Here's a couple of reports from the Family Research Council regarding the reprehensible behavior of several yahoos among the few hundred anti-war protestors who showed up last week in Washington, D.C. The profane, disrespectful vandalism of this group is bad enough but what is much more frightening is how the Capitol police simply allowed the sinister circus to go on unopposed. And, oh yeah -- where is the Democrat response?
Here are the two FRC commentaries:
1) This past weekend anti-Bush protestors marched on Washington. While the few thousand who showed up paled in comparison to the hundreds of thousands who marched for life earlier in the week, the anti-Bush protestors were given unprecedented access to the U.S. Capitol grounds, and some of them used that access to publicly deface taxpayer's property. According to the local newspaper, The Hill, the protesters were allowed to take the Capitol steps and they began to spray-paint "anarchist symbols" and phrases such as "Our capitol building" and "You can't stop us" around the area.
For any other group, such acts would mean immediate arrest. This time, the Capitol police's hands were tied because they were ordered to stand down by their Chief of Police, who answers to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). To add insult to injury, public employees had to come in on their day off, at taxpayer's expense, to clean up the mess the protestors left behind. (View this video to see evidence of the vandalism.) The vandals clearly broke federal law. According to the U.S. Code, "[I]f the damage exceeds $100, the defendant is subject to a fine of up to $250,000, ten years imprisonment, or both . . When property damage does not exceed $100, the offense is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $100,000, one year imprisonment, or both."
According to the news reports the rank and file police officers were "livid" that they were ordered not to arrest anyone. Since the Capitol police answer to Speaker Pelosi, the question arises, did the Chief of Police give the "no arrest" order or did it come from someone else? Whoever is responsible for the order needs to explain why the physical destruction of taxpayer property is acceptable.
Please e-mail Speaker Pelosi's office and ask her to find out why no attempt was made to halt or arrest these vandals. If the U.S. Capitol has a new policy on such acts, does it apply to everyone - or just to those whose views the majority in Congress favors?
2) FRC has done some digging and uncovered more shocking details about the anti-war march in Washington this past weekend. For such a small crowd, the demonstrators were an interesting bunch of people - everything from actors and anarchists to the members of Congress who marched alongside them, including: Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Reps. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Maxine Waters (D-CA), Jerry Nadler (D-NY), and House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI). Also addressing the crowd from his prison cell was convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal.
After talking to members of the Capitol Hill police, FRC discovered that one reason the officers held back from confronting one batch of protestors was because the anarchists threatened the officers with bottles of human urine. Additional damage done to both city and personal property includes a news truck pelted with rocks and spray-painted street signs. Although the demonstrators claimed they supported the troops but not the war, The New York Times reported that some of the protestors actually spat at war veterans as they marched by. Peaceful civil disobedience has an honorable history in the United States, yet many of those who protested last weekend were neither civil nor peaceful. Speaker Pelosi must respond to these actions, even though her party had connections to this shameful march...
