Signs of the times

I really can’t keep up. Somebody like the ACLU (hint hint) needs to start up an online database of this stuff.

In Oregon, the legislature wants to label protestors terrorists.

SALEM — The harshest critics of the war protests in downtown Portland angrily called the demonstrators “terrorists” and wished aloud that the police and courts would treat them as such.

This morning, that idea gets put to the test at the Oregon Legislature, where a ranking senator has introduced a bill to “create the crime of terrorism” and apply it to people who intentionally cause injury while disrupting commerce or traffic.

If convicted, they would face imprisonment for life.

Look, if anybody “intentionally causes injury,” they deserve to be arrested and dealt with in a manner appropriate to the crime. But life imprisonment? Have these morons completely lost their minds?

(I know that some people argue that protests aid terrorists by siphoning off valuable police resources and so on — but by that reasoning, so do St. Patrick’s Day parades, the Oscars, and NCAA tournaments. The police exist, at least theoretically, to serve society — not the other way around. We need to try to remember that. Assuming that “we” are making such arguments in good faith, out of concern for society and not as an excuse to crack down on those with whom “we” disagree. Which of course “we” are not.)