Yep, I think we have a trend

• Fox censors Sally Field's political comments about the war at the Emmy's.

• University of Arizona young Democrat banned from forum over t-shirt

• The Bush administration's anti-protester manual
  

• Nicole and Jeffery Rank arrested because they refused to take their t-shirts off at a Bush event on the 4th of July.

• University of Florida student who was arrested and tasered at a John Kerry event.
  

Mattew Good on the subject:

Dissent is something guaranteed us, though a right that is universally despised by those in power. We possess the right to dissent, to freedom of speech and expression, so that we have the power to voice discontentment, even if just a single person standing on a street corner.

Yet our perception of democracy is a convoluted one in that it does not particularly exist in this country, nor in most that claim it as their foundation. In reality, plutocratic governance is a far greater reality, and has been for centuries. Those that have the power to economically influence are of greater importance to government than the average citizen, that is the unfortunate state in which we are all born into.

~BT