Freedom of speech? The right to freely assemble? The 1st Amendment is obviously overrated.

This is old news, but I have to write about it anyway.

In April of 2003, the Oakland Police Dpt. broke up an anti-war protest at the city's port, using quite a bit of force (37-mm shells filled with rubber and wood, tear gas and stinger grenades). Just 5 days earlier, the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center (CATIC) sent the Oakland PD a bulleting telling them to expect trouble at the rally, warning the police that the protesters may be armed with Molotov cocktails. CATIC spokesman Mike Van Winkle told reporters that they didn't need direct evidence of terrorist activity to justify the bulletin. "You can make an easy kind of link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that event. You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act".

What the fuck? It gets better. The California Office of Homeland Security paid the Oakland PD $424,243 "for reimbursement of overtime costs incurred during the hostilities with Iraq"!! Beating up people protesting the war is the same as fighting terrorists and Iraq? This shit is just crazy. I don't know what to say.