Monday, October 18, 2010

A Republican police state? Believe it! Republican Joe Miller “privately” busts a blogger for “trespassing” at an open public gathering.

The photograph from the Anchorage Daily News shows some goons with military haircuts – they’re private security cops – standing over the handcuffed editor of an Alaskan blog called the Alaska Dispatch.

The editor is Tony Hopfinger. According to the Anchorage Daily News, Hopfinger had showed up at a rally that had been advertised by the campaign for Republican senatorial candidate Joe Miller, urging people to bring “friends, colleagues, family, acquaintances and neighbors.” The rally was held on public property, a school.

But Hopfinger evidently didn’t like the questions he was getting asked about his politics, his honesty and his private life. When Hopfinger walked after him asking questions and pointing a video camera to get Miller’s responses, he was grabbed by the private security goons, "arrested," handcuffed, and his recording was erased.

Reporters who tried to film, photograph or interview Hopfinger were also threatened with arrest by Miller’s thugs. When the Anchorage police finally arrived, they ordered the Miller people to release Hopfinger.

Now Miller’s blog is smearing Hopfinger, claiming that he “lost it” at the rally.

What if Republicans like Miller get elected? Seems like you can count on getting arrested and publicly smeared if anything you say or believe doesn’t agree with them.

There goes your freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Here come Republican-run political prisons.

Be sure to check out the whole story in the Anchorage Daily News here:

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