Herewith a third year law student at the University of Houston reacting to these pictures of the “free speech” cages and this posting of mine:

“Brian Leiter can’t understand how a federal judge could uphold keeping loony protestors waving various protest paraphenalia and working themselves into a frenzy a safe distance from the Democratic convention.”

UPDATE: More on the “free speech” cages here:

“There was absolutely no justification for the Democrats of the DNC and the Democratic mayor of Boston to adopt the shameful strategy of the Bush Presidency for dealing with protest–fencing it in behind razor wire.

“The protests planned for the DNC, mostly by A.N.S.W.E.R., have been and were going to be peaceful.

“The alleged threats of terror, emanating from the Bush Department of Homeland Security and the Bush Department of Justice were absurd–a warning that the media would be attacked! Warnings of attacks on public transit! Look out! It was all calculated to embarrass the Democrats and, incredibly, it worked.

“The fact that the Democrats fell for this kind of paranoia-inducing hokum shows how far into madness the American public has descended.

“But the price for such lack of principle and of such cowardice and idiocy is high. A new low has been set for a Democratic Convention violating the right of free speech when even a silent protest in the hall led to a demonstrator’s being dragged out in handcuffs….

“[W]e will all pay for this next step down the road of repression of dissent.

“With Bush, Cheney and the Republicans, we’ve come to expect the jackbooted response to protest, the shunting of demonstrators off into fenced in detention facilities out of sight of the media, the arrest of those who refuse to be so muzzled. If Kerry and the Democrats now adopt the same approach to dissent, the only response will have to be massive civil disobedience.”