Talk about ridiculous. After asking Alaska GOP Senate candidate Joe Miller a tough question at a press conference, the candidate’s private security guards handcuffed and “arrested” a progressive blogger, editor of the website Alaska Dispatch. The Anchorage Daily News, reporting on the incident, wrote:
The editor of the Alaska Dispatch website was arrested by U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller’s private security guards Sunday as the editor attempted to interview Miller at the end of a public event in an Anchorage school.
Tony Hopfinger was handcuffed by the guards and detained in a hallway at Central Middle School until Anchorage police came and told the guards to release Hopfinger. […]
One of the guards grabbed Hopfinger’s video camera. Later, Hopfinger said that when he got the camera back, the segment covering the span of the arrest was missing. An Anchorage police officer offered to take the camera into custody and have it examined in the crime lab to investigate whether evidence had been destroyed, but Hopfinger declined. He said he needed the camera and the remaining video for his work.
The guard who grabbed the camera said Hopfinger had dropped it in the scuffle and denied erasing anything. The guard wouldn’t give his name.
While Hopfinger was still in handcuffs, the guards attempted to prevent other reporters from talking to him and threatened them too with arrest for trespass. A Daily News reporter interviewed Hopfinger anyway. No other reporters were arrested, though a few shoving matches and chest bumps ensued as the guards attempted to cordon off Hopfinger and block photographs and videos from being taken of the bizarre school scene.
Hopfinger was released by the security team when the police arrived.
As Think Progress notes, the concern is that this incidence is part of a much bigger problem.
Miller’s belief that he can hire a goon squad to falsely arrest people who disagree with him is, sadly, part of a much larger pattern….
Miller — aka “Mr. Noun, Verb and Unconstitutional” — is best known for decreeing that laws he disagrees with must be unconstitutional. Miller has previously claimed that the federal minimum wage, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment benefits, and even federal child labor laws violate the Constitution — although his opposition to these programs hasn’t prevented him from tapping into them whenever his family qualified for benefits.
In other words, Miller really only follows one rule: “whatever Joe Miller wants; that’s the rule.”
I’m sure there are plenty of good folks living in Alaska, but it is certainly home to some pretty horrible politicians as well.
Photo Credit: Jill Burke via Alaska Dispatch
