Bush's Shut-Up Brigade

The U.S. Secret Service, brave and effective as ever, pounced on an 81-year-old Pennsylvanian late last week for having had the temerity to write to a local newspaper; in his published letter, Dan Tilli had referred to the execution of Saddam Hussein and concluded that "I still believe they hanged the wrong man."

Two dark-suited agents arrived at his door, asked to be let in, and interrogated the octogenarian would-be assassin for almost an hour. Apparently they deemed Tilli's bit of hyperbole a credible threat to the president. In fairness, when he told them he'd never been to Washington D.C. ("I don't even know how to get there, Atlantic City is the only place I go"), it began to dawn on the agents that maybe Tilli wasn't the second coming of John Wilkes Booth after all.

Still, they searched his closets for weapons and snapped pictures of him for their files. Then they retreated, secure in the knowledge that they'd done their bit to weed out dangerous terrorists (who, as we all know, have a habit of announcing their intentions in letters to the editor).

When prodded by reporters, an agency spokesman stated that "the Secret Service has a great respect for an individual's freedom of speech." This is no doubt so, seeing as the Secret Service enthusiastically sets up free speech zones wherever POTUS travels (albeit it far from the president's route and often conveniently located next to a dumpster and/or behind chain-link fences).

Anyway, the big picture is that the Secret Service is completely committed to citizens' freedom of expression, and that's fantastic to know. Consider what just happened to Dan Tilli: you wouldn't want that kind of incident to have a chilling effect or anything, would you?

Comments

[GreginOz]

Roj, this is one of your scariest posts ever. Lemme see, The CIA/FBI/SS/Pentagon/NSA etc kidnap people, torture people, assassinate people, illegally imprison people, wiretap people, open people's mail yadayadayada...
What is the difference between Amerika and the old USSR? Serious fuckin' question, dude!

[Chris Bray]

Icky as this is, the story indicates that he consented to the questioning and the search of his home: "Tilli allowed the agents to briefly search his closets and elsewhere for weapons. 'I have nothing to hide,' he said."

Wouldn't have been my choice, for sure.

[y81]

Of course, the Secret Service did exactly the same thing when Clinton was president, but back then you thought it was great. You have no principles whatsoever. That is what makes political types like you, both left and right, so disgusting to decent people.

[Rogier]

y81:

Re: "[T]he Secret Service did exactly the same thing when Clinton was president, but back then you thought it was great. You have no principles whatsoever."

Care to point out when or where I expressed my enthusiasm for any Clintonian abuse of the Secret Service?

You haven't been reading this blog for very long, have you? The last time I wrote about Clinton (more specifically about his role in escalating the drug war), I called him "a craven opportunist" as well as "a callous, hypocritical law-and-order ayatollah."

I recently also recommended the book "Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years," James Bovard's cri de coeur.

Then there was the time I tore Clinton's charitable foundation a new one for helping ban soda drinks from schools, a silly feel-good measure that does exactly nothing to make kids thinner or fitter.

Oh: I'm also on the record with my intense dislike of that nasty, calculating, fingerwagging shrew he calls a wife.

On the off-chance that, rather than playing the shit-slinging troll, you could actually muster an iota of curiosity about what drives me as a writer, I laid my cards on the table here (among other posts): http://www.bakelblog.com/nobodys_business/2006/01/levy_moving_fre.html

Got it?

After all that, would you still care to dismiss me as a partisan hack?

Didn't think so.

[The Wine Commonsewer]

My brother-in-law's, mother's (Corrine), brother.....(are you with me so far) was doing a long stretch of time in San Quentin but he had phone privileges or so they said.

So Corrine, Bush hater and long time Dem, goes on a tirade over the phone to her brother in prison ending with something like someone should shoot GWB.

Guess how long it took the Secret Service to get to her condo in Huntington Beach?

It was mostly no sale, they didn't even search the place, screwy old lady and all (okay, whe wasn't THAT old). Funny too. I mean who is that dumb?

[George Arndt]

Freedom on the March...

[Phelps]

y81 has a point in that I really don't think this is a Bush thing. This is a police "us vs. the civilians" thing. I don't think they were even concerned about whether or not he was a threat. They just wanted to rack up a weapons charge. I guarantee you that if they had found a couple of Scary Black Weapons&trade then he would have been a Serious Threat.

[Kid Handsome]

I guess there's no chance we could get those guys fired.

[Horrified]

Any chance someone can get a major media outlet to start to catalog complaints so Americans can see how often this is happening? That might help. People don't think it can happen to them, but when it does--you know--we all have to do more than just get ticked off. We need to use the "sunlight" as the best disinfectant, to quote Justice Brandeis.