http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2001/7/17/122855 Tuesday, July 17, 2001 1:27 p.m. EDT Tennessee Radio Talker Sets Record Straight on Tax Protest Over the weekend Tennessee newspapers were filled with reports of a near-riot at the State Capitol on Friday, after two Nashville talk radio hosts exhorted their listeners to march on the Legislature in protest over plans for a new statewide income tax. WLAC-AM's Phil Valentine and WWTN-FM's Steve Gill's call to arms prompted what the Memphis Commercial Appeal described as a "sometimes violent" altercation between police and up to 2,000 protesters, an episode legislators called "harrowing and intimidating." "I was in fear for my safety last night," state senator David Fowler later told Gill. "I was afraid someone might get shot." Reports of widespread window breaking made the protesters seem even more riotous. But Valentine tells NewsMax.com that the disruption, small as it was, was the result of police overreaction - more than 100 cops, some clad in riot gear, who were summoned to the scene by Gov. Don Sundquist, who backs the tax hike. "I began my remote broadcast in front of the Capitol and the people kept coming," the Tennessee radio talker explained. "Suddenly, the Nashville Police moved in. One motorcycle cop began ticketing motorists for horn honking. They brought in cops on horseback. The state police donned riot gear." Only later did Valentine learn that, as he put it, "some idiot had thrown a rock through the reception area window of the governor's office." The incident sent state troopers into overdrive, the radioman told NewsMax.com. "Two different people in cars were pulled from their vehicles and handcuffed," Valentine said. "One was a gentleman who dared ask a cop his name after he witnessed him verbally abusing a woman in her car. The second was a mother, riding with her husband and 3-year-old daughter." According to the afternoon-drive-time talker, when the officer told the woman to go home she replied that it was her "constitutional right to protest." He shot back, "I'll show you a constitutional right." In a flash, the officer swung into action. According to Valentine, he began to "pull the woman from the passenger side of the car, then handcuffed her and threw her in the back of a squad car in front of her hysterical little girl." After the altercation, Valentine had both protesters on his show to describe their ordeals. Besides the folks he interviewed, Valentine says a local television news station caught a state trooper on videotape "choking one protester, then throwing him to the ground and dragging him by one foot while the guy showed no resistance." Tennessee media reports painting the demonstrators as a rabble-rousing mob hell-bent on violence are a complete distortion, the popular Nashville host insisted. "I was right in the middle of it. We had everything from soccer moms to grandmas and kids of all ages. It was more of a patriotic Fourth of July-type atmosphere than anything else." --------- "Ok. That's pretty much my limit." ---Black Unicorn