Ah Denver... With councilmen like Doug Linkhart, you can forget about order and public safety.

So the Democratic National Convention is coming up in Denver. And aside from Obama getting crowned, the Dems now face the anger of the fringe leftists that feel rightfully betrayed after the Dems courted them and pandered to them while trying to gain control of Congress two years ago and abandoned them and their issues right after gaining the majority. Yep, contrary to Dem promises, the war is still going on, pulling out is off the table, and leaders like Nancy Pelosi who once embraced and encouraged nutters like Cindy Sheehan and Code Pink now routinely call the police to have their former allies removed from Capitol grounds. And the nutters are seething and planning to get their revenge at the convention by resorting to their old tricks--disruption of other speakers, vandalism, destruction of public and private property, assaults on police officers, and as much anarchy, rioting and hooliganism as they can get away with.

To this end, the police have asked the city council to do the reasonable thing, and ban possession of items which can be used as weapons or prevent identification of the criminal actors. That much is clear from this story. However the loon left has a savior in City Councilman Doug Linkhart, who objected to common sense provisions which criminalized the possession of gas masks and bullet proof vests, items that have the singular purpose of enabling the criminals to resist and fight the police and avoid identification and apprehension.

As these anarchist wanna-be's travel around the country causing damage and occasionally injuring people, they often resort to wearing masks so that they cannot be photographed or identified by eyewitnesses while smashing windows, painting walls, burning cars, or hurling objects at the police. Any study of events where these goons congregate shows that when they are prohibited from wearing masks or possessing gas masks and other implements designed to frustrate law enforcement crown control techniques, they behave much more appropriately. They don't want to be tear-gassed or identified while committing felonies, so they don't act nearly as stupid. But give these losers anonymity in the form of masks, bandannas over their faces, etc., and then they get brave and destructive because they know that there won't be any consequences to whatever they do. And let's be honest--most of the "black bloc" crowd doesn't give a fig about the political issues that they pretend to protest. They just want an excuse to damage things without being held responsible. Most are spoiled upper-class white kids traveling around on their trust funds or allowances from their wealthy-as-hell parents and they don't even have a reason to protest most of the things that they feign outrage over. They just enjoy causing carnage.

Now some police agencies know how to deal with them. Washington DC and Miami are places where these kids don't want to play. It's illegal to wear masks in those venues, and the police aren't shy about meeting force with force and cracking loser heads. And then we have places like Seattle and Portland which have sustained massive amounts of pulic and private property damage after kow-towing to these criminals by restraining the police and giving the anarchists carte blanche in the mistaken belief that exerting any control is somehow akin to censorship and un-Democratic. Well it seems as if Doug Linkhart is trying to add Denver to that latter list via his attempts to hamstring the police. I wonder if he'll feel any personal responsibility and give any of his own money to help compensate the victims of the anarchist storm that he's helping to unleash on his own city? I doubt it. Flaming liberals like him always manage to blame someone else for the consequences of their actions, and no matter how restrained they are, the police will bear the blame from Linkhart and other Monday morning quarterbacks when they have to respond forcefully in order to stem the tide of lawlessness and destruction that Linkhart helped unleash on Denver. And most of the criminals won't even be from Denver, but are traveling there just to cause trouble. Why Linkhart feels a need to stand up for them and against every police officer and law-abiding, peace-loving resident of and visitor to Denver is beyond me. You might want to write him and ask.