Did Obama call the 'SWAT team' on Tea Partiers?
The appearance of armored police officers causes outrage among the Tea Pary ranks

Conservative bloggers are outraged, saying authorities unleashed a "SWAT team" on 200 Tea Party protesters in Quincy, Ill., outside a convention center where President Obama was scheduled to speak. No violence erupted, but "there were a few tense moments," reports Rodney Hart in the Quincy Herald-Whig, when Tea Partiers refused a Secret Service order to move. The crowd instead began singing "God Bless, America" and the national anthem, prompting police in riot gear to move in until the crowd backed away. This is completely "unbelievable," says Jim Hoft in Big Government. The police "were worried about violence," but the "threatening protesters" were nothing more than peaceful grandmothers! Don't believe this Tea Party "fable," says David Weigel in The Washington Post. The so-called SWAT team was just local police who "briefly marched down the street to clear it for the president's motorcade." Watch video of the police below:
-
From Da Vinci to a golden toilet: a history of museum heists
In the Spotlight Following the ‘spectacular’ events at the Louvre, museums are ‘increasingly being targeted by criminal gangs’
-
Can Gen Z uprisings succeed where other protest movements failed?
Today's Big Question Apolitical and leaderless, youth-led protests have real power but are vulnerable to the strongman opportunist
-
The allegations of Christian genocide in Nigeria
The Explainer West African nation has denied claims from US senator and broadcaster