How convenient...
Another reminder that some are more equal than others.
http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2000/6/28/104208
The Secret Service has arrested unarmed protesters who spoke harshly to President Clinton and shoved reporters out of the way when they wanted to question his wife, Hillary.
But when a group of Black Panthers carrying AK-47s, shotguns and other rifles marched on the site where Texas first lady Laura Bush was about to speak earlier this month, the Secret Service took no action, the agency confirmed on Tuesday.
"We were aware of the situation and we were monitoring it, but Mrs. Bush was never in any danger," a Secret Service spokesperson told NewsMax.com on Tuesday.
At noon on June 16, 15 members of the New Black Panther Party led by Minister Quanell X emerged from a converted military vehicle to protest the impending execution of convicted killer Gary Graham. The armed group clad in black fatigues marched on the George R. Brown Convention Center in the heart of downtown Houston, where the wife of presdential candidate George W. Bush was scheduled to address the state GOP convention the very next hour.
Like President Clinton, Vice President Gore and their families, the Bushes are under round-the-clock Secret Service guard, a protection that will continue for the duration of the presidential campaign.
When asked about the gun-toting Panther protest, a Secret Service spokesman explained, "To our understanding there was no violation of the law."
Indeed, it is legal to carry assault rifles in Texas as long as strict licensing regulations and other restrictions are complied with. The guns cannot be "brandished" in a threatening manner and must not be aimed at anyone in particular.
But Houston police did not confront the Panthers to check for registrations or inspect the weapons for possible illegal modifications. Neither were background checks for possible felony arrest records performed. Texas law prohibits felons from carrying guns.
The Secret Service would not say whether they scrutinized the group for possible weapons violations, but media reports from the scene indicate there were no attempts by any law enforcement agency to question the armed demonstrators.
The agency spokesman also refused to say whether the Secret Service knew in advance that the Black Panthers had planned to march on the convention. Houston Police Department spokesman Robert Hurst told NewsMax.com last week that local law enforcement was aware of the Panthers' plans.
Police did arrest Panther Frederick Robinson, who was unarmed, after a GOP delegate complained Robinson had assaulted him at the scene. An HPD background check turned up two recent felony narcotics convictions on Robinson's record.
In the past the Secret Service hasn't waited for actual lawbreaking to occur before acting, even in situations that pose little or no threat to the first family and others under their protection.
In July 1996, agents arrested Glenn and Patricia Mendoza for threatening President Clinton at the "Taste of Chicago" food fair, though the couple were not armed and neither made any overt threats.
However, after Clinton approached Patricia to shake her hand, she responded, "You suck and those boys died," a reference to the then-recent deaths of 19 American soldiers in the Khobar Towers bombing. Agents at the scene characterized Mendoza's words as "threatening."
Both Mendozas spent the night in the Cook County Jail, after being arrested on suspicion of threatening the life of the president. Weeks later, lacking evidence, the Secret Service dropped all charges.
The Mendozas are hardly alone. In 1993 the Secret Service arrested William Kelly - also unarmed - who merely challenged Clinton at a town meeting about his failure to deliver on a promised middle-class tax cut. Not only was Kelly booted out of the meeting, hours later his home was surrounded by armed agents who took him into custody.
In 1996 a pro-life activist who confronted Clinton after a Washington, D.C., church service was detained and questioned by the Secret Service.
The Secret Service has been extraordinarily protective of Mrs. Clinton, who, according to New York Post Albany bureau chief Fred Dicker, is shielded from tough questioning, by bodyguards who physically block reporters, even as she campaigns for the U.S. Senate.
After this year's St. Patrick's Day parade, Metro Network News reporter Glenn Shuck told a New York radio audience that he and six other reporters were assaulted by agents guarding the first lady. (See: Hillary's Secret Service Agents Rough Up Reporters as St. Pat's Day Crowd Boos.)
Even in cases where the perceived danger to Secret Service protectees is not immediate or the result of a face-to-face encounter, the agency routinely springs into action.
When Senator Jesse Helms jokingly told a North Carolina newspaper in 1994 that President Clinton was so unpopular there he'd need bodyguards if he visited the state, the Secret Service launched an investigation.
In 1988, when listeners complained that WABC talk radio host Lynn Samuels had made an on-air threat to then-Vice President Dan Quayle, the Secret Service visited the studio and questioned her. Both Helms and Samuels were quickly cleared.
As these cases and dozens of others show, the Secret Service deems no potential threat too inconsequential to investigate.
Yet the agency indicated to NewsMax.com that it had no plans to probe the Panther protest and in fact showed extraordinary concern for the rights of the group to carry assault weapons at the site where one of its protectees was about to speak:
"In all situations when we come in contact with protests we have to provide a secure environment, which in this case we did. But also, we try not to inhibit anyone's right to demonstrate as long as they're doing it legally."
The New Black Panther Party decided to mount an armed protest of Gary Graham's execution after the convicted killer himself urged supporters to "come armed with AK-47's." (Houston Chronicle, June 21) Graham's last wish before dying from lethal injection in the Texas state death house last Thursday was for his supporters to "avenge my death."
The day before Graham died, Panther leader Quanell X charged that presidential candidate George Bush was a "murderer" who had killed more black men "than any other nation on earth."
When Bush spoke to the Congress of Racial Equality Monday night in New York City, unarmed Graham supporters were outside the event distributing flyers urging others to protest, with the headline:
"Emergency Call to Action Against Gov. George W. Bush - The Murderer of Shaka Sankofa (Gary Graham)"
The agency spokesman refused to say whether the Secret Service was concerned about the hostile rhetoric of Graham sympathizers directed toward Bush.
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