The 700,000 Club

So, what was Carolyn Bninski and her allies doing at the offices of Mark Udall that got them in so much trouble?

Why, they were reading aloud the names of all 700,000 Iraqis killed since the invasion.

Let's see if we can put that number into perspective.

1. On average, that is about 600 Iraqis a day, every day, for four years. Just the other day, NBC made a big deal when 50 Iraqis got killed by two car bombs. That wasn't 50 per bomb. 600 a day seems a bit much.

2. If one assumes that the names are printed in two columns on a sheet of paper, that is about 250 names per sheet if both sides are used. At that rate, it would take 2800 sheets of paper just to print the names. Carolyn must have some serious muscles if she carries 2800 sheets of paper around.

3. If one assumes that the names can be read at the rate of one per second, night and day, non stop, a difficult task given the language barrier, it would take 8 days. If Bninski only scheduled three weeks of protests, it is hard to see how she could have expected to read 700,000 names.

Can't see the Center has more.

Hmmm

After writing for several days that Mark Udall's staff was justified in calling the cops after a three week protest, more information is coming out that suggests that they operated on a hair trigger. If the latest report is true, it makes Udall, his staff, and the MSM doing the reporting look two-faced.

The demonstration was coordinated with Udall's staff, and for three weeks the demonstrators followed rules that both agreed to:

Bninski, a coordinator at the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, met with Udall's chief of staff in February to facilitate a three-week protest in which constituents entered the congressman's office, filed a complaint about the war, and left within 10 minutes...

Democracy can sometimes be inconvenient. The First Amendment guarantees the right to petition the government but doesn't require those doing the petitioning to do more than behave themselves. This report makes it sound as though the demonstrators went out of their way to behave themselves while presenting their grievances.

On the final day of the protest, March 8, Bninski and five others declined to leave Udall's office after 10 minutes. As the group sat on the floor, Bninski read the names of the 42 (now 49) soldiers from Colorado who've died in the war, and the 700,000 Iraqi civilians who've died in the war...

Just after noon, Bninski informed Bristol that the last group would commit civil disobedience. The press and the members of the CopWatch organization flooded inside. After 10 minutes passed, Bristol called the police.

So, these folks were out of compliance with their agreement for only a minute or perhaps less before John Bristol called the cops, not the three weeks the MSM led us to believe. (Actually, the MSM failed to report that there was an agreement) That doesn't show the amount of tolerance a reasonable person would expect of well paid Federal employees to show.

Two members of Udall's staff testified the protest disrupted the daily functions of their office.

“There had been people coming by every day for weeks,” said John Bristol, a staff assistant for Udall's office. The morning of March 8 “was a very intense three hours” in which the only work he accomplished was recording Iraq-war complaints from about 50 people, he said.

This is not a case that Mark Udall, his staff, or the prosecutor can be proud of pursuing. The judge who sentenced this woman to 30 days in jail for being out of compliance with her agreement so short a time has very little respect for the Constitution.

If the information provided by the Colorado Daily News is accurate, this whole thing has the smell of a Sister Souljah set up with one difference: Sister Souljah didn't go to jail.