NEVER TRUST ANYONE UNDER THIRTY

THE RELIABLE SOURCE: The Empire Strikes Back (Lloyd Grove, July 20, 2003, Washington Post)

The folks at the American Enterprise Institute -- that bastion of Washington power-networking and neoconservative theorizing -- apparently don't take kindly to the whimsical ways of youth.

A group calling itself the Shirts Off Coalition (because President Bush "is paying for his war by taking the shirts off our backs") was staging protests last week outside AEI's downtown headquarters. So on Thursday, when Shirts Off tried to infiltrate a debate about whether the United States is an empire, security personnel barred some of them, interrogated others and ejected a couple from the audience after calling the cops. And when toilets in the 12th-floor men's room suddenly clogged and overflowed, drenching the hallway carpets, guerrilla plumbing was suspected.

"AEI is always interested in featuring different points of view," spokeswoman Veronique Rodman explained. "However, we don't want our conferences disrupted by people looking to do publicity stunts."

In the 300-person audience were neocon gurus Irving Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb and their pundit son, Bill, and journalist David McGlinchey. "Two attendees were preemptively thrown out by AEI proctors and an armed policeman," McGlinchey recounted. "Proctors then sifted through the audience, seemingly questioning everyone who looked under 30 or was not wearing a suit. When they got to me, I asked what criteria they were using. . . . The proctor said, 'If you cause any trouble, there are police waiting outside.' "

Well, journalist might be a charitable description given who Mr. McGlinchey appears to work for, Global Security Newswire. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 21, 2003 9:54 PM