This news story has me outraged beyond belief. What do you think?

Tracy Chandler, a young woman from Whittier, California organized a tribute to those who died in the September 11th atrocity by maniacs from the middle east. She approached a man who owned a private business - and RV sales dealership - in La Hambra, California. He agreed and citizens in the area began creating personal tributes to those who died in that criminal act as well as personal displays in support of our nation and our armed forces. All of these were on private property and they included a large number of American flags. Many of teh displays were done voluntarily by children in teh community.

Three Americans-in-name-only went to this site recently and began vandalizing the displays. They cut, ripped and even burned 80 of the flags displayed there. They smashed all of the tiles made and decorated by local children to commemorate the victims of the mindless hatred of fanatical maniacs against us and our government. Here's the most disgusting part...

Local La Hambra police watched them do most of it and did nothing, claiming that they considered the three to only be "expressing their Consitutionally protected free speech rights."

Had the asses burned, mutilated and desecrated flags that were their property, I would submit that, while heinous repudiations of the very rights they invoke, their acts would have been exactly what police officers there claimed... stupid speech, but protected stupid speech. The difference here is that they did not desecrate their own property. They went on private property and destroyed private property that was also equally the protected "free speech" of others.

Civil disobedience it was not. Expression of their own positions it was not. What they did is nothing more or less than a criminal act, not protected political speech. The three vandals claim they "have a right to destroy the display because (we) disagree with what it stands for." In other words, they believe in free speech only so long as it is speech with which they agree.

At first, local police authorities said they were unable to bring charges against the vandals unless police officers had actually observed the criminal acts. When that blew up in their faces with other witnesses relating how local officers stood by without acting to halt the vandalism or to arrest the criminals, authorities started backpedaling immediately, saying they would "investigate" with an eye toward filing criminal charges.

As far as I am concerned, these three mindless b*****ds ought to be arrested, tried and - upon conviction - be forced to pay for all of the damages they did. Not only that, they should be forced to PUBLICLY restore EVERY display they damaged or destroyed and be required to make public statements of the wrongs they committed against the Constitutional rights of others. In addition, I believe they should receive the maximum fine permitted under California law on each count... with each display damaged being a separate count. More than 80 flags were destroyed or damaged by these scum. In addition, they should each receive the maximum jail time for each count, to be served consecutively. This is a misdemeanor crime under California law, so the maximum is one year on each count. That would add up to 80 years apiece. Then comes the kicker. The California "Hate Crime" law should be imposed on all of them for their cummulative acts. That would increase their jail time by an additional five years.

Free speech is NOT license to say or do whatever the Hell you want to do just because you want to do it or say it. If these scum feel this country is so terrible, then our borders are wide open. The rest of us will only wave goodbye to them when they start out in search of freedoms they can abuse elsewhere in the world, especially in those communist-controlled nations they hold up as such wonderlands of utopian paradise. Let them go tell Saddam Hussein's thugs about their views on any of his policies. Let them head for Tianeman Square to demonstrate for anything in the People's Republic of China. And, oh yeah, when they finally do wake up and discover what they abused, refuse to let them re-enter this country.

As for the police officers who refused to act, I wholeheartedly believe that every one of them should be fired immediately with total loss of all benefits and loss for life of any right to hold any police commission. I don't want anyone that dumb and intellectually challenged carrying a badge or a gun ever! I don't want to think my life or safety, or the lives and safety of anyone, should ever be in the hands of such mndless idiots, obviosuly incapable of simple logic and a blantant warped, twisted understanding of freedom. Perhaps they should also be charged with criminal dereliction of their sworn duty to protect the rights of the displays they permitted to be desecrated. I wouldn't argue against that either. Would they have been treated differently had they stood idly by and permitted the three scumbags to set fire to private vehicles and not make an arrest? There is absolutely no difference other than the monetary value of the private property they watched being destroyed. They ought to be prosecuted as well because they purposefully violated the civil rights of the people whose displays they allowed to be silenced in favor of the nonexistent "rights" of those slimes.

Am I alone in these beliefs? What do you folks think?