CALLING BULLSHIT...SOTU EDITION

My thinking about the Cindy Sheehan incident throughout today, with my latest thoughts first....

Did Beverly Young really wear such a shirt to a formal event?

I have yet to see a picture of Beverly Young, the wife of Republican congressman Bill Young, in a T-shirt that said "Support The Troops." In contrast, photos of Cindy Sheehan's shirt have been widely posted, and there's even a picture of her wearing it in the Capitol building.

I'm still skeptical about this incident--do spouses of members of Congress typically wear T-shirts to formal government events? Wouldn't Young's husband have talked her out of wearing such a shirt, if only because of the formality of the event? If she was being hassled by Capitol Police, would/could she not have told them who she was and who to call to verify her identity? Could she not have just put on a jacket?



Bev Young A Plant (or would the R's even go to that much trouble)?

Just a thought...could it be that the REPUBLICAN congressman's wife wore her "Support The Troops" shirt precisely so she could be thrown out so that media stories would then mention two ejections from the SOTU, one on each side of the partisan divide. Was Cindy Sheehan thrown out before Beverly Young (the congressman's wife), did it happen simultaneously, or was Young thrown out before Sheehan.

The possibility that Beverly Young might be a plant would help explain why she wasn't hauled off to jail in handcuffs as Sheehan was. In fact, why wasn't Young "taken downtown?" Is it because she's the wife of a REPUBLICAN congressman? Or because she was merely a plant and her job was done?

Also, the story about Beverly Young being thrown out didn't seem to surface until today (unless I just missed it)...did Young actually get thrown out at all? Did the Young incident even happen? I mean, it probably did, but you never know...

Sheehan's Ejection > Young's "Ejection"

This MSNBC.com story attempts to show that SOTU ejection was "bipartisan." The lead sentence says:

"Cindy Sheehan, mother of a fallen soldier in Iraq, wasn’t the only one ejected from the House gallery during the State of the Union address for wearing a T-shirt with a war-related slogan that violated the rules. The wife of a powerful Republican congressman was also asked to leave."

They undoubtedly were both "ejected" from the gallery (a security guard says in this story that the congressman's wife left of her own accord), but with a crucial difference: Sheehan was led away in handcuffs, booked and jailed. The congressman's wife argued with police, according to both stories. There is no mention of whether or not she went to jail, so presumably she didn't.