South Bend cops too gentle

I was reading a story about President Barack Obama's stop at Notre Dame during his Hopes and Dreams '09 tour and couldn't help but feel a little let down by the light treatment the pesky protesters received.

According to an AP story, one of the people resisting Obama's odd appearance at a Catholic university is Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff identified as "Roe" in the Roe V. Wade Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal.

It seems that McCorvey is now one of those anti-abortion types and she went to protest Saint Obama with the intent of getting tossed in jail. However, she said the security hired to keep protesters in line in South Bend, Ind., were downright gentle with her. A cop, seemingly, allowed her to chance to walk away from the scene instead of whopping her upside the head and tossing her in a paddy wagon.

"I didn't know why he just kind of gently moved me away. So I'm like, maybe this isn't the right time," McCorvey said.

I'm downright shocked by all of this. Here in Arkansas, people who opposed Bill Clinton had to put up with some real threats.

We got hooted at by Clinton's "truth squads" when getting anywhere near a polling place when Bill was running against Sheffield Nelson during the 1990 gubernatorial election. The homeless in downtown Little Rock are gathered up and shipped off to God knows where (I think that's somewhere in south Little Rock) when the former president is in town visiting that double-wide trailer that serves as the Clinton presidential library.

And do you think University of Arkansas students were allowed to display the enemy's campaign propaganda when Clinton visted the college during the 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns? Hell no! There's nothing like the threat of expulsion or the levying of some form of nonsense criminal charge to keep the pesky dissenters in line, is there?

Again, I'm disappointed that those South Bend cops simply refuse to be brutal to the protesters who dare show up and complain about that saintly Obama character. It seems certain that some protesters will get arrested, but where's the inhumane abuse in that? An arrest just lasts for a bit, but some scars inflicted by thugs wearing jackboots last forever.