Dear Editor,This is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to the U.S. president: The Justice Department needs to step in now and release these protesters.

Now whose U.S. Constitutional Rights were violated under the First Amendment to free speech. This is the must disgusting thing. There is a runaway D.A. from California who thinks he is above the law.

As a registered Voter/VET USAF, “I didn’t vote for this, and I won’t stand by and allow it to happen on my watch to others who exercise their First Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution.

Clearly these folks have been falsely arrested, and and their U.S. Constitutional Rights have clearly been violated, and they should be released immediately and the D.A. should be fired.

Did protesters who disrupted Israeli ambassador’s speech deserve to be criminally charged?

Orange County District Atty. Tony Rackauckas pulled no punches Friday when he charged 11 students with conspiring to disrupt a speech by the Israeli ambassador to the United States at UC Irvine last year. “We must decide whether we are a country of laws or a country of anarchy,” Rackauckas said.

“We cannot tolerate a preplanned violation of the law, even if the crime takes place on a school campus and even if the defendants are college students.

“In our democratic society, we cannot tolerate a deliberate, organized, repetitive and collective effort to significantly disrupt a speaker who hundreds assembled to hear,” Rackaukus said.

The Times’ Nicole Santa Cruz reported that backers of the so-called “Irvine 11” have said they were just practicing their free speech rights and committed no crime. But Rackauckas claims they made an “organized attempt to squelch the speaker.”

What do you think about the charges? Share your views here.

-Tom Birchfield

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