Opinions on Democracy, Media, Stolen Elections Now Posted on Tased, but not Confused, Andrew Meyer's Website...
By Brad Friedman on 10/30/2007, 11:32am PT  

All criminal charges against Andrew "Don't Tase Me, Bro" Meyer have now been dropped in exchange for an apology from the 21-year old student. We guess he didn't "incite a riot" after all, as originally charged by the police [PDF] who tasered him.

AP covers here. NYTimes covers here.

Meyer, however, remains defiant, and stands by the line of questioning that got him tased (inappropriately, in our opinion) for asking three questions of Sen. John Kerry during a recent, now-infamous, event at the University of Florida (video here).

On his website today, now that he's out of hot water, Meyer posts a number of opinions including...

  • Tasers are bad: "Tasers are not 'non-lethal.' Since June 2001, more than 150 people in the United States have died after being struck by tasers. I do not believe a taser should have been used on me..."
  • Democracy is good: "We talk about fighting for democracy in Iraq. What about fighting for democracy at home? There is nothing more central to democracy than the right to vote, and while Americans are fighting and dying for democracy in Iraq, democracy in America is dying without a fight. America, our voting rights are being stolen from us..."
  • Our elections aren't fair: "Not only might your vote not count, but the "frontrunners" have already been decided for you. Why is anyone a "frontrunner" yet? No one has voted. ... The media, which is controlled by a few men, is deciding the agenda for the entire country..."
  • Forget about "Liberal" vs. "Conservative": "The United States have been divided. The country has been split into 'left vs. right,' 'Red state vs. Blue state,' 'CNN vs. FOX News.' This is all false division..."
  • Candidates on both sides are ignored: "The media has time all day to talk about Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan, but millions of Americans have never heard the names Mike Gravel or Ron Paul..."
  • Stolen Elections: "The will of the American people was subverted in both the 2000 and 2004 elections..."
  • Wake up, America: "[D]emocracy depends on a free and fair election. If we the people do not decide the elections, than we the people are not living in a democracy. The problems of 2000 and 2004 have not been fixed. In fact, they have been expanded..."

Love him or hate him, we can't say we disagree with any of Meyer's general points. And we won't be issuing an apology about that.

Also not issuing apologies: Kerry and the majority of the students at the event who sat by and took no action as Meyer screamed in pain while being inappropriately tased by six police officers.

The Florida Police, however, acted appropriately according to a Florida Police review of the Florida Police actions. So we guess everything is just hunky-dory.

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