, Lees, Warners, Barres’, Wilkes, Burkes, Hales, Paines, Henrys, and all other “RABBLE” of this once great Nation, and its English supporters, STAND UP, and FIGHT!
It is that, or DO THE DONKEY! I’m not referring to voting democrat, useless as it is. Do the Donkey, be recalcitrant, do not cooperate, shun authority in personal life. Isolate and destroy their personal economies. Follow Sam Adams’ lead, create crisis, join each other at homes and taverns, betray no Patriot sentiment, punish those who do.
Have pint, smoke a pipe, and DO AS WE PLEASE. Please.
Remember the Boston Massacre, quartered troops(the goons in the auditorium), and the burning of the detested Gaspee, (crown authorized pirate ship).
This is it. We must General Strike. There is but nothing left.
September 18th, 2007 at 7:50 am
I worry that security and cops these days have a “Taser first, ask questions later” attitude. However, in this instance I don’t actually feel that it was related to the content of the guy’s questions. Rather, he went over his time, apparently didn’t feel like letting other people ask questions, and security chose an over-the-top means of shutting him up. Whatever happened to just removing people who disrupted public fora? Can’t security even handle that any more without their prop?
September 18th, 2007 at 8:21 am
The guy was annoying, I’ll give you that. But, he did NOTHING to be hauled off in the first place, nor did he do anything to be tasered. Those cops or rent-a-cops, whatever, deserve a major punishment. I am just starting my day, and learned about this here, but I guess it’s all over talk radio and the news. I’d really like to find out what Kerry says, especially since he was telling them that it was ok, and he’d answer the questions. My stomach is still turning from listening to his screams at the end of that first video, I couldn’t watch the entire second one.
September 18th, 2007 at 8:25 am
Daily Kos has an account from an eyewitness. An excerpt:
September 18th, 2007 at 8:25 am
I forget Joseph Warren, John Adams, a peacenik, that finally came around. Washington, Jefferson, Franklin were the prominent figures, but it was the lessor known people, that drove it, and pulled it off.
Fr. Warren fell at the Battle of Bunker Hill, I believe, and as Nathan Hale said before he was hanged for the treason of being a Patriot, he had but one missive before the tyrant crown stretched his neck.
“I have but one regret, that I have but one life to give to my Country” . Then they pulled lever. Are we getting any of this people? The right to be FREE does not exist, A PEOPLE must TAKE, and COVET it.
Fuck John Kerry, fuck the democrats, Jefferson and Jackson would PUKE on you now.
Then Andy would likely kill you with his bare hands, after dealing same with our current batch of tories and dual passport rats.
September 18th, 2007 at 9:01 am
Lucidity,
I’m sorry you won’t use your real name, especially in light of the fact that you associate with Democracy for Utah, a great organization.
I appreciate the Dkos comment you posted. I read the whole thing. I think the use of the word “douchebag” is rather discrediting. His name is Andrew Meyer, and he is clearly a very bright, passionate, and non-violent guy.
Nothing I’ve seen or read, including that Dkos account justifies the use of force. I assume you feel the same although you didn’t state your opinion.
The questions Andrew asks were and ARE all quite critical. Kerry WAS elected, and a national election WAS stolen. This has never been disputed.
This country is in deep trouble if much more than a fraction of our citizens believe the cops actions were justified.
September 18th, 2007 at 9:38 am
I’m sick of the tasering and what appears (to those of us who weren’t there) to be excessive force; I just don’t think this had anything to do with his particular line of questioning. I do wish we had video of the events leading up to the critical moments. I guess there’s no extended security video?
September 18th, 2007 at 9:51 am
Cliff,
I do agree that several security agents should be able to restrain one student without resorting to tasering. The use of the taser was excessive and unnecessary.
However, your title is misleading. The student wasn’t tasered for asking any particular question.
September 18th, 2007 at 11:37 am
Lucidity, Cari, Sheryl, whomever you are, you scare the beJeezus out of me.
Do you honestly think that Andrew Meyer needed to be restrained at all by police?
Put another way, ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY?
I do believe even Senator Kerry was trying to answer the question.
September 18th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
The incident was disgusting. Kerry was not trying to answer the question, he was trying to spin the answer to the question. Thomas Jefferson is turning over in his grave.
It is also clear that today’s Kerry blog is being filtered. ZERO comments on his statement this morning, as of 5 minutes ago????????
This college kid was a THREAT? Waiving that weapon of mass construction from Greg Palast? He was brave and heroic. Sad it is that that appelation is now required simply for a university student demanding answers to EMPIRICAL data that has been ignored by its target(s).
If the progessive left had any sense of political savvy left in its near-corpse-like body, forget about a moral heart and compass, they would already have rallied around this young man and the incident to make the point that WE ARE SLIPPING ASLEEP INTO THE CONDITIONS OF A POLICE STATE.
Truthout’s emails being blocked by major services? My broadcast emails being blocked by major services?
September 18th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Keep your powder dry. That’s an order.
September 18th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
John Kerry has a blog? Well, now everybody does.
September 18th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
This incident is a wake up call BIG TIME. This could have been you, me, anyone. When did it become against the law to simply ask a question? This young student was not beligerent, he simply was, in fact, trying to show support for Kerry. Kerry is an empty suit, sometime maybe he could walk his talk. He should have left the podium and walked down into the audience and stopped that shocking display of abusive power. The audience should have, as a group, done the same. It was a shocking abuse of everything we know about freedom under the bill of rights—especially the first amendment which is the guardian of the rest. As the young man kept screaming, “what have I done, what have I done.” Speak young man, that is what you did, asking an ‘inconvenient truth.” That ‘inconvenient truth’ is forbidden, as it seems in all of our public discourses. Why has John Kerry NOT held this administration to account for so many actions and dictates that are against the law, THE LAW- THE CONSTITUTION. Everyone had better wake up–this is where we now live.
After hearing this account on the radio this morning, what followed was an hour of people responding with their own version of police action in their own local communities for NO real reason. Intimidation (1984) is alive and well in our blessed country in 2007, shameful what we have allowed, and continue to countenance. I used to wonder how in the world the horrors of Nazi Germany could ever occur–how could the people allow such an atrocity to happen. I now grieve with understanding, people asleep in their own comfort zones, not wanting to be bothered –”some one else will handle the problems,” I see it every day as our precious freedoms are being emasculated, our policies corrupted, our laws being twisted to serve government power instead of control it, as wars and empirial reaching have eroded the HOPE of America around the world, but most of all in our own country. How do we explain 735 military bases around the world and budget deficits in the $trillions and growing to achieve a so called victory—over what, and how many lives for ‘us’ and ‘them” will that demand? What is the Prize? Oil, power, or as PNAC articulates, being the Supreme Superpower of the World, and what does that mean? What IS THE REAL REASON we are there in the first place? Long ago we saw the initiation of the search for Al Queda and Bin Laden — the supposed reason for invasions abroad. President Bush, himself, has said,” bin Laden isn’t important.” And, if you are reading anything, you understand that within months there is a planned attack on Iran, maybe Pakistan– and the ignition of the Middle East conflagration. Where is the Hope of our Republic in the dialogue process that created our Republic in the first place? Our Founding Fathers and the documents they designed were to provide a remedy against the constant wars of Europe for millennia before. “Entangling alliances,” was the warning.
Everyone wonders how such a thing as this arrest, how 9/11, how so many seeming events happen, why is the congress not taking action in a host of arenas, what, ‘literally in the world’ is Bush/Cheney doing, how can this or that happen; we all feel the dis-ease of our polity, we are uncertain about the future . It seems things are flying apart without any apparent connection. The problem is that we are only seeing a dot here, a dot there, not connecting the hundreds of dots that reveal the agenda at work for a long time. To begin to comprehend, start with a document prepared through the nineties, culminating in a report drafted in 1999 (before the elections)—PNAC, The Project for The New American Century—and then work backward and forward and the dots will come into clarity. This is not simple politics as usual. The deterioriation of our society, our culture, our unconstitutional present government is unfortunately unfolding an agenda that is accelerating under our noses. This incident of the student is a small a representative of its effects, a straw revealing a whole haystack. The local police are not to blame. They’re most certainly nice, ordinary citizens too. They are simply following the surrounding “conventions” of our political atmosphere.
When are we all going to stand up and scream ENOUGH. Please, Please—everyone once again, or for the first time, READ THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES and its Preamble, and then start paying attention to the fine print of Executive Orders and Directives, Resolutions and Acts of Congress, starting with the Military Commission Act, and the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007, the North American Union and the document that sponsors it–The Security and Prosperity Partnership, and the particulars first outlined in the Patriot Acts that give birth to the Homeland Security which has gobbled up the essential “Separation of Powers” doctrine that secures the Constitutional’s survival. This is a beginning.
Then we can understand the Florida event, and a whole lot more in context. America, Wake UP, tomorrow that event will play out in our neighborhoods, hopefully not en mass under an unconstitutional seizure of power. “Unitary Executive” is the term describing the pending usurpation of governmental power, in the May 9, 2007 Executive Directive. It is all-inclusive, must reading for every American. Back to the question of Meyers at the Florida University, John Kerry and every other Congressional /representative and senator—where is the challenge to this Presidential Dictum AND ALL THE REST THAT HAS BEEN PASSED IN THE LAST SEVEN YEARS, some 237 Executive Orders, and hundreds of Signing Statements that exempt the President, Vice President, and apparently anyone connected with the White House, from obeying the laws he signs into force. The extensive “Executive Privilege” claimed by this White House–Vice President and Attorney General their aides included, is literally declaring they are above the LAW whatever the LAW is–including the Constitution, ignoring supoeneas, asserting they are the supreme branch of government. Their actions state it all. When do we wake up? Congress, when do you wake up? Hubris of power anywhere IS tryanny. Meyers a tiny, shocking, and awakening case in point.
WE ALL DEMAND AN ANSWER. YOU HAVE ALL PLAYED POLITICAL GAMES LONG ENOUGH. WE THE PEOPLE , your employer, are demanding accountability. Meyers– a simple student asking the question– has it right and gives us an opportunity to wake up, NOW!
September 18th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
John Kerry wouldn’t even stand up to defend his own stolen election FOUR YEARS AFTER THE STOLEN ELECTION OF 2000. He tried to say something on the “Democracy Now” program with Amy Goodman by exposing Christopher Dodd’s statement to him that there was “nothing there” in his question to Dodd, (who has been actively involved in the HAVA scam), as to the presence of questionable evidence against voting machines.
So an angry young man sounds crazy while trying to question John Kerry’s involvement in scull and bones and gets another silly reply from Kerry. Who cares if somebody else jumped up to complete his reply!
Kerry and Dodd have some explaining to do in addition to Keyy’s laughing at this brave young mans question and Dodd’s book about his Dad’s involvement in bringing Nazi’s to justice!
PERIOD!
September 18th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Who is Keyy?
Sorry, but typing in anger isn’t any better then arguing in anger, but what else are we all left with today!
September 18th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
I hate to even give the appearance that I agree with glenn or glenn-from-germany, (whoever that is), but ALL
September 18th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
I hate to even give the appearance that I agree with glenn or glenn-from-germany, (whoever that is), but ALL OF THE DEMOCRATS supported the HAVA act.
Damn that enter, (or tab) button.
September 18th, 2007 at 8:11 pm
Hey Larry; ever gone through child custody and visitation courts in Canada? This crap we write can be used as evidence against you in the not so free nation of Canada. How would I know? My buddy glenn just received a pile of my writings from his wifes’ lawyer, as evidence that he should not be able to see his kids. the silly girl thinks Glenn wrote it.
It is why nobody should use their real name. Not anymore. Want to end up in trouble, use your real name Larry, uh who are you again. I’m serious Larry. What is happening to Glenn is real, and I’m so sorry about using his name.
I been writing it all.
Wake UP! The police State has been here since you were a kid. You just didn’t know it. Try to break shackles.
“It isn’t a prison, until you try the door”.
September 18th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Joey Chitwood is using glenns name and his children are in danger.
This isn’t a “police state” “joey”, it’s a congress state!
Congress is causing our problems!
NOT the police!
September 18th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
Some guy asks Kerry a question about SKULL AND BONES, (Kerry laughs it off), and is preempted by a jackass who asks Kerry a perfectly good question about his inability to carry, (bad pun), through a movement against election fraud.
Not ONE media outlet, (including MSNBC’s “Countdown”, (which I usually respect), covers this travesty and focuses, instead, on the “fact” that a jackass was tasered, (spelling?)
Daily KOS?
September 18th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
I also have a BIG problem with code pink people wearing pink crowns and trying to further the cause of justice. How in the HELL did these idiots get into all these hearings. Can’t they just wear pink?
Are the only people who show up at these hearings wearing pink?
JESUS CHRIST didn’t even wear pink!
September 18th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
THE POLICE DID NOT CAUSE THIS MESS!
IT’S THE CONGRESS!
September 18th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
DON’T GO AFTER DAVID!
GO AFTER GOLIATH!
September 18th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
Larry, you ‘aint me helping me out here…,
.. but you know, I don’t care anymore.
I crossed the Rubicon, when I swore an Oath to the US Constitution. I have already lost time with my tiny treasures. They are in tory lands, that I assumed safe. They are physically safe. I fear for their little minds.
Yet as my Uncle Vitzhek explained to me in his heavy Polish accent, it is “better to starve in the belly, than to starve in the mind”. He spent 6 years in prisoner of war camp in Germany after his army was destroyed in the German invasion. He married my Dads’ eldest sister after the war. Her first husband was the Bf-109 pilot I have referenced earlier. Shot down, Killed, 2 weeks before wars end.
He returned to Poland, lived under communism, and then when it became too much, he left for US. For America. For the ability to feed your mind, as well as your children. The war left poisons from the bombings, the children played in it. One cousin is already dead from cancer, 48 was she, Kamilla.
War brings death, long term. Anyone that promotes it, is a child of SATAN!
Non-denominational of course, pick your cultural avatar.
There comes a time when these demons must be fought. Those that can do. Those that cannot. RESIST, or help those battling. They can be defeated. I know for more than certain, that the Peoples that cannot even manufacture a toaster. are not capable of destroying.
For power such as ours, can only be destroyed from within.
Be not deceived, to defeat an enemy, one must know him, know ours, know victory.
For all Peoples.
September 18th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
Thank goodness John Kerry isn’t President when he treats a person, albeit an annoying one, like that for asking a simple question. The Skull and Bones question must have hit a nerve. I can’t imagine what would have happened to the poor guy if he had of been a conservative. We probably would never hear from him again.
“Come see the violence Inherent in the system! Help, Help, I’m being repressed!”
from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
(I thought it quite fitting)
September 18th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
Ken:
You win!
You’re number one!, You’re number one!, You’re number one!, You’re number one!
I have to admit, we’re all repressed, aren’t we…
Conservatives, liberals, gays, hippies, cowboys, cokefreaks, potheads, homeless, indians, hispanics, housewife’s, gun nuts, mormons, ect, ect,ect…
We’ve all been outsourced!
Sad, isn’t it?
September 18th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
Al Gore, if he had been, (rightfully), given office may have put some true conservative and environmentally sound, policies in place. But we’ll never know will we?
Maybe even John Kerry would have done the same. But we’ll never know will we?
When thugs steal office and put judges and lawyers in office who perpetuate, (for lack of a better word), piracy, we cannot possibly know what we could have truly been, can we?
September 18th, 2007 at 11:37 pm
Who cares Larry. It’s flat, that isn’t a question, you need not answer it with any emotion.
Algore could deliver his environmental missives from his jet, or perhaps his environmentally unsound balcony from his 11,ooo sq. ft. home.
It is beyond obvious that polarizing views are simply no longer permitted.
Welcome to HELL! Anyone seen a thermostat?
Oh that’d be the 2nd amendment, it’s tools used to be called “heaters” after we use it properly, we can begin to discuss Liberty again.
September 19th, 2007 at 12:22 am
glenn:
Are you going to come to America from Germany and support US or just keep spouting this Libertarian crap!
I thought not!
Like I said, we’ll never know what an “Algore” or even a Jimmy Carter presidency would have been, because they were destroyed by the fake Americans.
September 19th, 2007 at 12:56 am
glenn:
If I’m reading you wrong, then apologize, but I don’t know if up is down anymore.
Some of the police at the event seemed to be as stunned as the “student” and rest of us are. He was obviously attacked too harshly because he was completely subdued before he was tazered, however, if this guy jumped in to fill in for the guy who asked the question about Kerry’s involvement in skull and bones, then I support his being tazed just for being a shill.
September 19th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
[...] Youtube videos of the incident at Florida State (posted below) are well over a million views and still [...]