Long-shot third party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her Green Party ticket-mate Cheri Honkala were arrested a short while ago outside Hofstra University while attempting to enter the presidential debate hall without the proper credentials.



Stein and Honkala assert that, since the , managed to secure a spot on a whopping83.1% of all ballots across the country, it is mathematically possible for them to win the election, and therefore they deserve a chance to debate the other candidates.

They further denounce the Commission on Presidential Debates as an "unfair entity" set up by Democratic and Republican leaders to lock third party candidates out of the democratic process.

"Cheri and I agreed that this mockery of democracy, this violation of our basic right as citizens, of a so-called democratic country- we are here to challenge the violation of our democratic rights," [url=http://blogs.philadelphiaweekly.com/phillynow/2012/10/16/green-party-ticket-to-rush-tonight's-debate-are-prepared-for-arrests/]Stein told the Philadelphia Weekly[/url]. "We are prepared to be arrested in the service of democracy and a future that serves us all."

Stein, incidentally, has experience debating at least one of this year's presidential candidates: Mitt Romney. The two shared a stage during the Massachusetts gubernatorial election of 2002, when Stein was a candidate for the local Green-Rainbow Party.

[video via Long Island Report] In Virginia, when Romney announced his candidacy, he was two hours late. In that time, the people doing crowd control separated the obvious Romney supporters from the people who looked like Democrats, or trouble makers. They put up velvet ropes, to hold back the crowd of people, and just before Romney arrived Secret Service looking guys in suits and sunglasses sprayed mace on the non-Romney supporters. It never made the news, but this is the kind of "control" they are keeping on us, the country, the election. Thus, it comes as not too much of a surprise that the local cops have been kept as back up for these kinds of incidents. The news item does not state whether Ms. Stein was making a fuss, or shouting like she was Alex Jones or something, and it does state that she did not have "proper credentials"--(no doubt on purpose, she was not invited to the party). This is protest protocol, to "detain" the miscreants, until after the event, so that the sheep don't get ruffled by the indignance of the people who the "party" is stepping all over.