They Could Not Indict the Sandwich

Sean Dunn walked up to a line of federal agents at the corner of 14th and U Streets Northwest on the night of August 10, 2025. The agents were Customs and Border Protection officers posted outside a nightclub hosting a Latin Night, part of the federal force surging into Washington that weekend. Dunn shouted at them for the better part of seven minutes. He called them fascists and racists. He chanted “Shame.” “Why are you here?” he shouted. “I don’t want you in my city!” Then he threw his dinner at Agent Gregory Lairmore’s chest. The dinner was a Subway footlong, still in its wrapper. Dunn ran. The agents caught him. A body camera recorded what he said on the sidewalk. “I did it. I threw a sandwich. I did it to draw them away from where they were. I succeeded.”

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Task Failed Successfully: The Cracked Columbia Takeover and Expulsion

The sputtering 18-hour barricade-aided takeover of Columbia University by Hamas supporters ended last night faster than Humpty Dumpty falling off the wall; of course, the occupier’s task failed successfully only after being rightly pushed from the second story ledge of Hamilton Hall by NYPD riot officers. As a graduate of Columbia University, I was chagrined for the students who occupied Hamilton, and who are now about to learn the hard way why — the university does not not belong to the student — and those failed occupiers can now successfully weep into their expulsion letters.

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Only One Man May Save Us from Donald Trump

America is in crisis. We are lost. We are hungry. We are hurting. We are ill. These troubles have arrived with the heavy hand of Donald Trump — who has yet to meet a policy, a decision, or a thought that he can’t successfully caress into hatred and bigotry. If we are ever to get out of this muck of a mistake of a President, we need our national elected leaders to lead. We need Republicans to step up to stand up and stand down Trump. With Trump isolated and emolliated, the union just may be salvageable. There is only one man right now who has the capacity, and the power, to save us from the complete destruction of a failed American democracy: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — but one nagging question remains and lingers — how long will he wait to finally do the right thing?

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First Right to Protest

We, The Americans, have always held dear the foundational concept of protesting in the public square to express dissatisfaction with the status quo — and to also call others to action to join us against the latest repression at a hand coming down from above us without a velvet glove.

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Living in a Dark and Threatening Hollow: Evaluating the SOPA/PIPA Blackout

On Wednesday, January 18, 2012 we blacked out all 14 blogs in the Boles Blogs Network as part of a wide and grand protest against the SOPA/PIPA threat.

We gladly joined that blackout because, on December 29, 2011 — in an article titled Staring Down the SOPA Threat from the Public Square — I wrote this call to action:

If you don’t want SOPA to see the light of day — forget Washington.  Pressure the companies that support SOPA.  Hit them with a cudgel they understand:  Losing your money and ruining their reputation in the marketplace.  Don’t give your money to pro-SOPA companies.  Write about pro-SOPA companies and humiliate them in the public square of human opinion.  It is your moral duty to stand up for free speech and crush the censorship that creeps upon you to silence your hands and ears and eyes.

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Protesting Westboro Baptist Church Protesters at a Protest

When I was growing up, my parents would regularly remind me how lucky my brother and I were to live in a country where protest was as acceptable (and remains so) as it was — in Communist Romania, people marching the streets with signs jeering President Ceaucescu would have been arrested. People who marched down the street jeering then President Clinton would face no such problem as was evidenced by all the people calling for his resignation during the Lewinsky scandal that seemed to rock the United States for awhile.

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Get Arrested, Get Checked for Virginity

UPDATE 12-27-2011:  The forced virginity tests have been now banned by an Egyptian court. Samira Ibrahim, one of the many women forced to undergo the humiliating examination, filed the case. This is a great victory for human rights.

Egyptian women protesting had to endure an entirely unique sort of humiliation — getting tested to see if they were virgins at the time of arrest. Lest you think that this was some kind of depraved way to get into women’s undergarments under legal pretenses, rest assured that this is not the case. After all, the senior general who wished not to be identified absolutely insisted that this was the case.


Continue reading → Get Arrested, Get Checked for Virginity