Three Medford schoolteachers in Oregon were threatened with arrest and thrown out of the President Bush rally at the Jackson County Fairgrounds Thursday night, after they showed up wearing T-shirts with the slogan “Protect our civil liberties.”

All three women were carrying valid tickets for the event that they had received from Republican Party headquarters in Medford.

Teacher Janet Voorhies said she simply wanted to bring a message to President Bush, but did not intend to protest.

“I wanted to see if I would be able to make a statement that I feel is important, but not offensive, in a rally for my president,” said Voorhies, 48.

The women said they were angered by reports of peaceful protesters being thrown out of previous Bush-Cheney events. They said they chose the phrase, “Protect Our Civil Liberties,” because it was unconfrontational.

“We chose this phrase specifically because we didn’t think it would be offensive or degrading or obscene,” said Tania Tong, 34, a special education teacher.

The women got past the first and second checkpoints and were allowed into the Jackson County fairgrounds, but were asked to leave and then escorted out of the event by campaign officials who allegedly told them their T-shirts were “obscene.”

“Thursday’s actions in Oregon set a new standard even for Bush/Cheney – removing and threatening with arrest citizens who in no way disrupt an event and wear clothing that expresses non-disruptive party-neutral viewpoints such as “Protect Our Civil Liberties,” said Adam Green, a spokesman for the Oregon Democratic Party.

When Cheney visited Eugene last month, the Register-Guard newspaper reported that Perry Patterson, 54, was cited for criminal trespassing for blurting out the word “No” after Cheney claimed that the Bush administration had made the world safer.

This is the kind of thing we can expect – the idea of protecting our civil liberties is considered obscene!! How can ANYONE be supporting Bush? What kind of country do you want to live in? It won’t make me feel any better if Bush steals this election somehow, and all these people come around. When the plan to bankrupt the federal government succeeds, and all federal services are privatized, and we are simply a means of economic and military domination for the inner circle of chickenhawks who still get it, and the old and unproductive are finally killed off, and your child becomes the next soldier of compassion, it won’t make me feel any better at all. Can’t we just prevent it? I am feeling very very strident today. These plans have been in the works since the end of the Cold War, and it’s the same people – they have always opposed any cooperative effort among nations – they want to be in total control! In particular, take a look at the Wolfowitz doctrine, which was considered way way too radical even for the far right when it was first introduced. Shock and awe? Ring any bells? It’s pretty much a Nazi Blitzkrieg, a lightning war – unilateral, intense, intended to produce psychological trauma as well as physical damage.

If there is a justification for imperial world domination and control, let’s hear it! I have no doubt that many would go along. But let’s get the real agenda out from secrecy and on the table? No, I guess they can’t really rely… ON A DEMOCRACY!