This meme has too much police overreaching and not enough kittens.

Nobody was likable in that video.

The guy was acting like an ass and struggling with the cops (which is always going to get you either beaten or tazed). The cops were dragging someone away while asking questions (on their own authority? was anybody actually in charge?). Kerry didn't answer the Skull and Bones question as far as I could tell, which was the only one that was mildly interesting.

I like the idea of having cops bump people from Q&As when they get up there and ramble on. "I'm informing the audience before I ask my question"... come on! Just ask a question! No rambling. Also, one question per person.

This would have made me much more indignant if he had waited his turn, asked one question and then gotten dragged away for the content, not for the, ahem, style.

Don't struggle with cops. Go limp if you must, but don't struggle. Unless you want the taser, then go right ahead.

Most interactions between two people involve nobody likable; the human race sucks. Being lame, or rude, or unlikable, shouldn't be anywhere close to sufficient justification for being SHOT WITH A FUCKING TASER.

See also the Two Gallants incident in Texas, and the guy in the UCLA library. I really don't understand what satisfaction people derive from saying, "That's not how you should behave when you're confronted by the police, so the kid had it coming to him." God only knows how many people would react 'inappropriately' if they were attacked by a police officer while not doing anything illegal.

Your attitude is precisely what worries me, RumorsDaily. "Go limp if you must, but don't struggle. Unless you want the taser, then go right ahead."

The taser should not be used purely as a compliance device. It is *not* considered a non-lethal weapon, despite Taser International's protestations, and should be used with the knowledge than it can cause death. (Especially because cops don't ask if the victim has a heart condition before tasing.) Unless the officers were physically threatened by him, they should not have tased him. Their suspension indicates that at least for this police force, they acted outside of accepted policy. (Taser policy is notoriously lax or undefined by many police departments.)

I agree that the guy was a douche, but I don't agree that he was dragged away for style rather than content. If he had asked about Kerry's take on the 2008 elections in that same excitable style (which I've witnessed in other Q&A's before), I don't think he would've been confronted. He was only up there for 90 seconds before the confrontation, after all.

Update: Oops, I've been told that Taser does recognize the weapon's non-non-lethal status.

'I like the idea of having cops bump people from Q&As when they get up there and ramble on. "I'm informing the audience before I ask my question"... come on! Just ask a question! No rambling. Also, one question per person.'

If this policy was in place with cops stationed inside Senate hearings there sure would be a lot of stunned senators. Did you see Barbara Boxer take 7 minutes to not ask a question of Petraeus?

O'REILLY: Now, I've been tasered for a story, and all I can say is: He is the biggest wimp in the United States of America.

I know nothing about the danger from tasers versus the danger from, say, a nightstick. I have no idea who asked that the student be dragged out of the room. If the police decided on their initiative, then it's awful and the kid was totally right to be pissed off.

My issue is more one of common sense than about right versus wrong. If you're being dragged somewhere by police officers trained to beat with fists and nightclubs, stun with tasers and mace, and kill with guns, who struggles? These people have so many forms of firepowers on their side at so many levels of violence that you're asking for trouble when you decide to struggle.

Again, this isn't right versus wrong, this is sane versus insane when responding to police officers. If you struggle, you're going to be on the bad side of violence.

Not really at all. Um, we don't, last I checked, live in an authoritarian country. Which is to say that submission to any whim of an authority should not EVER be the default mode. This dude is so insignificant (apart from having been unjustly tased) that I'm not going to draw grand analogies, but suffice to say that civil disobedience has done a hell of a lot towards making this country great.

Civil disobedience is doing what's right even though you know you're going to be punished for it, and then not objecting to the punishment. At least, that's the classic definition. I don't think Thoreau or MLK ever struggled with their arrestors.

Falling back to a point from my last point - I know nothing about the safety of tasers. If they're not effective non-lethal tools then this clearly wasn't a situation where they should have been used. Much like the tear gas gun in Boston 2004, you need to use actual non-lethal weapons in non-lethal situations.

With that in mind, struggle with police if you want, but you're going to get hurt. Whether or not the police should be dragging someone out of a room, once they decide to start dragging it makes sense that they shouldn't lose in a struggle. If you're a police officer, and you are required to remove someone, you can't let them stay simply because they're bigger or stronger than you. The decision is already made when the dragging begins, your time for negotiation has already passed.

Dude was silly, no two ways about it, picking the wrong (i.e. the smallest) battle altogether and taking it stupidly far like only an angry, naive, conspiracy-theory-minded student can. I would say if you're a pacifist and you engage in civil disobedience then maybe you passively let the retribution fall, but MLK was the early incarnation of civil rights, right? Was it no longer civil disobedience when it became more militant? Honest question. Anyway, I'm not debasing some of our country's greatest heroes by comparing them to this douche. All I'm saying is that sometimes it takes people getting hurt for things to be revealed, and a much more pacifist policy (which it seems you're advocating) is not something I would live by dogmatically. I just wouldn't be caught bothering with such a display in such a forum in the first place, so I would never have to worry about whether or not to struggle under those circumstances.

Again, this isn't right versus wrong, this is sane versus insane when responding to police officers.

You can have both at the same time.

Also, I think many people would struggle just because they're indignant when confronted with that sort of police overreaching. People who are consciously committing civil disobedience (like the die-in people at the protest you went to) know the drill.

By the way, the official term for describing tasers seems to be "less-lethal" -- see this review.