Bob: Right, in fact, this sort of thing is not allowed and is stopped in its tracks at public hearings that have been previously inoculated by this sort of crap. You start off not bothering with the distrust of those who show up because you don’t need to distrust them. Then, a bunch of yahoos show up and from then on you’ve got to make rules.

Don’t get me wrong, I am completely in agreement with your sympathies, but when you exaggerate your claims and reflexively and lazily call me a liar (instead of doing some critical thinking and a modicum of research) when I am simply trying to add to the discussion you lose a lot of credibility.

Futhermore, in case you were trying to suggest this, inappropriate use of the public forum by one group does not justify it for another group, AND, for the cases you claim, the Unions may have been actual stakeholders, but people bussed into a district “town hall” meeting are not. They are lying liars telling lies.

Seriously though, set some simple ground rules (no signs, no slogan shirts, people line up at a microphone to ask questions, questions limited to a minute, moderated, etc.) Basic guidelines for a civil Q&A with the stated intent of making sure all voices get heard, not just the loud ones. Oh, and disruptive people will be ejected, possibly arrested. The “no sign, no slogan shirt” part should keep most of the overt bozos out in the parking lot. There shouldn’t be any First Amendment issues with this, otherwise be mostly reasonable, and let the courts settle the fringe cases.

The crazies will have none of this, of course (being crazy, entitled, and whipped to a spittle-flecked frenzy by the talk radio blowhards.) So eject them, politely at first, dragging their sorry asses out like dirty fucking hippies if necessary. And it will be necessary. Let them cool their heels in jail for a weekend and let them play martyr. And keep doing it.

And make sure the local media is there to pick it up. O’Reilly, etc. would make this shit up or blow it all out of proportion and trumpet it anyways, so you might as well really toss the low-level protesters in the can. It gives them an arrest record and a taste of the criminal justice system, and might well inject a bit of reality back into their Limbaugh fantasy worlds. See, the real activists, left or right, will take this in stride; they expect to be arrested, in some cases they want that as an outcome. 99% of the birther loonies don’t realize that actions have consequences simply because there have been no consequences for being one brickbat shy of a rioting mob. A night in jail will break the will of most of these cretins.

If this was a peaceful protest, a march, a rally, a sit-in, 12 nuts with a box of teabags and a bullhorn from Harbor Freight, it’d be a different situation. But these people are disrupting a public event, so up the ante, set some rules, politely draw a line in the sand and enforce it. You don’t need truncheons and tear gas (make sure the cops get the memo; they seem to love that shit especially where DFHs are involved and nobody’s looking.) There’s no point in cracking heads; all that’d do is rearrange the rubble.

My 8 years at the University of Wisconsin in the mid-80s solidified my hatred of disruptive mobs; my views on peaceful protest have softened considerably having left that cloistered, radicalized environment for the real world. The loonies can say what they want but they don’t get to shout down the opposition or disrupt the conversation.

So let them speak, in turn, civilly, just like everyone else. Strip away the safety of the mob. If they can’t control themselves as individuals, toss them in the pokey for a weekend and let them see how far that gets them in life.

I don’t particularly accept that there is some arbitrary line when shoving your way into a town hall you don’t belong it and screaming at people who are presenting ideas or asking questions to make them sit down and shut up, and so on, is “technically violent.” There is no sense in waiting for this to happen.

There is almost no line between what we see here and Westboro Baptist church. There is very little difference between Westboro and any of a half a dozen very significantly violent acts carried out by Republicans and Libertarians over the last half-year, including murder. This is just more of the same: An organized Republican circus, whipping ignorant people up into a frenzy some of them will not be able to come back from.