Reply #43: I was trying not to say it ... so hard ... but I agree.

[Maat]

I read the rightwing websites, and they are deliberately exaggerating this and blowing it up, in order to make it their cause celebre. I have read their sites faithfully for over a year. During the last few months, it seems to me as if they are setting up incidents, so that they can make legal challenges to certain separation-of-church-and-state and obstructionist barriers.

I went to the Michael Moore gathering in San Marcos, at the Del Mar racetrack. The oppo was allowed to protest on the sidewalk as we drove into the parking lot. The police were right there, and they were not permitted to harass individual cars, and the police were strict about this. They were permitted a protest/free-speech area as we walked into view the presentation, but they were not allowed to physically accost us ('course I would have loved it if they had tried).

Contrast this with the account you read about this incident. They were not 'praying quietly,' but, unlike the MM lecture I attended, were interfering with people entering the event area.

Not that I think they should get decades in prison. These guys were so obnoxious - it is just my fantasy that they would.