Saturday, April 06, 2013

RIGHT-WINGERS CURIOUSLY UNINTERESTED IN CRYING "FASCISM!" AS OBAMA JUSTICE DEPARTMENT JAILS MAN FOR SPEECH

The right believes that Barack Obama is a totalitarian president determined to crush all forms of dissent, with a Justice Department clearly eager to do his sinister bidding. Given that widely held belief, you'd think this story would be getting a lot of attention in conservative circles, as one more sign of the president's jackbooted ways:
Activist re-imprisoned for HuffPo article

Daniel McGowan ... was re-imprisoned today for publishing an article on the Huffington Post, according to the claims of his lawyers and his wife.

Attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights representing McGowan say he was taken into custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn yesterday because his Huffington Post article violated the Federal Bureau of Prisons' regulation prohibiting inmates from "publishing under a byline."

McGowan, who pleaded guilty in 2006 to federal charges of arson, had been moved to a halfway house in December. In his Huffington Post article, published on Monday, he charged the BOP with transferring him to a high security prison during his incarceration in order to restrict his freedom of speech....
Ahhh, but of course it's not fascism in this case, because McGowan is "an activist with Earth Liberation Front, the animal rights activist group."

It seems to me that this case is strikingly similar to that of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a convicted criminal who was arrested last fall for violating the terms of his probation; his violation was the posting of an excerpt from the anti-Islam film Innocence of Muslims on YouTube. You may recall the right-wing response to that:
...spurred on by conservative web king Matt Drudge, conservatives have turned Nakoula into a martyr for free speech.

As Roy Edroso documents in the Village Voice, conservatives are now claiming that Nakoula's recent arrest for potentially violating the terms of his probation is proof the Obama administration is caving to violent protests around the world. Popular conservative blogger Glenn Reynolds demanded Obama resign for "sending -- literally -- brownshirted enforcers to engage in -- literally -- a midnight knock at the door of a man for the non-crime of embarrassing the President of the United States and his administration[.]" The "brownshirts" are the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, whom Reynolds is comparing to militia of the Nazi Party in Germany. Powerline blogger Scott Johnson declared "I am Nakoula Basseley Nakoula," (a reference to the anti-Red Scare film Spartacus). Pajamas Media blogger Roger Simon wrote "Hillary Clinton, I insist that you have me arrested. I am thinking of making a movie about Mohammed."
Curiously, I see no complaints about the re-jailing of Daniel McGowan at Power Line, none at Instapundit, none anywhere else at Pajamas Media.

McGowan has since been allowed to return to the halfway house. But ... but ... harassment! And ... and ... inviolate constitutional rights! Will none of of our right-wing betters speak up for the Constitution?

1 comment:

Victor said...

It's only harassment or totalitarianism if it's done to one of theirs.

If it's not, it's some DFH who's getting what he/she deserves, and if they don't like it, they can leave this freedom and liberty loving country.