Police power (indeed, Presidential power) needs to know that it must use restraint or the people will take their power away. Horror doesn't come from disobeying a brief time limit for questions or from resisting unjust physical attack by police or from an audience rising up against unjust use of force by police. Horror comes from not asking the questions, from looking the other way. A few weeks ago, I attended a school board meeting called to fire our superintendent. A group of 13 adults hired an out of town legal firm to investigate and make a presentation to the board regarding trumped up charges against the man. The two lawyers talked without interruption for 2.5 hours on the first of fifteen points. I was on the list to speak whenever the authorities allowed members of the audience to voice individual comments--with a limit of 2 minutes. At the rate they were going, the attorneys would have taken several days for their damning presentation about AP courses, parking spaces and class rank. I'd get two minutes. Not fair, not just. The superintendent was fired. The horror is that our community allows this to slip quietly down the stream of time into the past. We forget and move on to tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Whose voice is valorized does make a difference. Sometimes when talking with a person of limited intelligence, it becomes necessary to exceed polite volume level and sanctioned time limits. Lots of authorities are of limited intelligence. Our homeland security, our prosecuting attorneys, our local police, our Blackwater mercenaries are wholly out of hand when they can summarily arrest, restrain, taser, even execute on their own recognizance without giving the subject any protective paraphernalia of legal framework. Glocks, Tasers, lasers, armored personnel carriers with mounted 50 mm's, F-14's? Should we add Orwell's "Soma vapor guns"? The power is not the technology; it's the people. People need to rise up and assert that power in situations so important as the armed police attack upon an unarmed citizen during the U of F Kerry presentation. This is a life and death matter for democracy. The point isn't whether or not the student was following Roberts Rules of Order, or being impolite, immature, etc. The point was in that silent secret decision by someone to silence him. Who made it? Why did the Decider believe s/he had more right to call for silence than Andrew Meyer had to ask what some feel were impertinent questions? Our valorization of politeness or of the voice of individuals in "authority" (in this case, in uniform) is precisely the issue. Who gets to be the Decider? Sometimes we all should listen to what comes out of the mouths of kids. Even Jesus, after being lost for 3 days, made impertinent remarks to his mother and foster-father when they found him teaching the elders. I'm glad neither Joseph nor the Sanhedrin had a Taser. What matter who speaks?