Saturday, March 17, 2012

St. Charles County GOP leaders shut down caucuses rather than let them be videotaped

No cameras, no recording devices, no caucuses.

That's how the St. Charles County Republican Committee turned a simple political exercises into a travesty today. Apparently, the powers that be did not want Ron Paul supporters to video how business was being conducted.

So no business was conducted.

From Bob McCarty's blog:


Dokes reiterated the importance of the rules and emphasized the ban on recording devices before pausing to implore a man in the bleachers to turn off his video camera or face arrest.
When the man refused to put away his tripod-mounted camera, Dokes asked members of the St. Peters Police Department to arrest the man and escort him out of the building.  That, of course, drew heated objections from members of the crowd — including Ron Paul supporters and others — who seemed to believe transparency should trump rules during the caucus.  After being drowned out by the volume of those objections, GOP officials conferred with police and, within a half hour, more than a dozen more uniformed officers arrived at the scene.
Order was never fully restored, and, after much threatening, GOP officials announced that police officials had advised them to shutdown the meeting due to safety concerns.  Soon after, Caucus Chair Matt Ehlen announced that he had received a motion and a second to do just that — adjourn the caucus.


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