Texas Lieutenant Governor Dewhurst, a politician seeking to persuade conservatives that he wants to ban abortion after losing to conservative leader Ted Cruz, tells Michelle Malkin’s Web site that in the aftermath of the state senate gallery disruption that helped stop the recent abortion ban, he thinks journalists may have acted to incite what he calls a “riot”.
By what standard do we measure whether gallery expressions of free speech, which I think are part of the proper purpose of a legislative gallery in a free republic, constitute a riot?
Dewhurst goes further, however, in pledging to review senate security videotape to identify such individuals and that, on those grounds, he pledges to “take action against them.” So, in other words, he’s saying he’s going to arrest journalists for inciting a “riot” in the state senate. Promising Malkin’s Web site that he will bring a ban on abortion to the senate again, he also threatens to clear “the gallery with our state police.” (I wrote about an American heroine in the Texas anti-abortion craze when I posted about Wendy Davis).
If this Texas moderate, who reminds me of another lowly, no-good Texas politician who moderated his political position to snuggle up to conservatives for political gain – George H.W. Bush – cracks down on the press (are members of the media prohibited from expressing themselves when they accept a government pass?) we may have to dub the Lone Star state the Red Star state.