Disrupting Congress: All fun and games when liberals do it
The reaction to the mob of demonstrators storming the Capitol two weeks ago provoked a hysterical and heavy-handed response from the political elites. Federal agents went on a nationwide manhunt and quickly arrested over a hundred demonstrators. Since actual violence was minimal, most were charged with "trespassing" and "disrupting an official proceeding" — even people who innocently wandered in with the rest of the crowd.
(Of particular concern is the way the feds are treating Jacob Chansley, the hilarious Buffalo-horned, face-painted "shaman." Chansley is being held without bond and faces a possible 25 years in prison for acting and looking not very different from tens of thousands of NFL fans on any Sunday afternoon in a normal, pre-COVID season.)
You'd never guess from the over-the-top reaction to the Jan. 6 event that disruptions of official congressional business, while not a daily occurrence, aren't exactly uncommon, either. But when the left is responsible — which is almost always — the reaction is one of good humor.
Here's a brief video of the leftist anti-war group Code Pink disrupting a Senate committee hearing chaired by the late Sen. Robert Byrd in 2007:
You'll note that MSNBC host Chris Matthews has a good laugh. It's all fun and games when liberals do it.
Here's a Los Angeles Times article covering the event.
It seems that Byrd was somewhat sympathetic to the Code Pink shenanigans until they got out of hand. But Byrd wasn't charged with "incitement to insurrection," as President Trump was. The Times article does not mention any arrests, so we presume that no Code Pink activists were arrested for the incident. If they were, this writer is not on notice that any of them were held without bail or faced 25 years for their antics.
As Lenin famously observed, everything is a question of "Who, whom?"
Image via Pxhere.