The story about Alaska’s GOP Senate Candidate Joe Miller’s detaining and handcuffing a reporter at public event on public property because he didn’t want to take questions was bad enough. Now it turns out that the “security guards” were Active Duty members of the Armed Services. These men may be in a some trouble since they are in direct violation of the Department of Defense Directive 1344.10 titled “Political Activities by Members of the Armed Services”. While these fellows may have a lot of explaining to do to their commanding officers, that aside, as Glenn Greenwald stated:
The legality is the least of the concerns here. That directive exists because it’s dangerous and undemocratic to have active-duty soldiers taking an active role in partisan campaigns; having them handcuff journalists on behalf of candidates is so far over that line that it’s hard to believe it happened.
The real issue, though, is Joe Miller: the fact that he did this and then emphatically defended it reveals the deep authoritarianism of many of these “small-government, pro-Constitution” right-wing candidates. Any American of minimal decency should be repelled by this incident.
We may have laughed at the bearded Mr. Miller’s “pompous piety”, as Matt Taibi of Rolling Stone described the disclosures of Mr. Miller and his family having benefited from the very welfare state that he currently rants against in his campaign for the Senate, but he has clearly stepped over the line with his use not only of unnecessary and excessive force but using Active Duty Military to carry out his orders. This incident was anti-democratic and un-American and should be completely intolerable.
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