Chinese protester charged with Federal offense: "threatening a foreign official"

By Aussiegirl

President Bush yesterday urged Chinese President Hu Jintao to allow his people "the freedom to assemble, to speak freely and to worship."

CNN just reported that the Chinese journalist who shouted at the Chinese president at yesterday's Rose Garden ceremonies has been charged with a
serious federal crime -- "threatening a foreign official".

I can't even begin to express my outrage and disgust with this action, taken by a president in what seems to be a fit of pique and designed to kowtow to the Chinese despot with blood on his hands. And it is intended to show him what precisely? That here in America we too have the power to imprison and punish dissidents who dare to speak the truth?

In my book, Bush has just consigned himself to the trash heap of history. He is a president who started out strong in reaction to 9/11, got himself mired in a failed and mishandled war in Iraq that will have continued negative repercussions in the region (a resurgent and wider influence of radical Shia Iran). A president who went on to distinguish himself by tearing down the borders of this country and doing nothing domestically with his resounding second-term victory, and who talks a big and soppy game of "democracy, freedom and liberty" -- to the teary images of purple fingers raised, while at the same time he smashes down liberty and freedom of speech in our own homeland.

I thought Harriet Miers was the last straw -- I thought the Dubai Ports deal was the last straw -- I thought the open borders and the amnesty for illegals was the last straw -- but this has really done it for me.

For shame!!!! According to CNN, this woman has not even been allowed to see her lawyer, and has been unable to talk with her employers, the Epoch Times, according to a spokesman last night on the John Batchelor Show.

If Reagan had been there, he would have nodded his head in that inimitable way, smiled and turned to President Hu with the words --"Welcome to America!" -- That would have both diffused the awkwardnessof the moment (although, God forbid a tyrant should be made to feel awkward or embarrassed in public to have the crimes of his regime exposed) -- but it would have diffused any awkwardness and at the same
time delivered an unmistakeable message -- in America people are free to speak their minds, even when it embarrasses or disrupts or causes discomfort.

This woman had a valid press pass. She did not break into that ceremony illegally. She in no way "threatened" that evil little despot, the Chairman of the Communist Party of China -- and the elected president of NO country -- she merely spoke the inconvenient truth.

As one commenter said today on the Lucianne.com site -- imagine if Ann Frank had managed to get to America and had shouted out at a German leader to stop killing the Jews in the camps -- would FDR have had her arrested and charged with a federal offense? What if Solzhenitsyn or Sakharov or any of the Russians imprisoned in the gulag had managed to get over here and do the same against Gorbachev or Brezhnev -- would we have imprisoned them too?

All Bush has done is to succeed in making this story even more embarrassing than it was for his administration -- perhaps they should charge her also with the crime of whatever idiot told the announcer to use the incorrect term for introducing the Chinese anthem -- instead of saying "The Anthem of the People's Republic of China" he called it The Republic of China" -- the term used by a democratic and (so far free Taiwan.

It looks as though we can't afford to have China stop sending us its cheap goods or to call in our debt.

Off with her head!! Throw her in jail! On with the global trade! Long live tyrants and their money!!

For shame!! For shame!!!!