The Daily Background

Coverage of the incident where Virginia Republican Senator George Allen’s staffers tackled, dragged, and assaulted an ex-marine liberal blogger (video here) has expanded after initially being reported by CNN and a local Virginia NBC affiliate. The blogger, ex-marine turned University of Virginia law student Mike Stark, writes:

I demand that Senator Allen fire the staffers who beat up a constituent attempting to use his constitutional right to petition his government. I also want to know why Senator Allen would want his staffers to assault someone asking questions about matters of public record in the heat of a political campaign. Why are his divorce records sealed? Why was he arrested in the 1970s? And why did his campaign batter me when I asked him about these questions.

[…]
I will be pressing charges against George Allen and his surrogates later today. George Allen, at any time, could have stopped the fray. All he had to do was say, “This is not how my campaign is run. Take your hands off that man.” He could have ignored my questions. Instead he and his thugs chose violence. I spent four years in the Marine Corps. I’ll be damned if I’ll let my country be taken from me by thugs that are afraid of taking responsibility for themselves.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post (which is very influential in Virginia politics because of DC’s geographical proximity to Virginia and the considerable subscriber overlap between the two areas) has picked up the story, noting that the Allen campaign is claiming the whole thing was orchestrated as a shameless Democratic stunt.

Filed under: oh six midterm Elections, Z-TDB Blog