that's true. today on r t with the bad weather out of the way the republican national convention is in full swing in tampa but not everyone is singing mitt romney's praises coming up r.t. asks maine's delegates of the r. and c. is that the rule. was a former marine detained and sent to a psychiatric ward all for writing anti government comments on facebook as a supporter of terror prevention or the latest assault on free speech we'll speak to the marines lawyer. and one of the poorest most dangerous cities in the u.s. is attempting to rein in its debt its plan lay off the entire police force and then replace it with one that doesn't have any collective bargaining powers does this sound counter intuitive to you coming up we'll find out if this tactic can actually

work. we're going to see winning in tampa florida where the republican national convention is underway slated to speak is mitt romney's wife ann and a jersey governor chris christie. just a short time ago artie's christine shot this video with her camera phone inside the r. and c. along with some cheering you have to listen closely for some booing over how the delegations are being seated most notably in maine during tonight's speeches they're not expected to mention what's happening what's been happening with the political process of actually nominating their candidate mitt romney but we do want to tell you more about it are two white house correspondent christine for as i was in tampa for more on this story christine tell us more about what you're seeing and hearing over there. i tell you well as i don't know if i've ever seen anything like

it and to be totally honest i'm not sure of the r n c was expecting what happened to happen what you had here was the chairman of the republican national committee rense priebus call a vote to adopt new national party rules when that was asked he asked for simply eyes or nose and from where i was sitting it seemed to me of the delegates voting on the floor who said no we're voting on a whole lot louder and with more nose than those who said i but of course chairman priebus said the eyes have it without really any discussion really really interesting and it wasn't just maine there are only twenty four delegates from maine that vote already taken fourteen votes went to romney ten went to ron paul but really the texas delegation which is absolutely enormous some of the ron paul supporters but this is such a bigger thing less than just ron paul this is about an entirely new set of rules being adopted that will shift sort of the grassroots political message in so many

states that really brings you know delegates who don't support the same person but of course was as you know national conventions are about unity about coming together for one candidate it's certainly the opposite of what we saw just a few minutes ago that video that i shot with my i phone down there not just brewing but people calling point of order people really you know not happy with the way things are going on here but i do want to focus for a second on maine these are delegates who many of them ten years thinking they would be seated and in fact they were not seated we spoke to them just a few days ago about what they've been going through the last week. of the salvage of ron paul supporters who attended his weekend rally a few of them are here on business political business mike wallace is here as a delegate from the state of maine and has spent the last week involved in a bitter fight quietly unfolding in the shadows. there is

a lack of. integrity with the way they are and. i mean delegation the republican national committee's rules committee and credentials committee has gotten involved as well and succeeded in dismantling something delegates say is theirs they basically decided to unseat all of our delegates and then they re appointed twenty new delegates and twenty two alternates they did they did keep ten of our delegates and ten of our alternates got stripped of half our delegates for paul supporters and this is the way small battles were supposed to be won at a grassroots level and by following a little no rules in america's sometimes confusing political process but the rules ron paul himself says seem irrelevant to those in charge they've been bending the rules and breaking the rules and rewriting rules for too long that's what we have to stop from happening twenty one year old ashley ryan has become one of the highest profile faces in this fight and spoke about the consequences at this weekend's rally in the best case scenario delegates will be awarded proportionately

. in the worst case scenario every state could become winner take all. delegates say it could undermine democracy as we know it turning each political party from a big tent with many ideas to a small group of political insiders who call all the shots in tampa christine for zero archie. and i should tell you that the main delegates who thought they would be seated and were not they were in the stands today cheering along with everyone else booing along i should say about the things that they did just that they didn't agree with also those maine delegates the ten delegates who did get to cast their vote for ron paul as soon as that vote was taken they unified and walked off the floor together so really interesting what we're seeing here is ron paul's presence is still really being felt but i should

say that roll call vote now wrapped up mitt romney is the official nominee we can stop calling him the presumed presumptive nominee he's now the official nominee for the republican party list so interesting how it's playing out there were saying as you had mentioned that these these conventions are supposed to be this show of unity sounds like there is some kind of a split there has there ever been tension like this at a convention. well as i haven't been alive that long but you know people are talking about you know the one nine hundred sixty s. i think one hundred sixty four barry goldwater days there pointing to his son was at the ron paul rally over the weekend and spoke a little bit about it but by the time you get to the national convention of course we watched those debates i watched every one of them where it got contentious between the candidates between all the candidates who wanted to become the republican presidential nominee but by the time you get to this point we are not

far out from election day this is when they want to show unity and so it was really sick. rising i think you could see chairman priebus getting pretty frustrated that he couldn't really calm down his people and get them all to just sort of join the party now what do you think does it seem like the g.o.p. establishment is trying to censor them or or what is the feeling that you're getting speaking to these delegates that support ron paul. well again you know no matter what going forward liz no matter what the polls are saying right now it's going to be a tough fight is going to be a close race between mitt romney and president obama and so they really want to have as many people behind their candidate as possible but what you do see and what i've heard time and time again you know actually ryan saying this should be a party with you know of a chance and a lot of ideas within that tent we're not you know people with only one or two ideas people have a lot of things that they believe in and a lot of reasons of if they're members of the republican party and she's worried

a whole lot of other people that i spoke to are very worried that this is simply going to become a party for political insiders the part of the power they worry will become more and more concentrated so that expression all politics is local there were that's not going to be the case anymore that all politics will now be from the top down with the man with the most money wins now this is the first day since it got postponed due to tropical storm isaac how did the paul levitz plan to continue getting their voices out in the coming days their voices proving to be quite loud as we're seeing the way it played out today. well i've got to say liz what took place today was sort of what everything in the last week was leading up to this roll call the delegates still hoping at the last moment they could get a rule passed on the floor that would change it and allow the original delegates of maine to be seated again that's didn't happen the vote is taken mitt romney is the

official nominee and that's going to be the storyline that you're going to hear but i do have to say ron paul supporters are everywhere ron paul himself was on the can the convention floor a few hours ago this morning and certainly was very well received a lot of people cheering for him chanting for him that's what happens you know basically anywhere where he goes that his followers his disciples as i like to call them know where he's going to be and we see outside as well deeper holding ron paul signs wearing ron paul t. shirt so they say they're going to continue the movement they say they're going to continue to do so now of course spreading his messages but also trying to rally support for his son senator rand paul from kentucky to try to keep. the dream and the revolution as they call it alive christine thanks so much for keeping us updated over there and that was our team white house correspondent christine for that. but he turned out to ask the question when does the punishment fit the crime

the punishment i'm talking about involve u.s. troops and their actions in two high profile cases and afghanistan one case involving marines urinating on corpses and the other case deals with u.s. soldiers burning copies of the koran r t was the one of the first networks to report on the video showing four marines urinating on the bodies of what appears to be three dead taliban insurgents as you can see the marines are in full combat gear this video set off a firestorm of controversy here in the u.s. . almost members of the military and political world quickly apologized but others cheered on their actions including conservative radio host and c.n.n. contributor dana lash can someone explain to me if there's supposed to be a scandal that someone pees on the corpse of a taliban fighter someone who was this is part of an organization murdered over three thousand americans i dropped due to that's me though when our team

started reporting on this video it quickly proved to be a divisive issue our online comment section on you tube created a heated debate both for and against the actions of the marines back to the punishment for those involved the one will face no discipline at all the other three have pleaded guilty and will receive a permanent mark on their records that will impact any future promotions or reenlistment so basically a slap on the wrist the u.s. military has also handed down punishment for the burning of korans back in february when news of the burning of the crowns leaked that touched off several days of rioting in attacks on u.s. troops at baghran base in north coble afghan president hamid karzai called on a public trial for the soldiers involved but that is not going to happen that's because the army has found no ill intent in the koran burning so no criminal charges will be filed those soldiers however will face administrative discipline which could mean a cut in pay or

a demotion so back to the question when does the punishment fit the crime and after nearly eleven years in afghanistan it appears the actions by the u.s. aren't winning the hearts and minds of locals there we turn now to an update to the marine that was sent to a psych ward for his facebook posts as reported last week twenty six year old brandon routh was sent to a psychiatric ward for his controversial post to his page. like my right. well you are looking at video of local authorities and the f.b.i. arresting ralph aconite of his virginia home on aug sixteenth appears to be confused asking the authorities what crime you have committed the f.b.i. found this post anti-american and quote paris and nature last week a judge found that there was no legal basis to hold in the ward against his will so

what does this mean for freedom of speech in the us for more on this case john whitehead the marines attorney joins us now don welcome so first want to ask you what is the latest in this case what is next for brandon well. the ruling we go next a great victory for first and then we did talk to brandon he was here all day yesterday we discussed. a legal case of rice actually gets the authorities here the government so he's thinking about that i think that's a real possibility i think we need to hold these people accountable as this is someone posting things those facebook there are no specific threats to any kind of individuals and i mean this is a as i said on the internet every day i thought about revolution in fact most of the stuff he was courting were some lyrics from a group called full members a canadian rap group i mean i told people to be dangerous to quote guys like john the are some of the older dude back in the older days to talk about revolution these days so but what it says is that they are watching facebook the authorities

are watching facebook they are conducting surveillance it's a very dangerous trend now rabaa wasn't charged with any crime. how are authorities any able to justify sending him away. under a civil commitment statute we're genyen almost every state have what we found is getting in this case about twenty thousand people plus each year in virginia disappear like this authorities drive arriva arrest them and take them away too and then a situation here predator robs the other guy on the internet started yelling about it alerted us we got about what most people you never know about flash is getting in this case i've had hundreds of people call me that this has happened to across the united states but here's the weird thing mainly bathrooms i don't know why that maybe if people remember back in two thousand and nine janet the policy issue to men was called right wing extremism and leslie best friends were mentioned in those

extremist memos so for some reason our government weirdly so under the other ministrations seemed to think better is or extremists so they might be targeting veterans now this has been argued as a first amendment issue want to take a listen now from brandon routh himself hand describing some of the controversial posts that were on his facebook page and the line that i posted on my facebook wall was sharp enough my son michael and i'm here several heads and what i actually meant was that was you know what we call a metaphor because excuse me metaphor exactly. now in addition to that i do want to bring attention to some of these other controversial posts i want to bring them up there. one of them their dear men and women in positions in power within our government corrupt bureaucrats corrupt judges and police nazis in the marine corps

iraq obama and your communist cabinets we have another one their friends if you are unaware of the great amount of evil perpetrated by the american government i suggest you take you take your head out of the sand the day of reckoning is almost at hand and one more there the revolution is upon us i'm starting the revolution i am done waiting now john some of the as they are they do raise eyebrows to say the least. when you say those those kinds of comments would get some kind of a reaction meaning that you raised. here's the key the first amendment is written as james bastien who wrote it said to protect minority against the majority when he was talking about people who speak out so i mean i see this stuff all over the internet so they're going to have to start rounding up a lot of people and some of the stuff again sounds like a john lennon song revolution i mean can you quote people the internet these days

that are extremist sure a question is what does it stream is obviously the government thinks these statements are extreme but larissa king says something very similar this by the way i'm a big market picking fan so i think today martin is the king could get rounded up some of the things he's there and he talked about a revolution and above the way the perpetrator very good revolution of a right not by the way brand ragas not own a weapon and as the if that interview which i conducted you just the clip from it he says he's nonviolent revolution is talking about a cultural revolution ok and we listen to our your interview there and you have described it as a metaphor i want to ask you how do you draw the line where is the line between a threat and a metaphor how can authorities tell the difference. well the difference is you talk are you targeting somebody i mean i'm going to say hey i like to talk as though in

fact i've seen some clips real swiftly someone really clips only internet of all these talk show hosts are saying this time because their heads off as. this girl wants to go as i was told at the prison i mean so a lot of people are dissatisfied with government the basic question is how to parse between what is real what is not a background check of this man a decorated marine of this honor of standing members granted he doesn't even own a weapon i mean what's he going to post somebody on but the point is he's been doing this stuff for a long time and august they go around the rather obvious time around of about a million other folks right away those were all dangerous all right you know there's been a lot of discussion lately about domestic terrorism in large part due to tragedies like the one we saw most recently the sikh temple shooting over in wisconsin and they just had said that a way to monitor suspects is through social media and this is what hat is happening in this case they were monitoring his facebook do you think authorities taking that

step is it is crossing the line. well i think you're going to conduct surveillance on american citizens the fourth amendment requires a that you have credible evidence someone's doing something illegal it has to be particularly. conducting surveillance while as for the memo if you don't have a search warrant they hear they did not have a search warrant nor an arrest warrant they're arresting and taking away and put him in a mental hospital if this is a real threat sure the authorities should or i discuss this but here again they have not charged with a crime is that we called both the f.b.i. and the place they said he committed a crime and we with well why did you rusty in the first place was when you just want to go up and talk to them line vehicles often down the street as if he was getting ready to blow up the trade towers so the facts here the police say he did not commit a crime so why was he arrested ok i do want to play a clip from another clip from brandon robert who is kind of reflecting on the whole

ordeal. i never imagined that there would be problems to the degree that we have or or things going on that that are easy easy to find if you're told to go look for them. very specifically the rabbinate these executive orders oh yes a lot of people most the less than the political level took a ride a concern about executive order here's the president dictatorial powers absolutely i mean it literally gives the president a bill to write his own laws and that's what he's doing that's not only what's going on in this nation don i want to ask you looking at the wider implications of this case what does that mean for our first amendment rights and why should americans be concerned about this case well first of all what's good about brenden here rather rob is that he actually has done something nice he's doing in the first amendment allows that because i tell people this the person i'm just doesn't allow this it tells us if you think you're going to go in the wrong direction it's time

speak up and says we can petition our government for a redress of grievances so i think that the the bigger picture here is. it's time to speak up all right on these issues off on our griddle exactly bars are written on president obama's kill list i'm opposed to all that. i think our goal is moving in a dangerous direction but so does the a.c.l.u. and various right wing groups all groups i work with all the left in the right so there's the i work with the constitution project in washington d.c. we're all concerned is this in the amount of about forty different groups we're often start about these things and here we have random robs the no they don't come arrest maybe i'm to belittle probably or some of these other people that were they show you know groups like that i know rob is an easy target to say in this civil commitment to rivendell many people disappeared his mother got a facebook and started yelling about it we know about it but i would concern about the civil commitment i think it's very very dangerous all right john thank you so

much for coming on the show ring at the. latest on this case that was attorney john whitehead thank you. we're going to take a quick break but coming up times are tough in the u.s. perhaps no city knows that better than camden new jersey a solution to solve their debt crisis layoff. so is this really what things have come to that story next. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that clearly is called. the far left doesn't want

a usa to defeat terrorism. terrorist cells neighborhood. the only ball and a kiss. from cohen joins. us in support of the service but you know the corporate media distracts us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that sells a sensational stick garbage because of breaking news i'm having martin and we're going to break the set. up.

a crime and corruption so bad in one u.s. city that it decided to do away with its police force camden new jersey has consistently been ranked among the top ten most dangerous cities in the country it's expected to save the city millions of dollars in the local police forces place is camden county police and to make matters worse what stirring controversy is that these officers are prohibited from unionizing for more i spoke with r.t. correspondent christine marina. that's what it appears to be liz because as you mentioned already to our viewers camden police department every officer that makes up that depletes police department two hundred seventy of them will be laid off by the end of this year and according to the plans of of put in place by new jersey officials house of those officers will be hired back to serve for the camden

county police force which actually has not been created yet but once they are serving for that police force they will be non union members which means that these officers will not have collective bargaining rights they will not be able to bargain for pensions for health benefits for retirement ages and for salaries and this clearly is an indication that it takes more rights away from public workers such as police officers so this does appear to be an increasing kind of dr talwar breaking apart unions at least and in camden ok so we have a lot of issues at play here one is this possible union busting another is the safety of the people of the city of camden and is it possible that getting rid of a police force i mean what is that going to do to the city of camden will it lead

to more police on the streets or less. you know liz i myself had that question i called a source of mine that works for the new jersey state police and i asked him is this a good move do you think this is better and you know you put it bluntly nice said no this is very very dangerous move because first of all camped in is the most crime ridden city in the united states of our viewers are not aware that the crime rate in camden is five times the national average and it is one of the poorest cities in this country so when you strip a city of that of all their police department and then you create a county division it's not clear if the city is going to become safer in any way you know we have to remember that it was just in january two thousand and eleven when one hundred sixty seven police officers in camden were laid off and after that scrying got worse and new jersey state police officers with. reassigned to cover

the city of camden and this actually ended up costing the state more so at the end of the day what we see here is that clearly a union is will be busted up but it does not necessarily mean that this city is going to become any safer in the long run ok and you were talking about these crime rates marion and we do have some charts to show it's kind of illustrate just how bad it is in camden if you see there in purple that's camden and we can see that that is multiplied much more the crime rates in camden are significantly higher than the national average now we're cutting the police force over there and camden is also dealing with budget woes so is this more of a budget issue too to write its budget wrong or is it about the safety of the people. well i mean it depends on who you ask clearly this is a move that they're saying is going to save the city a lot of money the officials the new jersey officials that are making this decision

if you speak to the police officials there's not one police official that i've spoken to so far that has told me this is a move that's going to benefit the people of camden as a matter of fact many many officers are saying that this is actually going to take away police from nearby counties of camden and which will then be reassigned to camden because camden is not going to have a police department any longer so the nearby counties are they're going to lose their security force or their security force will be depleted you know it's ironic that the story's coming out right now because the governor of new jersey chris christie will be speaking at the republican national convention this evening and he is a governor that has been known for stripping these collective bargaining rights of unions throughout new jersey since he became governor in two thousand eleven he temporarily limited collective bargaining rights of unions throughout new jersey he

made sweeping changes to pension benefits and he also under governor christie four thousand police officers in new jersey were laid off last year that was across the board that's the same pattern we've seen happening throughout the united states but in this situation we're talking about the most dangerous city in the united states losing their police department clearly this does not look like a safe decision but it's on the last that is going to be pushed forward by the end of the year very controversial issue there are a lot of play marina thanks so much for staying on top of this story that was our t. correspondent marine important. and that's going to do it for now but for more on the stories we covered you can check out our youtube channel youtube dot com slash or to america you can also add to our website r t v dot com slash usa and you can follow me on twitter liz wall for now have a great night.