There’s a huge difference between “campaign officials” as your link indicates were responsible for the incident you mention, and Secret Service agents. The former can and often do act completely idiotic; the latter would - I expect - understand what’s required for an arrest. And that’s a second important difference: being ejected from a specific event is quite different from being arrested. There is no constitutional right to attend a campaign rally; a candidate has every right to regulate the people and the attire that attend his event. There IS a constitutional right to not be arrested except upon probable cause.
I did not know that! I knew that aggressive or threatening speech can be illegal in some contexts, but I wasn’t aware that it could fall under the legal definition of “assault” all by itself. Hmm. Thanks for the info.
Okay, how about these anti-Bush t-shirt wearing folks being ejected from a Bush rally?
Yes, the local police have to do the dirty work but it’s at the direction of the SS. Who’s directing the SS?
Himmler?
With all due awe, whaaa? One would certainly assume so, since we are but lowly laypersons, we would assume that political activity is pretty much protected, in all its forms, wondrous and weird. Has there been some ruling in this regard, or is this the Constitution according to Bricker? The right to express your opinion is protected, but you can’t do it at a particular place and time if somebody would prefer that you didn’t? Wouldn’t that somebody have to have some sort of legal authority to do so?
So I mount a soap box on the corner and begin excoriating…oh, I don’t know, Bush, I guess, good as any…and someone comes along and begins to disagree with me, I can have him arrested? Like, if he’s wearing a tie?
PS.
The Charleston, WV event wasn’t a campaign rally.
It was a Fourth of July. Irony anyone?
You didn’t even read both links, did you?
From the second link again:
(Emphases added)
So yeah, you’re right, there’s a world of difference between the Cheney incident and the one I noted.
Of course the SS denies that they have any involvement in any of these arrests that they’ve ordered. Because all of the local cops who’ve said that they’ve moved protestors and arrested dissenters were all lying when they said the SS told them to.
Sorry I missed this before, John.
What I’ve heard is the Vice President snarled that’s the guy who pushed me when Howards came back for another piece of the action.
Recently read some Heinlein, ETF? 
This is why events get permits. If your event has a permit, you’re entitled to be protected from other people yelling louder than you are.
If you stand on your soapbox and start yelling about how Bush is teh suxxor, I can stand on mine, with a megaphone, and ten of my friends and out-yell you. That’s great for my First Amendment exercise; not so great for you. If you have a permit for your event, you can get the cops to haul me and my buddies away, at least far enough to not stop your speech. Of course, I’m free to get a permit for tomorrow and express my views as well.
Let them say it under oath, identifying the specific officer that gave them their directions, and it’ll be far more credible than, “Uh, yeah, the Secret Service told me to.”
However, your point regarding the type of event is well-taken; I missed that line about the event being an official visit as opposed to a campaign event. As an official visit, the rules should be content-neutral – you can certainly ask T-shirt wearers to leave if you’re enforcing a ban on T-shirts or even on political T-shirts, but you cannot kick out a particular political message (unless you can show a security concern).
Perhaps but irrelevant. This point was floated at the time and quickly shot down. There were several pro-Bush t-shirts in the crowd and the wearers were not stopped, questioned, or arrested.
I don’t have a cite yet. The Charleston event occurred 3.35 miles from my home (according to Google Earth) and it was big new here.
Is it really that hard for the Bush apologists to simply swallow their pride and admit that their candidates do some rather indefensible things?
That was bad. I’m not sold that the Secret Service was responsible, but whoever did it was acting wrongly.
Much as I enjoy roasting Busch and Co., I don’t think we can really blame them for this unless we have reason to believe that Cheney specifically requested the arrest, described the encounter as “assault”, etc.
Given the preposterously blatant nature of the story, and the fact that it seems fairly isolated, I think it far more likely that either:
(1) (most likely) some miscommunication occurred within the Secret Service, and they just plain screwed up
or
(2) (less likely) the guy is lying out of his ass, and was much more verbally assaultive, bordering on fighting words, but there’s no proof
than
(3) Cheney randomly decided, after all this time, to have some guy arrested, despite the fact that it would have been obvious to His Evilness that what would end up happening is in fact precisely what ended up happening.
I completely missed the part about Cheney saying he was pushed, which puts it into a kind of he-said he-said area. I’d like to think that, Cheney being evil and all, he was vastly overreacting to a non-push touch. Even so, it’s definitely less of a completely unjustifiable overreaction on the part of the SS than my original picture of what happened.
Since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. 
Yep. It might not have been the Secret Service. Our Republican Mayor said it was but the Chief of Police just said it was the White House.
That’s kinda the point here, innit?
snort And the Secret Service spokesperson, who is every bit as unsworn as the police officers, is somehow more credible in his denials than is the Republican mayor of Charleston who, one would think, has no interest in making a Republican presidential candidate look bad?
I assume this is a rhetorical question?
Burden of proof resides on the person making the case. Yes, he’s more credible in his denials if for no other reason than if both are credited with equal weight, we must believe the denial.
That happened two years ago, by the way. Where ARE the sworn statements, the depositions in the lawsuit?