Innocent students turned away from Obama speech

(Mario Piperni)

From Daily Kos:

The rightwing echo chamber reverberates with the sound of outrage:

FreedomWorks: Obama Bars College Republicans from Speech, Labels Them Security Threat

Town Hall: College Republicans Deemed Security Threat at Obama Speech

The Blaze: College Republicans Say They Weren't Allowed Into Obama's Speech Because They Were Deemed a Security Threat

OK, anyone want to guess what happens next? Yep.

The National Review rehashed the story today in the form of an interview with one of the "victims": Courtney Scott, Treasurer of the Missouri College Republicans. In the course of doing so they accidentally blundered into a bit of reporting.

Bad move.

At about 3:40 p.m., an individual, whom Scott believes to have been a police officer because of his clothing, which included a hat emblazoned with the letters "PD," stopped the group short of the gymnasium where Obama was scheduled to speak. He told them that they would not be able to proceed further. The group showed him their tickets, but the man said the doors had already closed and that they could not be let in. The tickets stated that the doors opened at 1:45 p.m. and did not state when the doors were scheduled to close. President Obama was scheduled to begin speaking at 4:00.

Emphasis mine. I realize that if you are a College Republican you are hoping to matriculate into a world where the rules do not apply to you - but strolling to the vicinity of the entrance with less than 20 minutes to go and then whining because the Secret Service won't unlock the doors for you? Surely some things are simply beyond the bounds of reason, even for conservatives.

To their credit, The Blaze updated its original post with a statement from the Secret Service (though not one which really addressed the issue here), but those other websites did not. And the comments at all of them demonstrate how clueless their readers really are.

This had nothing to do with being College Republicans,... except for the whining afterwards. That, I'm afraid, is all too typical.