Posted on 02/01/2006 5:01:54 AM PST by kristinn
Cindy Sheehan, the drama queen who was removed from the House gallery last night before the State of the Union address for wearing a t-shirt with a political message, is not the first person to be tossed from a Congressional gallery at a high-profile event for wearing a political t-shirt.
In the early days of the Senate's impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton in January 1999, a Pennsylvania man named Dave Delp was removed by the Capitol police from the Senate gallery for wearing a t-shirt that said, "Clinton doesn't inhale, he sucks."
Unlike Sheehan, Delp didn't make a federal case of the incident and took his removal with good spirit. He told me at the time that he hadn't gone into Senate chamber to protest, but that he had opened his jacket some while sitting in the gallery.
An alert Capitol police officer hustled him out of the gallery and took him to the sub-station in the basement of the Capitol for processing. The only real trouble Delp got into was when he mistakenly thought the doughnuts left out on a table in the sub-station were for guests.
Delp was released after an hour or so without being charged. The New York Daily News did a brief story about the incident which was picked up for a gag by Saturday Night Live.
I haven't seen Delp in a few years, but we always have a good laugh about the incident when we run into each other in D.C.
see post 121, that is a picture of that day that I took
That was my first Freep ever!
According to a number of reports, she wasn't just wearing a T-shirt with a political message, but had unfurled a banner...and the Capitol police didn't know what else she might have with her and what she might do with it to disrupt the speech.
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