Thou Dost Protest Too Much

[Pale_Rider]

An old law turns protesters into threats against the president.
http://www.slate.com/Default.aspx?id=2107012

Depending on where you stand, Brett Bursey is either the world's greatest protester or a giant, unmitigated pain. He's been a thorn in the side of Columbia, S.C., authorities since 1969—when he got two years in prison for spray-painting "HELL NO, WE WON'T GO" on the wall of his draft board office. Except for a stretch in the early 1970s spent hiding in the mountains of northern Georgia, Bursey's been a fixture of Lexington County, protesting everything protestable since Nixon and Vietnam.

So, you'd be excused for thinking that Bursey's recent federal conviction stemming from his protest of a 2002 visit by President Bush—a conviction upheld last Wednesday—is his own, special problem. But it comes at a time when hundreds of protesters are being rounded up at presidential visits all over the country, making Bursey the 56-year-old canary in a demonstrators' coal mine.

Hmmm ... I doubt many people know about this Secret Service law which makes it illegal to (1)willfully and knowingly to enter or remain in ... (ii) any posted, cordoned off, or otherwise restricted area of a building or grounds where the President or other person protected by the Secret Service is or will be temporarily visiting,
in violation of the regulations governing ingress or egress thereto:
(2)with intent to impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions, to engage in disorderly or disruptive conduct in, or within such proximity to, any building or grounds designated in paragraph (1) when, or so that, such conduct, in fact, impedes or disrupts the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions;

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1752.html

Sounds like a possible first amendment case to me ...

[lazarus]

1. Got Him!

Notice that this law only applies to "Government business or official functions."

Since when is a campaign stop "Government business or official functions"? Isn't combining the two technically a violation of election law?

A felony?

[Pale_Rider]

2. Probably so ...

... but first we need a test case.

:kick:

[TahitiNut]

3. If the conduct of the protester is ...

.... no more "disorderly or disruptive" than the other attendees, with the exception of those attendees who use violence against the protestor, then the political content of the conduct cannot be the determinant. That would be an infringment on civil liberties.