As the president races around the country, furiously pushing the twin lies that things are getting better in Iraq and that the economy is on the upswing, and ducking the reports that he hid from the draft in a National Guard unit and then went AWOL from even that cushy post, a huge, coordinated effort, largely unreported, is underway to insulate him and the media from any signs of dissent.

The latest evidence of this shameless and brazen trampling of the First Amendment to the Constitution is found in a lawsuit filed yesterday by the ACLU against the White House and the Secret Service on behalf of two West Virginia Republicans, Jeff Rank, 29, and Nicole, 30, who were arrested on July 4 at a Charleston, West Virginia, rally for President Bush, because they refused to remove two home-made T-shirts sporting the circle-and-slash “no” symbol superimposed over the word “Bush.”

According to the suit, filed by the ACLU in federal court, even though the Ranks had tickets to the event, which was held on the grounds of the state capital, and were not being disruptive, city police arrested and handcuffed them, charging them with trespassing, and held them for several hours, on instructions of the Secret Service, the federal police agency that is tasked with “protecting” the president.

Nicole, who works for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a notorious nest of right-wing loonies, was also temporarily suspended from her job following the arrests.

The charges were later thrown out, and the city council apologized to the Ranks for the incident, saying local police would never have bothered them had they not been ordered to act by the Secret Service. (Bush and the White House had no apologies to offer.)

As outrageous as this incident is, it is hardly isolated or unique. Back last year, I wrote an article in Salon Magazine, Keeping Dissent Invisible (Oct. 16, 2003) , which documented how the removal of all signs of dissent from Bush and Cheney public events has been standard operating procedure, with instructions coming from the Secret Service and White House advance teams. Paul Wolf, a deputy police chief from Pittsburgh, PA, where police were instructed to fence off protesters in a remote baseball field during a 2002 visit there by President Bush, stated on the record that his department had been told what to do by Secret Service and White House staff. Around the country, protesters who have been similarly removed from presidential parade routes or rally sites, or arrested by police for simply carrying protest signs, have reported being told that it was “on instructions from the Secret Service.”

Americans need to become aware how deeply antagonistic towards, and dangerous for American civil liberties like the right of free speech and assembly this current administration is.

Our corporate media, whose highly paid and well-groomed reporters prefer to travel with the presidential motorcade and to broadcast promotional soundbites from the president, don’t even see, much less bother to track down and interview the many people who have the courage and principle to come and try to protest. As a result, the average American doesn’t even know that there is a vast sea of opposition to this president and his policies.
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