Muzzled for liking tea?

This is a fairly disturbing piece, and it made me think of another local blogger to boot. It comes from my blogging friend Bob McCarty, who tells the tale of a tea party organizer in Quincy, Illinois being denied the right to speak at a Quincy City Council meeting. I presume the passage on his blog is missing a word, since the key sentence reads:

"In a 7-6 vote down party lines, members of the Quincy City Council voted to (deny) him his right to speak, despite the fact that  he had taken all of the proper steps required of a citizen to appear on the council’s agenda."

I think my slightly edited version is correct. The other possible error is in the chart McCarty uses, the party affiliations are either reversed or incorrect since both he and Steve McQueen (the organizer) say that the 6 Republicans voted in his favor yet the chart shows a 7-6 GOP majority.

In either case, the question is whether these tactics are going to spread to other jurisdictions, particularly ones where Republicans do not have a majority such as Salisbury City Council. I worry less about the Wicomico County Council since as currently composed it's 4-3 GOP and the three Democrats generally seem amenable to honest debate.

We all know that there are local bloggers who swarm like flies to these meetings, particularly those involving the Salisbury City Council. Certainly I'm sure that many would love to see such a rule applied to one in particular because his camera is ever-present.

This brings up an interesting legal question. Let's not look at this particular person as the press representative he purports to be and instead see him as a private citizen. Do free speech rights cover photography, a form which isn't in words but does express thoughts and ideas, along with the possibility of finding a subject in an unflattering pose?

Or, to use another example, would the Tea Party organizers need to undergo this treatment if they wanted to express their disgust with our government's free-spending ways? Here in Maryland, aside from a protest in front of Government House for Governor O'Malley's edification, there's not the opportunity for influencing the wheels of state government since the Maryland General Assembly isn't in session again for another 8 months.

To be perfectly frank, I'm not completely convinced that our current Administration will continue to have a hands-off approach to internet writers like myself. Perhaps I'm a little bit too small-time to pay attention to, but what could happen to larger investor-owned sites like Red County if government leans on them as they apparently are making an impression on Chrysler bondholders?

Seeing this example in Illinois should remind us that government does not always attempt to be of, by, and for the people but rather dictated to the people, who simply exist to be worker bees for maintaining their hives. If you extend the analogy to what the producers of society pay for taxes (hint: theirs aren't going down) you can see why many of us won't go quietly.