People. The Washington Monument is CLOSED. Quit posing with it!You know, last Sunday, I got out of the car to take this picture, and somehow it didn't occur to me until I got home that I should have walked around that thing just to be funny.
I'm such a rule-follower!
ADDED: I show this post to Meade and he says — quoting me from an old story about something I said to the cops in the 1980s — "You can't close the park, man." Or, no, wait. I didn't say that to the cops. Fallible memory! I said that after the cops told us a park that had no walls or gates was closed. We meekly got in the car and left, but I did my imitation of a hippie backtalking to a cop, in the safety of the car: "You can't close the park, man." I'm normally duly submissive in a cop situation.
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Most good people have historically been duly submissive. People who have something to lose are duly submissive. They count on that.
But nowadays we are rapidly approaching the point of not having anything to lose even when we're not hippies or goths, etc.
Althouse said:
"I'm such a rule-follower!"
I would hope so. Any government agency which would go out of its way to deliberately inconvenience and damage people for no reason except to score political points will have no compunction in arresting and prosecuting you if you resist. How long would you be able to function as a law professor if you got on the wrong side of the US government? Under Obama, our government is totally out of control.
I think Meade was just spotted buying a policeman's uniform.
I'm normally duly submissive in a cop situation.
The cops had me handcuffed one time, for an expired tag and a revoked driver's license, and I'm kicking my tag with my foot saying his computer was wrong, look at my tag! And my tag was new. His computer was wrong! That was my argument, anyway. Look at my tag!
So the cop, who was in training, was being graded by other cops. And they said, "What are you going to do?" And the poor rookie cop didn't know what the hell to do.
And both my dogs are in the car, so he's going to have to arrest me and I don't know what the hell he's going to do with my dogs. And I'm handcuffed and kicking my tag. "Look at my tag! Look at my tag!" And he had to admit that my tag and his computer did not say the same thing.
Yes, I manage to talk him into believing that his computer is wrong.
So he let me go with a warning. And then I found out later at the DMV that my license actually had been revoked in that state. Oops.
Anyway, so glad I had a nice rookie cop who hadn't yet developed cynicism. Which in my case I guess would have been warranted. I was really outraged though. Look at my tag! Totally convinced of my own innocence.
My other run-in with the cops, I had to say the alphabet backwards.
At the Wisconsin protests, I argued with a cop who directed me to go to the end of a line of protesters who were waiting to enter the Capitol. They'd only let a new one in when one came out.
But I wasn't a protester! The protesters were working with the police to control the crowds, and one protester even advised me, "The police are on our side!"
That irked me. I wasn't part of their game. I was a free citizen, and I just walked right in. Got away with it too.
I've never had a run-in with the police. And that's probably good, given my smart mouth.
Submission is not patriotic.
My wife and I did our parts...took our granddaughter and some of her playmates, and violated the Lincoln Birthplace. We hopped the fence and picked walnuts. We weren't the only ones doing it either.
We did it because fuck you obama.
Obama has thrown the NPS under the bus. "1st Amendment activities" only in D.C. and Philadelphia? Really?
They're all open now for "1st Amendment activities" as far as I'm concerned.
Get out to a National Park or Monument for the weekend and enjoy it. They can't stop you per their own politically motivated rule.
If you went inside a park to protest its closing that would be First Amendment? And if you recreated in a park as your means of protest would that be "street theatre" or "expressive protest" or whatever they said Occupy was doing? There's art that shows people sitting benches in public parks. So does that mean that if you reenacted being a tourist instead of being a tourist that reenactment would be art and therefore protected speech? And aren't the Park Rangers imitating TV Gestapo guys in Hogan's Heroes and Frank Burns in MASH? What if people said "oh come on, you're a Park Ranger in a silly hat, you look stupid? Take that cone and shove it."
What site is that? I was looking for a place in Wisconsin that was closed but couldn't find much in my brief search.
I want to seek out some laws to break and take some pics. I don't really want to take the shutdown laying down but it's hard to seek out something closed just to violate it's closure.
When entering a park is a crime only criminals can enjoy parks or something.
Those silly signs demand that one ignore them, just as a no nudity sign demands that one strip and stand beside it for a photo. Maybe a "Keep Out, Rabid Ranger" sign would work better.
I'm normally duly submissive in a cop situation.
Yeah.
You got to get over that.
What if hundreds or thousands of people went to the grounds of the Washington Monument or the WWII memorial or some other highly visible national monument....and just did a sit-in 1960s style?
Make the police carry off thousands of people who....just...want...to...sit...there...
The National Park Service is well on its way to becoming as hated as the TSA. Americans love our parks. The NPS, not so much.
Larry J,
It's worse that that. Beyond the NPS. When combined with the IRS story, the shutdown theater sends a message that the whole civil service system (which replaced spoils hiring) has met its limits. Obama, unlike Nixon, doesn't need to order the Federal minions to punish the people and those uppity Tea Party folks. The workforce now knows that the people are its enemy and acts autonomously.
Ipso facto, If the Tea Party wants smaller government, it deserves to be punished by government....
Was talking to my wife the other night, she a 30 year civilian Fed and retired Colonel. I made the analogy about how an Army (or Marine for Skyler) unit behaves when told there are no resources or replacements. It reacts, adapts and overcomes, attempting to complete the mission regardless.
Our Feds in the face of reduced funding? Punish the people...
That has got to hurt the Civil Service brand, long term...
Squirrel!
"I would hope so. Any government agency which would go out of its way to deliberately inconvenience and damage people for no reason except to score political points will have no compunction in arresting and prosecuting you if you resist."
-- How many people have been arrested for trespassing though? There've been armed guards locking people in their hotels, which is a kind of arrest, but I don't think anyone has actually been booked yet, have they? [This is not a defense of the NPS, but I'm very particular about being specific.]
I encountered one of those signs as I left a National Wildlife Sanctuary along the Minnesota River the other day. The bureaucrats who posted it hadn't bothered to place one at the trailhead where I started the ride, just near their building at the other end. The trail doesn't get a lot of use, contains no dangerous areas that would require helicopter rescue. After I made a snarky post on FB my dear uber-liberal sister commented that the purpose of the sign was a "ride at your own risk" disclaimer. I'm always riding at my own risk in there. Never once have I seen a Federal employee making the rounds. If I fell and called 911, county or city employees would respond. I was happy to be a scofflaw that day, and I'll ride there again if I can.
Speaking of the government being silly, Obama signed a bill the Republicans passed reinstating death benefits for troops killed in the line of duty/training/etc.
In short, that meme we'd been hearing about why we can't fund the government piecemeal has been shown to be the empty slop everyone on the right said it was.
Pass a bill to fund the parks, then start turning as much as we can back over to the states.
I think that Drill Sgt has a good point. You expect this sort of bad behavior from the IRS, but not really the NPS. They were always one of those inoculous agencies in the past where you figured that they were really understaffed and underfunded, because their funds had been diverted over time to various other worthless pursuits and expenditures that made more noise. But, then you discover that they are as politicized as the next agency, esp. in a hyper-politicized Administraiton as Obama's.
For a long time, the government has gotten away with a lot of things because we assumed that it had more to do with ineptitude than intent. Not any longer. Fast and Furious got things rolling this time around, but the IRS scandal is the one that made the problem crystal clear. The government is run for the benefit of the politicians and for those employed by it. And, since the Dems advocate bigger government, and more pay and better benefits for government employees, and they tend to believe that government is a solution to many/most problems, most non-defense government employes are Democrats. Supposedly, disiterested in politics though. But, Obama gave the green light, and maybe even encouraged them to apply their politics to their jobs, and the rest of us poor blokes have been the ones to suffer.
I don't think that anyone should be surprised that the Tea Party is having a big resurgence right now. Those on the left are constantly complaining that the Republicans in Congress have sold out to the Tea Party, but they aren't hearing (or are ignoring) the intense pressure being placed on these Republicans by their constituents right now. Think about caving to the Dems and the MSM here? The threat is real, and becoming ever more real, that this will be the last time that they are in DC, that this is their last term of office, if they do. What the Dems (including the MSM) have to remember is that they rarely lose primaries. That just doesn't happen in Dem circles unless they are substantially more corrupt than the average Dem politician. Political offices are theirs to lose Just part of the system, where political office is a personal asset. Being primaried is a real threat to Republicans though. And, there is going to be a lot more of this come 2014.
Something is going to break - either the will of the American people, or the stranglehold that progressive politics, government, and policy have over the American people. Try buying ammo right now. At least here in NW Montana and nearby N Idaho and NE Washington, finding it is near impossible. Everyone is armed, and everyone is buying whatever they can get their hands on, for the firearms they, or their friends and family, have. So, the shelves are mostly bare, whenever you check the supply or look to buy, and every merchant seems to have set pretty low limits on what you can buy at any time. (Of course, the federal government continues to stock up too, as more and more of their people are armed, and esp. armed with automatic weapons, generallly illegal to the general populace). The pressure is building, and something is going to happen. We can just hope that it isnt as bad as it could be.
Apologize for the double posting. Pretty sure it was Blogger this time, since it required me to resign on.
you can delete one, Bruce
"I don't think that anyone should be surprised that the Tea Party is having a big resurgence right now."
-- The IRS story is really what did it for me, at least. If you recall, I've always been center right, but I've never really been combative. But, the IRS story hit where it hurt, because I was always one of the few on the right that said the IRS has a tough job, but someone's got to do it.
Then I learned that the problem isn't bad direction from Congress, it was systemic. Then, you just start seeing it everywhere. In the regulations that get enforced in some places, but not others. In the raids on Gibson but not others; in the closing of more right-leaning car factories than left, etc., etc.
Even if there ISN'T political motivation [which I believe is true at least in the car store closings], the appearance of impropriety is there. Which makes it hard to argue persuasively that the government ISN'T out to silence people.
I'm in VA, and I'm not a fan of Cuccinelli or MacAulliffe, so much so that I'm too lazy to Google their names and fix that. But, I may begrudgingly vote for Cuccinelli solely because I have been taught that you just can't trust team blue with the reins of power till they drain their swamp.
Are the tourists insane? I don't think so. This is a political protest, growing as the government acts ever more irrationally, irresponsibly, and with increasingly ill intent, to make the government shutdown hurt the American people. Fine for illegals to have access to one of the places in this country most central to protest, but not for anyone else who doesn't further the Obama Administration goals.
And, by now, that is really what is going on - people protesting the high handed, arbitrary, and retaliatory way that the federal government, and the Obama Administration, have handled the shutdown. Nothing insane about it.
Drill Sgt - thanks. Forgot that you could delete posts here. Used to some other blogging engines that don't let you either change or delete your posts.
Politeness and humor with the Police go a long way. I had a cop neighbor, a real jerk. He called his buddies to come terrorize my six year old for throwing an egg at his eight year old son who had been harassing her. I tried to politely talk to the neighbor about it and apologize, but he was on the phone with his station and ignored me.
Imagine my shock when I hear police cars headed for my neighborhood running red light and siren. Two of them!
I made my daughter go in the house, she was hysterical at that point. Her dad was in Iraq and she was writing farewell notes because she was convinced she was going to jail.
I waited in the driveway. The two cars first stopped at the cops house, presumably to go over the game plan. When they walked down to my house I greeted them with a hand shake and a smile. I didn't talk trash. I didn't say anything about the cops kid following my daughter into our garage where the egg incident took place. I simply laughed and said the hardened criminal was packing for the big house. They said, well keep your kid in your yard. I smiled, looked at the egg that was clearly on my property and said, sure thing.
They slithered off probably disappointed I didn't get shrill and argue with them.
The NPS’s only real goal and charge is to protect the park resources for future generations and to protect park visitors. Cross over if you want - no one’s really stopping you - you’re special and you’re mad at Obama – or something, dammit!
Kelly. You're right. But sometimes when they're clearly in the wrong and I'm not in the mood for their holier than thou attitude-you know who you are- I've gotten right up in their grill.
That being aid. By far most of the police officers I've had experience with have been friendly, polite , and helpful.
The notice -- like a "no trespassing" sign -- doesn't stop you from entering, but it does put you on notice. It doesn't explain what the consequences are, however.
I don't see people getting arrested if they pass these signs, and to arrest the people who are protesting by crossing would be selective enforcement targeting the speech.
Unless the govt wants to go after everyone who decides to cross the line because they just feel it's probably okay, they can't start arresting the people who cross for the people of dancing around and singing "La la la, the govt didn't stop me. I got through. I am special!!!"
Cop-out
"open for first amendment purposes" under current law and supreme court decisions means open for strippers but not unapproved campaigning.
The longer this thing drags out the more apparent it becomes that so much of the government is useless and expensive and spiteful. Although not by design the "shutdown" is becoming a great lesson in civics and the need to limit government.
"The notice -- like a "no trespassing" sign -- doesn't stop you from entering, but it does put you on notice. It doesn't explain what the consequences are, however."
A good no trespassing sign is written by hand and an especially effective one is written by the hand you normally do not write with thus rendering the sign the obvious work of a crazy and dangerous person.
But you are truly crazy if you obey your own "No Trespassing" signs, if you stay out of your own property. As I recall, these parks belong to the people. I have been walking around one of these signs to take a run the last week and I would tear down the sign if I thought there wasn't a camera hoping to catch me doing just that. The rangers are too lazy to come after me running.
We meekly got in the car and left, but I did my imitation of a hippie backtalking to a cop, in the safety of the car
L'esprit de l'escalier
I trespassed into a closed national park once as a teenager and got caught. The fine was fifty dollars.
Fifty dollar fine and no arrest, I should specify. It was a group of us in a car on a ranger service road in the middle of the night. The middle of the night seemed like a great time to find out what was down the ranger service road, but it wasn't.
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