This story on the First Lady taking the kids to a Broadway show in New York has an interesting element: a warning by the Secret Service that anyone taking their picture would have their cameras confiscated. Perhaps the Secret Service General Counsel could point us to where in the Constitution and federal law the Secret Service has the authority to ban photographs by the public and the confiscation of cellphones and pictures to enforce the ban.
Michelle Obama – with Sasha, 8, and Malia, 11, and about a dozen other people in tow – attended the matinee performance of “Memphis” Sunday. After the block was cordoned off, the large group entered the theater. Secret Service members did not like all of the pictures being taken that issued the warning. If the First Family wishes to avoid pictures, they may want to watch the play on video rather than confiscating cellphones and cameras of citizens. I find it outrageous that the Secret Service would consider it within its authority to confiscate phones to avoid annoyance to the First Family. The Secret Service at times seems to view itself as a Praetorian Guard rather than a public law enforcement agency.
For the full story, click here.
The Shubert Theatre has a published policy against cameras in the theatre. Violate their policy—which is an explicit part of your invitation to be on that private property—& you can be uninvited. It’s probably a common theatre policy & makes perfect sense, but as was observed by one experienced theatre goer above, the management didn’t make the rule to prevent attendees from taking snaps of each other during intermissions & has probably never enforced the rule when the show is not in progress. The NY Post story said nothing about any cameras going off during the show.
Secret Service Officers are federal law enforcement officers with broad authority to enforce federal laws. They have no authority to enforce any local laws and most certainly no authority to enforce a private business owner’s house rules. There is no law against taking a photo in the Shubert, unless it was being done to appropriate some thing of value….like filming a bootleg copy of the show. So, if I violate the theatre rules, I can be thrown out by the management. If I shoot my mouth off during the show, the management can, similarly, throw me out.
The Secret Service has no jurisdiction or authority to do a darn thing about me ruining the First Family’s evening if I was so rude as to be blabbing during the show. The Secret Service has no power to forbid anyone from taking a photo in this place—as they might if you were at the White House—where the Obamas are empowered to make all the house rules.
I’ve been a government attorney for 30 years and this threat to confiscate cameras is very disturbing to me. I heard the Secret Service did the same thing last Spring when the Obamas went to a NY restaurant and diners started snapping photos. Same rules applied there…a restaurant owner can 86 anybody from his private property for behavior he finds disruptive, but when no federal law is being violated, a federal police officer has no authority to say or do anything about it. Sooner or later, if the Secret Service doesn’t wise up, someone with a camera is going to tell them to jump in the lake and unless they’re just saying this to scare people (which doesn’t foster much respect), what happens next is going to cost the taxpayers money. They had no more right to threaten theatre goers than they would to threaten the actors if the show was bad.
I’ve thought about this for days and I can imagine only one circumstance that police might be empowered to start seizing private cameras. If a crime had been committed, and all the oglers with cell phones were snapping photos during the crime, a peace officer could arguably take the cameras and preserve the photos as evidence. Same goes if the officers knew you’d photographed a crime and then left the scene…they’d soon be applying for a search warrant to obtain the photographic evidence in your possession. Otherwise, I haven’t been able to think of anything which justifies such silly behavior on the part of the Secret Service. I find it even more odd that it hasn’t drawn greater press attention.
Cheryl,
Civil rights, unlike courtesy, do not go “both ways” as your civil rights are guaranteed by the Constitution whereas courtesy is a skill oft untaught by parents. But you do raise a salient point about people with their phones. There is nothing quite so pleasing as to carry on a conversation with some nitwit too busy texting/taking pictures/checking e-Bay/etc. to pay attention to the live people trying to interact with them.
Awww, did I offend the thin skinned Christians?
Forgive me.
Or not.
I don’t need your approval nor do I seek it. I walk a different path. One that I am guaranteed the Constitutional freedom to walk.
Being a Christian and being a fascist are by Jesus’ own teachings mutually exclusive. How anxious you are to throw your religion in my face as a justification for greed. How unknowing you are to think this is somehow a Christian nation when it was founded as a secular country precisely because of the stupidity our Founding Fathers saw done in Europe in the name of theocracy.
Two words for you.
Money Changers.
Get a clue. Christianity isn’t supposed to be about corporatist profits. It is, in fact, counter to it.
Jesus was a liberal Pharisee rabbi and a wise teacher. So liberal that the Romans killed him. So wise for having that audacity to tell us to love one another instead of worshiping money and social status.
And careful where you throw that “bigot” stone, troll boy. You live in a glass house.
I think there is more to this than has been stated. I worked as an usher in a large venue and have a different viewpoint that folks should think about. There is a courtesy issue here that has nothing to do with the first family. How would you like to be the person who paid for a ticket to this event and after going through extra security because of the first family, you also got stuck sitting next to someone who was more interested in waving their cell phone or camera around taking pictures than watching the show they came to see? People are clueless about common courtesy anymore. They don’t care how much you paid for your ticket or that they are standing and blocking the view or having their flash going off in people’s faces etc. It’s all about them and what they want – not what other people in the venue want. Civil rights are like common courtesy – it goes both ways.
When fascism comes to America it will come with a Nobel Prize in literature for bigoted remarks about Christians who love their country.
So if you are a Christian patriot you are a fascist?
“When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.” – Sinclair Lewis
I didn’t know you knew Mr. Lewis, Tootie. But clearly, he knew you.
Except incident to arrest, when does *any* American police officer have the authority to “confiscate” a camera?
And why do so few Americans know the answer?
In a free country, the Secret Service announcement should have resulted in gales of laughter. [And the “Secret Service” would have changed its name to something less Orwellian generations ago, on general principle.]
anon:
You seem to be insinuating that the Christian right is fascist, but last century it was the democrats who led us into most of our wars and it was leftist and liberal.
And now, true to this tradition, Obama is escalating the phony war on terror! The Clinton admin supported the starvation and death of 300,000 plus Iraqi children through sanctions. Madeleine Albright said it was worth it. Clinton also conducted an illegal war in Kosovo.
And you are worried about Christians who want less government? Please, I don’t believe you!
I posted this elsewhere on this site (it is written by a conservative).
Tell me who this sounds like, if not the democrats.
“Fascism will come at the hands of perfectly authentic Americans, as violently against Hitler and Mussolini as the next one, but who are convinced that the present economic system is washed up and that the present political system in America has outlived its usefulness and who wish to commit this country to the rule of the bureaucratic state; interfering in the affairs of the states and cities; taking part in the management of industry and finance and agriculture; assuming the role of great national banker and investor, borrowing millions every year and spending them on all sorts of projects through which such a government can paralyze opposition and command public support; marshaling great armies and navies at crushing costs to support the industry of war and preparation for war which will become our greatest industry; and adding to all this the most romantic adventures in global planning, regeneration, and domination all to be done under the authority of a powerfully centralized government in which the executive will hold in effect all the powers with Congress reduced to the role of a debating society. There is your fascist. And the sooner America realizes this dreadful fact the sooner it will arm itself to make an end of American fascism masquerading under the guise of the champion of democracy.” John T. Flynn 1944
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/fascism.html
Read more about him @
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_T._Flynn
What a hypocrite. Obama is a ruthless and diabolical supporter of spying into every nook and cranny of our lives and yet his family are privileged characters who deserve privacy?
We are tracked by our cell phones and cars. Google exposes our security situation to every stalker, terrorist, and crank who hates us and government permits it.
Obama will probably live in a gated community and have an expensive security detail for years to come all the while he promoted invasions of privacy against against the rest of us.
What a fraud!
One day it’ll become as bad as the UK…
Byron,
I mistrust government of any size that is non-responsive to the common good of the public and the Republic because they are addicted to K Street graft. Big. Small. That’s the wrong ball to watch. Democratically responsive and functional are the two most important factors. It could be as small as a bread box or as large as the Empire State building and it doesn’t matter a whit if it’s tyrannical and broken. I’m pretty sure the last two adjectives perfectly describe the current Washington lot to a tee (starting with Bush I). Small isn’t really the gripe most people have who claim that as their war cry. If you dig deep enough, you usually find out that they are mistaking “big” for “non-functional”. It’s not really the size that pisses them off as much as it is the sheer waste and fraud. While more parts creates more room for error is a mathematical truth, one does need enough parts to get the job done. An engine is a useless hunk of metal without a drive shaft, but a supercharger is optional. But in truth, I prefer to think of optimal structures of government like Mozart thought about music. When told his music had too many notes, he replied that his music had just the right number of notes, not too many and not too few. And that’s how government should be too. Enough to get the job done with harmonious precision but not so many as to be a dysfunctional noise.
Buddha:
He did indeed, and it is.
mespo,
Yeah, but you got to admit that Caligula had it coming.
_____
Now THAT is a filthy joke. 😀
Buddha:
I was just having a little fun. I agree with some of your contentions.
But food is much cheaper than it was in the 60’s and we have so many fat people there isnt a supply problem.
We will see what happens, hopefully you are right. I do agree that there were some things that did need to change on the health care front. I am not in denial, I just have a distrust of big government.
“The Secret Service at times seems to view itself as a Praetorian Guard rather than a public law enforcement agency.”
************
Those Praetorians assassinated about as many Emperors as they protected with Caligula, Galba, and Pertinax bing the most prominent. Constantine defeated the legions of Maxentius, which were composed mostly of Praetorian Guards, at the famous battle of Milvian Bridge in 312 CE. The Milvian Bridge, as many of us familiar to the blog will recall, carried the Via Flaminia across the Tiber River and into Rome.
Two books that relate to this story, as well as the comments:
1) American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America by Chris Hedges
I’d recommend the last chapter, at the very least.
2) The Watchers by Shane Harris
Byron,
Way to overreact. You know very well that I think free markets are fine for most things. The things they are not fit for? As illustrated by recent history?
1) Health Care
2) Food and Water Safety
3) Energy (and only because THEY STARTED A WAR RATHER THAN INVEST IN SOMETHING SIMPLE that might take some of the “power” out of their hands . . . like hydrogen. Oh, and ENRON. Let’s not forget where the first capitalist domino fell.)
4) Defense
Pretty much everything else you can leave to free market mechanics. But those three? I ask you to take a looooong look at the falling of this country and if you don’t realize that free market uncontrolled greed in three of those four sectors are the leading cause of death – both natural and by bullets – then you simply aren’t looking hard enough or are in denial.
I vote the second.
It is about $1,600 per month plus they have subsidized housing where rent is a couple of hundred dollars a month. There are all kinds of freebies. I’ll adopt a couple of kids and make even more and get free child care as well.
Plus since I am older I can probably get free meals as well. I am going to have a nice retirement. All paid for at tax payer expense, that way I don’t have to dip into savings (I will put that in a trust for my children) and can leave it all to my children. Isn’t socialism great 🙂 I might even be able to have enough to invest a few hundred dollars a month.
Thanks for the idea Buddha, this is going to be great.
I encourage all tax paying republicans, libertarians and other productive people to do the same. That way there will be no one to pay the bills except the progressives that are working.