Solidarity with David Schultz

My friend David Schultz is a reporter. On Tuesday, he was covering a public meeting at the Veterans Affairs hospital here in Washington, D.C. Routine, right? But when he started interviewing a veteran who had complaints about the care he was receiving at the hospital, Gloria Hairston, a communications specialist at the VA, demanded that Dave stop the interview and turn over his recorder. When he said he wouldn't, she called on the security guards at the event to intimidate him, demanded the memory card to his recorder, and threatened him when a vet tried to give Dave his phone number so they could talk later. WTOP has a fuller account of the sequence of the events here, but we shouldn't need to hear more to get outraged.

Dave was doing his job, doing it in an open, public forum, and as a result, he got harassed, threatened, and ultimately had his property stolen by a federal employee just because he was reporting news she didn't like.