I'm all for working within the system...

...but it's worth asking where the road's leading when the people administrating the system say "screw you and your rights"...

CAPE CORAL, Fla. - A tea party to protest government spending and taxing is canceled. Canceled by the government.
Why? They feel too many people could show-up.

And I can almost understand the requirement for insurance, but then I wonder if anyone protesting back in the early 1770s had such a burden and what in the hell happened in the years since that got us to the point of accepting, even embracing, such a requirement. I know more than a few would say that one should go along with it because it's what we as a society have accepted, but then down here in Texas a certain segment of society accepted some asshole behind a badge arresting a woman for uttering an obscenity as she was under the stress induced by an approaching tropical storm. (The charges against her were ultimately dismissed, but it's worth asking how in the hell her arrest was justified in the first place...) I also wonder what some people would say if the protesters decided to disobey and go ahead with the protest in defiance of the government's requirement, being as it would not be the, ahem, pragmatic thing to do. It'd make for a hell of a spectacle to see them led off in handcuffs for that, especially if it was later determined that less than 500 people showed up. From what I understand the tea parties that have been held so far have had very good attendance though, more than 500 people, to be sure. Maybe they ought to hold a bunch of smaller protests, all in roughly the same vicinity. ;-)

"...as I watched my mother die, I lost my head...revenge now I sought, to break with my bread...." You know, I could get used to this Mandatory Metallica channel on Sirius...