2 admins. 2 arrests. What would Johnny Cash have said?

[bos1]

Johnny Cash had a song, "Starkville City Jail", about the time he got arrested for picking flowers. In its humble way, it's a protest song about the over-policing of the USA, about how easy it is to get arrested for doing next to nothing.

Two arrests are in the news this week that might have made Johnny Cash write a new song. One case is the taking of Harvard professor at his home for disturbing the peace, and the other is the arrest of the Lackawanna Six in 2002.

The former became a sensation when President Obama said the police acted "stupidly".

The Lackawanna Six case is in the news due to revelations that former vice president Cheney wanted to send the military into Buffalo, New York, to have the men arrested. He wanted it done not by the police, but by the military. That would have violated the Posse Comitatus Act, the rather central democratic mainstay that keeps the military out of law enforcement, but Bush advisors were claiming the executive branch had this new authority due to the War on Terror. What is not new about the case is that the Bush administration held daily briefings with the FBI on the supposed terrorist cell and ordered the arrest with convenient timing for publicity purposes, the anniversary of 9/11.

So in the current arrest mini-scandal, we have a president sticking up for the rights of a citizen in a case of the police abusing their power.

In the Bush case, it's the president and his cabinet themselves who are abusing their power, micro-managing the arrest of people who possibly never would have been charged otherwise (the men, who attended training camps at a young age in the Middle East when they were visiting relatives, all had faked sick in order to leave the camps when they learned how anti-America the training was.) With Bush, the debate was how far would they go in violating our rights. In their planning of arrests on US soil for War on Terror propaganda, would they call out the military to arrest people for the first time since the civil war, or would they just use regular law enforcement?

Whereas in the Obama White House, the president is taking a politically risky stand, one I would call brave and principled, speaking out against the railroading and overzealous police action that all too many of us are familiar with.

Johnny Cash sang that police are "bound to get you." Now we have a president who shows he might know a little about what Cash was singing about.

[rocktivity]

1. Well, we know what someone from Cash's estate said to Rachel Maddow

when she used "Johnny Cash" as a caption for her story about John Ensign's payout to his mistress. She said they complained, and she apologized on-air!

:headbang:
rocktivity

[bos1]

3. good for Rachel. She didn't have to apologize. class act. n.t

[3waygeek]

2. Here's what he would have said...

[bos1]

5. he's a hero, no doubt

[TexasObserver]

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