Walter Shaub, the federal government's former top ethics watchdog, said Ms Sanders's response was a clear violation of federal law...... “Sarah, I know you don’t care even a tiny little bit about the ethics rules, but using your official account for this is a clear violation of 5 CFR 2635.702(a),” Mr Shaub tweeted. ....... He said: “Sanders used her official govt account to condemn a private business for personal reasons. Seeks to coerce business by using her office to get public to pressure it. Violates endorsements ban too, which has an obvious corollary for discouraging patronage. Misuse reg covers both.....

Did not see this reported in US media. link UK Independent

Excellent analysis Ramona.

On the other hand, there's feeding the troll exactly the kind of stuff he likes to eat in order to distract the news cycle. Just sayin'. We will now commence with serious discussion by all the top talking heads about whether it's the correct thing to do for a president to review a restaurant, whether it's owned by a friend or an enemy. And top reporters will take time to tweet on it so they get more followers, so just in case they lose their job they can put that huge number on their C.V.  The discussion will go on for a week. Rinse and repeat.

Trump supporters are THAT stupid. And ignorant, frenzied mad malevolent idiots.

They are targeting Ye Olde Red Hen restaurant in Ontario, Canada. They either can't read a webpage, or don't know jack on geography, or both. Some of the posts:

“Hope you go out of business you liberal trash. Clean up this dump,” commented Thomas Collins, whose Facebook profile indicates that he lives in Maryland, on Sunday.

“I wonder how long before the Red Hen slop house folds and goes bankrupt?,” wrote Albert Holland.

“Shame on you,” wrote Connie Szczepanik. “Bigots and hypocrites!”

Much has changed when Max Boot, a perhaps at least temporarily chastened, anti-Trump, neoconservative (former neoconservative?), early Iraq war cheerleader and consistent enthusiast for the frequent use of US military power, is quoting Martin Luther King, Jr.  From his WaPo opinion piece yesterday:

.....

These public rebukes have predictably allowed Trump’s defenders to play the victim, as they love to do. “Her actions say far more about her than about me,” Sanders tweeted indignantly about Wilkinson. “I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so.” Her father, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, weighed in with his own tweet: “Bigotry. On the menu at Red Hen Restaurant in Lexington VA. Or you can ask for the ‘Hate Plate.’ And appetizers are ‘small plates for small minds.’” Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich decried “the increasing personal nastiness toward people who work for President Trump,” which he claimed “reflects the left’s understanding that they are losing.” (Trump, for his part, accused the Red Hen of having “filthy canopies, doors and windows . . .  . I always had a rule, if a restaurant is dirty on the outside, it is dirty on the inside!”)

The hypocrisy is galling. The administration thinks that a Colorado baker should not be forced to serve a gay couple because their wedding offends his religious beliefs, but it insists that restaurateurs should be forced to serve Trump aides whose conduct, rather than their characteristics, offend their most deeply held beliefs.

Trump defenders are in no position to decry “personal nastiness” and “bigotry” when they defend a nasty, bigoted president. Huckabee wins the hypocrisy gold medal for attacking the Red Hen just hours after posting a picture of tattooed MS-13 gang members under the nasty, bigoted headline: “Nancy Pelosi introduces her campaign committee for the take back of the House.”

.....

I can understand why such acts elicit a strong reaction when administration officials venture out in public. But that doesn’t mean restaurateurs should refuse to serve patrons whose political views they find repugnant. In Washington, especially, this could easily get out of hand: “Sorry, senator, no eggs for you this morning – not after your vote on S.R. 2148!” Even less does it mean that flash mobs should harass Cabinet members in public, as demanded by Rep. Maxine Walters (D- Calif.). Some who serve in the administration – such as Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein – should be applauded for trying to save the country from the president.

While I sympathize with the impulse behind what an Internet wag has dubbed the “no justice, no peas” doctrine, in the end I think it is counterproductive and reduces Trump’s critics to his low level. To save our country, we need to practice heroic self-restraint and courageous civility in the face of grievous provocation. Remember what the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said: “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.”

"Those who oppose Trump shouldn't sink to his level", Max Boot, Washington Post, yesterday afternoon.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/06/25/those-...

Ann Telnaes' latest (cartoon) at WaPo:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/06/26/the-hypocrisy...

Response to barefooted above

There is no reason to believe that Democrats have the backbone to protect us. Maxine Waters being criticized by fellow Democrats on the shaming issue is outrageous. Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant. During sit ins, Black were beaten. 

https://theslot.jezebel.com/these-are-the-white-moderates-mlk-warned-us-about-1827119523

​As I post this a do-nothing long term Democratic legislator was kicked out on his behind in a NY Primary. The incumbent took the voters for granted. When Democrats tell enraged voters to be civil in the face of authoritarianism, they can expect pushback. Nothing is gained from being polite.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/6/26/17506970/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-joe-crowley-primary-new-york

​Resist.

Edit to add:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won by running on immigration.

Jennifer Rubin's final for now take on Red Hen, posted yesterday, is at https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/06/26/my-final-t...

​It offers a nuanced view.  It is not that lengthy and it's only recently occurred to me--please pardon, I'm a little slow sometimes--that some might not be able to access Washington Post articles if they are behind a firewall.  We subscribe.  I do not know their current policy on online access for non-subscribers.  So I am posting in full here:  

When I voiced — and still voice — support for quiet and not-so-quiet acts of social snubbing and shaming, I surely wasn’t calling for mobs to descend on anyone. Waters didn’t help her side by suggesting as much. No one should be urging conduct that can devolve into violence. No one should stalk anyone or break any other law.

On the other side, objecting that personal confrontation is no substitute for political action and for voting misses the point; no one serious argues that denying Sanders a quiet dinner is going to end the scourge of Trump. Here, we are talking about individual actions of conscience that put the president’s aides and former aides on notice that they have betrayed the public’s trust and offended their fellow Americans’ sense of decency.

We, after all, do have a long and honorable tradition of public demonstration and rebuke. Protests outside abortion clinics, for example, intend to make people feel uncomfortable. Civil rights protesters did the same during the 1960s and beyond. They, too, were accused of being disruptive and impolite. Sometimes, however, a little discomfort serves some social purpose. One is not entitled to live a life without fuss or muss after engaging in destructive, racists and antidemocratic conduct in office or public life. (If David Duke had walked into the Red Hen, I’d be in favor of calling him out and asking him to leave. )

But let’s take a step back here. Ordinary Americans have a right, maybe even an obligation, not to reward conduct that has promoted dishonesty, racism and authoritarianism. I would applaud employers who would shun former Trump aides and refuse to hire them, citing their lying in public office and their participation in an administration increasingly reliant on a white-grievance message. Likewise, no one should feel compelled to invite former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon over for brunch, or throw a birthday party for Sanders or invite her to the neighborhood block party. Certainly, excluding public figures from social occasions and niceties is a valid expression of disdain from Americans who’ve paid their salaries. We are talking about small, but pointed demonstrations, expressions of our rights of free speech and association.

Let’s then agree that there is a vast gray area between chasing Trump aides down the street with pitchforks and pretending as though nothing they have done in public life warrants scorn. In the case of the Red Hen, the owner took Sanders outside and quietly asked her to leave, saying her party could stay. Sanders left and the owner comped the drinks and snacks they’d already consumed. This personal act of protest was not, in my mind, barbarous conduct beyond the pale. There should be room for people to object, to exercise their free-speech rights, and to let Trump aides know they are personally responsible in the eyes of their fellow citizens for enabling an administration that has operated outside the bounds of constitutional government and democratic norms.

Finally, Trump’s use of his position to slam a business — like his threats to use the U.S. Postal Service against Amazon.com (whose founder and chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, also owns The Post),  to tax Harley-Davidson, to harass individual employers that do not pay deference, or worst of all, to “pull the license” of a news organization — is a misuse and abuse of his office. He does not have the right to say whatever he wants like an ordinary citizen; he’s taken an oath, and part of that oath is to fairly and equally execute the laws. Using the power of the president to run some business owner out of town is the stuff of tin-pot dictators.

In sum, the choice is not between, on one hand, pretending this is a normal administration whose political appointees get treated like everyone else and, on the other, resorting to behavior that instills fear, risks violence or breaks the law. Moreover, I never favor any sort of display or outburst when someone is with their child. (Remember, the country is in an uproar because collectively we treat all children with care.) However, I’d like to think the members of this administration would become social pariahs of sorts; they are not entitled to go through life insult-free and embarrassment-free after their egregious conduct in public life. Now lets get back to the victims of Trump’s inhumane policies.

Lost in some of the back-and-forth on this thread is the deliberation involved in decisions about where, when and how to launch campaigns that have produced against all odds tangible results.  Concerning the 1950's and 1960's civil rights actions, there was absolutely nothing passive or mealy-mouthed about those efforts.  They involved solidarity, high risk, great courage, self-discipline, restraint, a refusal to respond rashly in the face of gross abuse and injustice, clarity around objectives and theory of action, and sacrifice. 

The spirit and the practice animating those efforts was infused with a rhetoric of love, compassion, and a desire for inclusive national community.  

In the air today I see very little of that (Barber, oddly, being an exception).  Rather, I see much anger and mutual recriminations.  It's as though as a society we largely skipped the love, compassion and disciplined, considered, carefully organized actions phase and fast-forwarded to the late 1960's breakdown and backlash phase.  From which in many ways we have not really recovered.     

Any group of angry individuals can get in the face of people they mean to confront.  The line between approaches that communicate a positive message and/or provoke a rash response from the opposition which can be used to gain public relations advantage can be thin.  It's clear every effort is being made by Trump to portray Maxine Waters as advocating public harassment and stalking of political opponents.  If she truly does not want that, and is concerned that actions of individuals emboldened by her rhetoric could prove damaging to her concerns, it might behoove her to clarify what she is and is not advocating. 

King's MO recognized that civil rights agitators were under a microscope, that any ways their actions could be construed as irresponsible or menacing were going to be pursued. and that, therefore, they needed to dress and conduct themselves like Boy and Girl Scouts and be highly disciplined and restrained in their considered agitation.

Applauding the Red Hen incident because it feels good is unthoughtful.  If what feels good is to be our guide, how is that distinct from mob behavior?  Where anyone who disagrees with a particular, more militant action proposal is shouted down as, therefore, a soft, spineless appeaser?  The moral high ground is easily forfeited, including in cases where it might, with more considered, disciplined action otherwise have been won.  Public opinion matters enormously.    

"Outside the Red Hen, fire and ire on social media come to life", Gregory S. Schneider, WaPo this afternoon:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/outside-the-red-h...

This is in the "Virginia politics" section of the paper at present.  Question: is the MSM horrid for a) continuing to cover this story, which only aids Trump?, b) sticking it in the Virginia politics section, which only aids Trump, instead of on the front page, or c) something else (please specify)?

When I was fired from my job in Cincinnati I sold my second car to a black for  $50.

Said "Can I buy you a beer?"

"Sure " .

Drove over to the highway in Mt Airey (northern suburb) and went in the bar.

Bunch of guys with glasses.

 Ordered a couple of Hudeys. And waited. And waited.

Finally the bar tender  handed me two bottles  and asked me to go to the cash register for the

 change, 

OK. 

"We don't serve  ...........s"  he said ( didn' t say Blacks".)  

"I didn't want to embarrass you. But don't do this  again,"

I think bakers should bake cakes, bars should pour beers, and  restaurants  should put food on the table .

This one story strikes me that this sort of thing involving businesses might just devolve into tit for tat with no real winners:

Bookstore owner calls police after customer confronted Steve Bannon

By Morgan Gstaleter @ The Hill.com - 07/07/18 10:38 PM EDT

[....] Nick Cooke, owner of Black Swan Books, told The Richmond Times-Dispatch that a woman called Bannon a “piece of trash.”

The woman then left the store after Cooke said he called 911.

“Steve Bannon was simply standing, looking at books, minding his own business. I asked her to leave, and she wouldn’t. And I said, ‘I’m going to call the police if you don’t,’ and I went to call the police and she left,” Cooke said. “And that’s the end of the story.”

Bannon grew up in Richmond, the newspaper noted [....]