GOP Leads the Way in Criminalizing Opposition to Its Rightwing Schemes

After Scott Walker "dropped the bomb" on Wisconsin citizens, a stark image from February is of a Wisconsin legislator [Nick Milroy (D-South Grange)] being tackled to the ground for trying to get to his office as Walker closed down the capitol.

Republicans are so hostile to the idea of a democratic republic that a judge had to order the Wisconsin capitol open to the public in early March.

Other examples of GOP hostility to democracy abound today.

• U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s office threatened constituents with arrest and investigation.
• Two other GOP Congressmen put Constituents who asked tough questions on a ‘Watch List.’
• In another instance, [a] memo [from Rep. Tim Griffin (R-Arkansas)] suggests that members of the media question the military service of a 66-year-old Vietnam veteran named Ron Parsell. Parsell told the Orlando Sentinel, 'I think it’s pretty weird. Someone asks a legitimate question, and all of a sudden somebody’s got a dossier on you.' Parsell added, 'It’s the type of thing they’d do in old Russia.'
• In an unrelated incident, Ohio Republican Congressman Steve Chabot had police seize a citizen’s camera after he tried to record one of Chabot’s answers at a tax payer-financed town hall meeting. At the end of the meeting, the police confiscated two video cameras.
• Other GOP members of Congress are refusing to hold free, open town hall meetings for constituents during the August recess and instead appearing only at paid events.

We expect the GOP to run away from angry constituents.

We expect the GOP to block the civil rights of our fellow citizens. But to target and actually criminalize opposition to the GOP agenda is dangerous and repulsive, though the silence is deafening.