MOsanthrope

Posted by Chris on January 31, 2006 at 11:42 pm.

In his State of the Union address, the President spoke of freedom. It was a recurring theme*.

Shortly before his speech, Cindy Sheehan, a guest of Representative Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), was handcuffed and escorted from the gallery because Capitol Police didn’t like her T-shirt.

Sheehan… was charged with demonstrating in the Capitol building, said Capitol Police Sgt. Kimberly Schneider. The charge was later changed to unlawful conduct, Schneider said. Both charges are misdemeanors.

Schneider said Sheehan had worn a T-shirt with an antiwar slogan to the speech and covered it up until she took her seat. Police warned her that such displays were not allowed, but she did not respond, the spokeswoman said.

The T-shirt bore the words “2,245 Dead — How Many More??” in reference to the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq, protesters told NBC News.

Thank God we live in a country in which we’re free to petition our government for redress in a controlled manner and in certain well-defined circumstances.

At this point, non-geeks should exit the auditorium. You’ll find refreshments in the lobby.

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*I think this should work, but it doesn’t:

awk '
{
while ((c = sub(/(^|[^[:alpha:]])free([^[:alpha:]]|$)/,"_x_")) > 0)
count += c;
}
END { print count }
' /home/chris/Documents/sotu.txt


Why?

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Filed under: Politics, U.S.