Radio personality and C&L friend Nicole Sandler attended Allen West's town hall today and was led away in handcuffs.
Inside the meeting, West was less than a minute into his remarks tonight when two or three men began shouting from the audience.
"How about our Medicare that you're stealing?" shouted one.
"How about allowing questions from the audience?" shouted another man, apparently dissatisfied with West's decision to answer written questions submitted by audience members before the meeting.
At West's previous town halls, members of the public lined up to ask him questions in person, sometimes waiting 30 minutes or more to do so."What you have seen happen previously is you get such a line of people and a lot of folks want to come up and proseletyze for six or seven minutes and you're really not getting to the questions that people want to have answered," West said after the meeting.
West, who has gone back and forth with critics at his previous meetings, said the written format was not an effort to avoid tough questions.
"I don't duck," West said.
During the meeting, West had responded to a question about Medicare when Nicole Sandler of Coral Springs, a former radio host on the liberal Air America network, began shouting from the audience.
Other audience members began shouting at her and a police officer led her out.
"This is supposed to be a town hall meeting. That means back-and-forth," Sandler said as she exited.
Sandler argued with a Fort Lauderdale police officer in the lobby who told her to leave the building. After she yelled at the officer for placing his hand on her, she was arrested for "trespassing after warning" and led away in handcuffs.
Funny. I don't recall the 2009 town hall meetings as having the heavy police presence at every single one, or people being arrested for asking questions. And I certainly don't view Nicole Sandler as someone who is threatening in the least, but evidently those policemen did.
Nicole Sandler lives in Allen West's district. She is entitled to receive answers to her questions even if he doesn't like her politics. She is entitled to attend town hall meetings and ask those questions. She's even entitled to record those meetings.
Having her arrested for insisting on answers to her questions is just another indication of the totalitarian state people like Allen West, wingnut loony man, think of when they think of "liberty."
(ps - If you want a taste of what conservatives in Sandler's district want our country to look like, read the comments on that Palm Beach Post article)
Here's the video of her being ejected:
UPDATE: John Amato
I just spoke to a source close to the situation and $25.00 was already posted for her bail. She's not out yet. Since the town hall was on private property, the police were allowed to arrest her on a trumped up charge. She was pushed by the cop to get out of the building while she was trying to leave. He arrested her for daring to ask a question from the audience. If it had been in a public building there would have been no grounds to ask her to leave. West only answered pre-approved questions. What a cowardly move by Rep. Allen West's people.
Karoli wonders...
The "private property" Nicole was ejected from was Calvary Chapel's theater. Calvary Chapel is a tax-exempt organization. It seems to me that they should not be playing partisan politics, screening questions and supporting West's narrative without being accountable for that.
