{"id":78,"date":"2006-04-20T08:18:48","date_gmt":"2006-04-20T15:18:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=78"},"modified":"2007-07-08T14:28:27","modified_gmt":"2007-07-08T21:28:27","slug":"apologies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=78","title":{"rendered":"Apologies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/today.reuters.com\/news\/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&amp;storyid=2006-04-20T210853Z_01_N20177177_RTRUKOC_0_US-CHINA-USA-PROTESTS.xml\">China heckler at White House prompts Bush apology<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Okay, someone managed to get into the press stands and shout at Chinese President Hu Jintao. Isn&#8217;t this normal behavior in the United States of America? Isn&#8217;t this, in fact, constitutionally protected behavior? Maybe not:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Secret Service charged Wang with disorderly conduct under local statutes. The U.S. Attorney&#8217;s office was weighing federal charges of &#8220;willing intimidation or disruption of a foreign official,&#8221; said Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Oh, and get this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A U.S. official said Hu&#8217;s team was probably offended by the incident. &#8220;The hardliners on Hu&#8217;s team are going to ask, why did it take so long for us to pick her up. It is not a good thing,&#8221; he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Uh, when did &#8220;U.S. officials&#8221; start worrying about the sensitivities of communist hardliners?<\/p>\n<p>As for Bush&#8217;s apology to Hu, I&#8217;m embarrassed but not at all surprised &#8211; Smirky&#8217;s been protected from hecklers and protestors for so long now, he&#8217;s probably forgotten that we&#8217;re allowed to heckle and protest!<\/p>\n<p>Or did they slip something into the Patriot Act when we weren&#8217;t looking?\u00a0 Oh, right . . . they <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2005\/12\/12\/AR2005121201448.html\">did<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>China heckler at White House prompts Bush apology. Okay, someone managed to get into the press stands and shout at Chinese President Hu Jintao. Isn&#8217;t this normal behavior in the United States of America? Isn&#8217;t this, in fact, constitutionally protected behavior? Maybe not: The Secret Service charged Wang with disorderly conduct under local statutes. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}