NYT/AP: Klan Plans Rally at Antietam Battlefield

[DeepModem Mom]

Klan Plans Rally at Antietam Battlefield
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 26, 2006

SHARPSBURG, Md. (AP) -- A Ku Klux Klan group plans to hold a rally June 10 on the grounds of the Antietam National Battlefield, site of the bloodiest one-day clash of the Civil War, an organizer and a park official said.

Battlefield Superintendent John W. Howard said Tuesday the National Park Service approved the white supremacist group's application for a permit to use the park to exercise its free speech rights.

''It would be very difficult to find a reason why a First Amendment permit would be denied,'' Howard said.

Gordon Young, Imperial Wizard of the World Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, estimated in his application that about 100 people would attend the rally....On Sept. 17, 1862, more than 23,000 men on both sides were killed, wounded or reported missing at the western Maryland battlefield.

The Confederacy's failure to achieve a clear victory at Antietam gave President Lincoln the political strength to issue the Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves in the South.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Klan-Antietam.html

[stepnw1f]

1. We Should Counter Them

to prove how inferior they really are. Fuckin "cult o' dweebs".

[kenny blankenship]

2. Why isn't the Klan designated a terrorist organization and dealt with

according to the wonderful new rules we have suspending the various Consitutional rights of suspected and/or known terrorists and terrorist organizations?
It's not like they don't have a history of killing people in organized political terror campaigns.

[AnnieBW]

3. Come And Get It, Baby!

Come to Maryland, Imperial Wizard. Us true-blue-state Marylanders will give you and your redneck a**holes the welcome that you so richly deserve. :evilgrin:

[LiberalEsto]

15. Amen!

I will extend my right foot in "welcome." Hard.

[blue neen]

4. Over 23,000 American soldiers died at Antietam.

This is a horrible and is dishonoring their memory.

It's hard to fathom the hatred that would drive one to become a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

[demosincebirth]

7. Killed and wounded combined

[AlCzervik]

5. are they having more rallies of late or are they reported more?

them and the neo-nazis--do they work together?

[marmar]

6. Let me guess...they're disappointed with the outcome of the Civil War...

Seems like the White Supremacist (translation: Inferiority Complex) groups have been very busy lately.

[struggle4progress]

23. Lookin to fly their Treason Flag again. eom

[onehandle]

8. Isn't it a bit early for the Republican Convention? nt

[rpannier]

11. Funny

I like it. It's witty, clever and short.

I was thinking (before I saw your post) that it's a meeting of the RSCC (Republican Senatoral Campaign Committee). They're getting geared up for November now.

[DoYouEverWonder]

12. I wonder if they'll have a ferris wheel?

[Arkham House]

9. I think I'm going to be sick...

...I once dug into my family tree--and no less than five of my ancestors fought at Antietam. One, from Massachusetts, was buried there. The thought of these human offal defiling this sacred ground by their damned rally--well, I have no words...

[TreasonousBastard]

10. Best thing we can do is ignore them...

just let them march alone. Maybe a few stray tourist kids asking "Mommy, why are those people dressed for Halloween?"

These assholes are looking for confrontation, and if 10,000 protestors show up, with the usual police barricades and press coverage, that's just what this 100 or so pantloads are looking for. They'll scurry back under their rocks and talk about how they are being persecuted and glory in the mess they made.

Leave the fuckers alone and let them slither back under their rocks like the losers they are. No coverage, no stories, no "glory" to go along with no brains.

[noonwitch]

20. I agree, the media gives them power by paying too much attention to them

Ignore them and let law enforcement deal with them.

[DemoTex]

13. Funny who has 1st Amendment rights and who doesn't.

A free speech zone is an area set aside for protesters, within which law enforcement supposedly will not interfere with them if they stay inside it, but may arrest or assail them if they venture out of it. It is often at a remote location from which the protesters need not be seen or heard by those attending the event being protested.

"When Bush travels around the United States, the Secret Service visits the location ahead of time and orders local police to set up 'free speech zones' or 'protest zones' where people opposed to Bush policies (and sometimes sign-carrying supporters) are quarantined. These zones routinely succeed in keeping protesters out of presidential sight and outside the view of media covering the event....When Bush came to the Pittsburgh area on Labor Day 2002, 65-year-old retired steel worker Bill Neel was there to greet him with a sign proclaiming, 'The Bush family must surely love the poor, they made so many of us.' The local police, at the Secret Service's behest, set up a 'designated free-speech zone' on a baseball field surrounded by a chain-link fence a third of a mile from the location of Bush's speech. The police cleared the path of the motorcade of all critical signs, though folks with pro-Bush signs were permitted to line the president's path. Neel refused to go to the designated area and was arrested for disorderly conduct; the police also confiscated his sign. Neel later commented, 'As far as I'm concerned, the whole country is a free speech zone. If the Bush administration has its way, anyone who criticizes them will be out of sight and out of mind.'"


"...Brett Bursey, of South Carolina, attended a speech given by the president at the Columbia Metropolitan Airport. He was standing among thousands of other citizens. Bursey held up a sign stating: 'No more war for oil.' ...Bursey did not pose a threat to the president, nor was he located in an area restricted to official personnel. Bursey wasn't blocking a corridor the Secret Service needed to keep clear for security reasons. He was standing among citizens who were enthusiastically greeting Bush. Bursey, however, was the only one holding an anti-Bush sign....He was ordered to put down his sign or move to a designated protest site more than half a mile away, outside the sight and hearing of the president. Bursey refused. He was then arrested and charged with trespassing by the South Carolina police....However, those charges were dropped. Understandably, courts across the nation have upheld the right to protest on public property....Instead, Bursey was indicted by the federal government for violation of a federal law that allows the Secret Service to restrict access to areas visited by the president. Bursey faces up to six months in prison and a $5,000 fine."

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Free_speech_zone

I guess different free speech standards apply to the Ku Klux Klan and Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church protesters. I guess Antietam's bloody Cornfield and funerals of gays and US soldiers enjoy protected free speech, while national political conventions and Bu$h's Traveling Salvation Shows do not.

[saigon68]

14. You make a good point

I call it "The Golden Rule"

He who has the Gold and thus the power --- makes the Rule.

[alcibiades_mystery]

16. Why should anyone even pay attention to these irrelevant douchebags anymor

They are only successful racists because they mask the way racism operates today, making people think that if you're not the Klan, well then you're not a racist. Ignore them. They're irrelevant.

[SaveElmer]

17. The best reaction would be to ignore them...

They are trying to provoke a reaction.

[Frank Cannon]

18. Every time these idiots hold a rally, a half dozen KKK show up

and about four dozen media people, a couple dozen counterprotesters, and another couple dozen lookee-loos. This has gone on for at least 20 years, when I personally witnessed these people's ridiculous shenanigans here in Idaho.

It's LONG past time that these dumba$$es be treated as the marginal whackos that they are.

[kineneb]

19. I call it desecration

One of my ancestors had a "run-in" with the Klan. It resulted in his being hanged by them as a "horse thief". The relative was a physician, and probably helped the wrong person. No love lost here.


And Linclon's comments on a later battlefield...

The Gettysburg Address
Nov. 19, 1863

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.


It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

[GoddessOfGuinness]

21. June 10th also happens to be "Artillery Weekend" at Antietam

Artillery firing demonstrations will be held throughout Saturday and Sunday. Think they could fill a cannon with water balloons, appropriately aimed? :evilgrin:
http://www.nps.gov/anti/pphtml/eventdetail22922.html

[classysassy]

22. KKK

=Krazy kaucasian Klowns & the Krazy Kolored Klowns are on a mission from the devil to destroy America and the Konserative Krooked Klowns are their biggest supporters.WAKE UP AMERICA.