[richlevy]

Originally Posted by MaggieL

Wow...there's a newsflash. :-) Did you ever vote for him before?

Seriously, he is an asshole. But not because he voted against S.2611.

Well apparently he's an asshole who doesn't like his views to be questioned.

Now I don't know what the publicity hack overheard to order the eviction, but:

a) It wasn't her or Santorum's bookstore. If anything, only a store employee should have been able to order their eviction.

b) Don't advertise a discussion if you're not going to accept opposing views.

If the woman heard that they planned to be disruptive, she should have spoken to a store manager. If she just got the impression that they were going to ask difficult questions, she should be sued. In general, before evicting someone it is better to wait until they are disruptive. If everyone who just seemed suspicious was automatically ejected from stores (insert racial profiling joke here).

I love the backpedaling here. Apparently, noone was responsible. Not Santorum, not the bookstore, not the 'family institute'.

In general, bookstores and libraries take the first amendment pretty seriously, considering that is the basis for their existence. I am surprised the store went along with this. I actually shop at that Barnes and Noble and after reading this I will stop in and register my disapproval.

Women, ordered to leave signing, to sue


The ACLU has filed suit on behalf of several women tossed from a book signing for Sen. Rick Santorum.

By Randall Chase

Associated Press

DOVER, Del. - The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of a group of women who claim their constitutional rights were violated when they were ordered to leave a book signing event featuring Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa.).

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, claims that two of the women were arrested for trespassing last year and three others, from Delaware County, were threatened with arrest because of their political views.

According to the lawsuit, the women went to a Barnes & Noble store at Concord Mall in Wilmington to challenge Santorum at an event advertised as a book signing and discussion of his book, It Takes a Family.

The women were ordered to leave by a uniformed state trooper providing security at the event after a member of Santorum's promotional team overheard them talking before the senator arrived, according to the lawsuit.

"The advertisements said 'book signing and discussion,' not 'discussion only if you agree with the senator,' " said Julia Graff, staff attorney for the Delaware chapter of the ACLU, which joined with the Pennsylvania ACLU chapter in filing the lawsuit. "The trooper denied these women their right to share their views with an elected official. This is precisely the kind of conduct the First Amendment was designed to guard against."

Robert Traynham, a spokesman for Santorum, referred calls to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a nonprofit educational organization and conservative think tank in Wilmington that published It Takes a Family.