I am glad they said sorry, they arrested her because she protested the president.
Apology for T-shirt fray
BY MICHAEL McAULIFF
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON – Red-faced Capitol Police had to apologize yesterday for whipping up a tempest in a T-shirt.
Police said they were sorry for booting “peace mom” Cindy Sheehan and a GOP congressman’s wife from the President’s State of the Union speech Tuesday night – all because they wore slogans about the war on their shirts.
Sheehan, whose soldier son died in Iraq, was hauled from her seat in the House gallery, handcuffed and arrested after an officer spotted her shirt with the message “2,245 Dead. How many more?”
Police are dropping an unlawful conduct charge against her.
Another cop ordered Beverly Young, the wife of Florida Rep. Bill Young, to leave because her shirt said, “Support the Troops – Defending Our Freedom.”
“The officers made a good-faith but mistaken effort to enforce an old, unwritten interpretation of the prohibitions about demonstrating in the Capitol,” said Chief Terrance Gainer.
Young said she argued with the cop who kicked her out. “I said, ‘Read my shirt, it is not a protest,'” she told the St. Petersburg Times. “They said, ‘We consider that a protest.’ I said, ‘Then you are an idiot.'”
Apparently, she had a point.
Police did not explain why Sheehan was arrested and Young was not. Sheehan, who became an icon of the anti-war movement when she protested outside President Bush’s Texas ranch last summer, has threatened to sue.