Matt Blunt Orders Troops to Fire Into Handicapped Crowd

Well, no, but you wouldn't know it judging from the coverage in the media. Here's an editorial from today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Gov. Matt Blunt: No handicap parking:

MISSOURI GOV. MATT BLUNT marked the 15th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act this month with a speech to the Governor's Council on Disability. Alas, several disabled people in wheelchairs weren't allowed into the room to hear the speech.

Alas, alas! Barred from the room because they were in wheelchairs! Blunt might as well ordered his staff to wade in with the truncheons.

But let's add some bold to a description of these disabled people in wheelchairs:

Carla Sellers, from the advocacy group Show-Me ADAPT, told The Kansas City Star that a Capitol police officer refused to let her and eight other activists, some of whom were in wheelchairs, attend a public meeting of the council on July 20 in Jefferson City. The council serves people with disabilities.

The ADAPT members were wearing organization T-shirts but were well-behaved. Some ADAPT members outside the building had carried protest signs, but they had not brought the signs into the building. Earlier in the spring, eight members of the group had chained their wheelchairs to the House door to protest the governor's Medicaid cuts, which have fallen heavily on the disabled.

So we have the story told from the perspective of an agitator protestor, reprinted without question by the state media. Also, we're assured that the protestors were well-behaved.

One, who doesn't merely accept the word of a professional advocate, wonders what ADAPT members would have done to disrupt the speech had they not been limited to behaving well outside and wailing about unfairness to the media.