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> Regardless of your semantic quibbling about the word "schedule"

That was the crux of your latest argument dude. That weird one where you tried to tie this to anti-abortion activists.

> Because it's wrong for the government to evenly enforce the rules on public comment periods, and instead they ought to selectively enforce the rules to your liking.

Keep straw-manning! I believe in you!

> There's nothing more to be said here. You're just repeating the same talking points you've said in this comment chain.

Yes, I can lead a horse to water but I can't make it drink...

They don't explicitly schedule public comments periods in the agendas in Springfield, MO.

The city's rules for addressing Council also list Resolutions among the categories open to public comment. Placing the Flock resolution on the agenda automatically includes a scheduled public comment on it too. Residents were required to register and they did. Before those speakers were called, the council sent the resolution to committee, preventing them from speaking.

> The context of why she made the off-topic comments is that there was no scheduled public comments period with ALPRs as the topic.

Quoting the article:

> Dozens of people showed up to the Springfield City Council Meeting on September 22 with plans to let city leaders know how they felt about the city’s use of automated license plate readers. There was a resolution before the council that would trigger a review of the controversial camera systems, but Schrag moved to send the resolution to committee and prevent public comment on the issue.

> “This isn’t how government is supposed to run. It’s just disappointing. And we’re not even allowing folks to speak who clearly came out to share their voices tonight.”

> The facts of the article is that Hyder made off-topic comments and was removed accordingly.

Once again using a hypothetical and ignoring the context of why she made "off-topic" comments, which is what people are upset about. Should we just keep going in circles? Your turn.

[citation needed]

Nah man, I just think you're trying to straw man this conversation and ignoring the facts of the article, which is coincidentally what someone else said at the beginning of this thread.

I'm not going to engage with your hypothetical nor do I think it's incumbent on me to provide you evidence of anything related to it. If you want to ground this in reality, we can go back to discussing the facts of the actual situation which occurred in the article:

> There was a resolution before the council that would trigger a review of the controversial camera systems, but Schrag moved to send the resolution to committee and prevent public comment on the issue.

> You can disapprove of the council's actions all you want

I do. Turns out even the council itself disapproves of their own actions.

> Hyder's rights are not being "trampled"

I wasn't claiming that her rights were trampled, I was saying that your original comment was viewed as ignorant by another poster because you're focusing solely on decorum and not the fact that elected representatives were attempting to circumvent inconvenient public comments about a controversial topic. I provided you with that context the poster claimed you ignored, because we're discussing the unmitigated proliferation of mass surveillance and not procedural rules for city council meetings.

Again, your hypothetical is not equivalent because it assumes that the "activists" a. had their own public comments section, and b. they monopolized the entire meeting. Neither of those things happened here.

When I asked you how familiar you were with democratic principles, you said:

> Moderately so

You also asked for my credentials and told me that it would be useless to continue speaking to me if I didn't have the experience you expected, which doesn't strike me as a good faith argument.

I'm aware that people can protest. However, protests happen when a system breaks down. The system in question here is the official channel (the public comments section during a Flock policy discussion) that was circumvented by elected representatives who found their community's concerns to be inconvenient. When elected representatives refuse to hear their constituency's concerns, it means the system is broken. Most people in this thread are incensed about that, regardless of if Heider broke a procedural rule.

> is just not remotely true. Not unless you meant to narrow down this statement to public comments periods, specifically.

Yes, I mean the official channel that was created specifically for the residents to discuss the policy in question with their elected representatives.

You don't need to take my word for it, here's a sympathetic councilmember:

> Jenson spoke before the vote to push the resolution to a committee. “All I’m trying to do is get people answers to some real questions that they’ve brought to us for months. And it’s a shame that it comes to this sort of, I guess, theater that I’m a part of to try to get those answers,” he said. “This isn’t how government is supposed to run. It’s just disappointing. And we’re not even allowing folks to speak who clearly came out to share their voices tonight.”

I'm not getting into the weeds on anti-abortion activism. Your hypothetical is not equivalent because the "activists" in this case were not allowed to speak about the policy in question in the first place.

You see order/decorum as the more important issue, and I see the ability to petition government officials as more important. Residents showed up at the date and time that the officials expected them to, in order to discuss a policy during the time allotted for public comments; instead, officials didn't allow residents to speak. The violation of a procedural rule pales in comparison to the violation of the community's trust in their elected officials and the democratic process.

> I think we need to know before engaging with you further. It's not useful to argue with free speech absolutists.

... so by your own logic, engaging with you further would be useless because you're only moderately familiar with democratic principles?

The "channel" I'm referring to is the public comments period for the policy related to Flock, and more broadly the meeting structure and public comments periods created by the city government.

Edit for your edit:

Your hypothetical isn't equivalent. Residents weren't allowed to give comments on the Flock policy. That's the crux of the entire issue; the public comments period was circumvented by the mayor and council.

> She can petition her elected representatives elsewhere

Why would she need to do this outside an official channel that was created specifically for petitioning elected representatives? She shouldn't have to.

> If the community is frustrated with the city council's decisions on public comments sections they can vote for different city council members.

I'm sure they'll be doing that. In the meantime, the city council is voting on an extremely controversial technology which will be paid for, installed, and operated years before a future council can dismantle it.

> But they're not being denied the ability to speak

From TFA: "There was a resolution before the council that would trigger a review of the controversial camera systems, but Schrag moved to send the resolution to committee and prevent public comment on the issue."

> Heider can go hold a protest against Flock in public

A protest isn't an equivalent substitute for a forum created for citizens to petition their democratically elected representatives. She and the others were there to discuss a specific policy that was supposed to be discussed at that time, and they were denied at the last minute. The opening salvo was the city council refusing to hear public comments, which many see as the main issue (and not that she broke a procedural rule).

That's Powell. Heider was also arrested and prevented from petitioning for redress of grievances, going back to my point:

> In a democracy, it's generally disruptive to prevent constituents from petitioning for redress of grievances.

The real "disruption" here is the fact that the council and the mayor refuse to listen to their constituents, not that some of those constituents are angry about it.

The person saying your comment is ignorant probably doesn't care about the procedural rules. Instead, it's because you're placing disproportionate emphasis on citizens following meeting rules instead of being concerned that they're denied the ability to speak about policies that directly affect them in a democracy.

Very familiar. How familiar are you with the principles of democratic societies?

> No solid arguments, no discussions

From the article, she showed up to make solid arguments and have a discussion, but:

"There was a resolution before the council that would trigger a review of the controversial camera systems, but Schrag moved to send the resolution to committee and prevent public comment on the issue."

> Is saying the following (different person said this, but was also arrested) a petition for redress of grievances?

Yes, and it's protected by the first amendment.

> they don't guarantee that every single person will be able to speak at length about their grievances.

In this case, they didn't let anyone speak at any length about their grievances. Hence this article.

And the mayor who refused public comments at the last minute? "Act like a tyrant, expect to be treated like one"?

> Dozens of people showed up to the Springfield City Council Meeting on September 22 with plans to let city leaders know how they felt about the city’s use of automated license plate readers. There was a resolution before the council that would trigger a review of the controversial camera systems, but Schrag moved to send the resolution to committee and prevent public comment on the issue.

1. That wasn't her, it was someone else who was arrested

2. These are the "normies":

> Mia Heider had never attended a public meeting before when she showed up to the city council meeting in Springfield, Missouri.

> Dozens of people showed up to the Springfield City Council Meeting on September 22 with plans to let city leaders know how they felt about the city’s use of automated license plate readers. There was a resolution before the council that would trigger a review of the controversial camera systems, but Schrag moved to send the resolution to committee and prevent public comment on the issue.

According to TFA, the "folks who just want to disrupt the process" seem to be the city council and the mayor, not their constituents who came to give public comments about something that affects them:

> The council was set to vote on Jensons’ proposed review on Monday and hear comments from the community. But when the resolution came up during the meeting, Mayor Schrag immediately pushed to send it to a committee and avoid public comment.

In a democracy, it's generally disruptive to prevent constituents from petitioning for redress of grievances.

No it isn't, you just refuse to read the report or any of the other links I've posted.

They have a word for what you're doing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

There doesn't need to be an admission of guilt to determine that the US acted in violation of international law. If you'd like to learn more about the methodology, feel free to read the article or the report.

That evidence is once again in the report which I linked and the statements of the DoD and Hegseth himself. If you want aerial imagery or the full text of the interviews, you'll have to obtain it yourself because it wasn't included in the advance version of the report.

I have a question for you: how do you know the moon is not made of cheese? What evidence do you have?

This has to be a troll. You're literally replying in a comment thread where I've already summarized the material findings that you're asking for (it's from the article we're discussing). I then pasted links to the raw text of the report that support the summary but you refuse to read it, asking me again for a summary which I already posted? I've provided everything you've asked for; do you actually have a point or are you just trying to start a flamewar?

We're discussing the article that summarizes the report's findings, but sure.

Please refer to the report [1] and read the following sections (they are too long to paste here):

- II (full section)

- IV.B.1 (full section)

- IV.B.2.88-89

- IV.B.2.95-96

- V.B (full section)

The report itself attributes its sources. If that's not enough, the DoD's own preliminary investigation produced the outdated-targeting finding. Pre-strike imagery of the school is public.

[1] https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies...

I'm sorry you feel that way. Feel free to refute the substance of what I've said.

Because the human rights chief has a lifetime of experience and credentials to be able to make these determinations [1], whereas Hegseth and Trump do not. Furthermore, Hegseth has stated repeatedly that the US military should ignore rules of engagement (and has worked to strip legal oversight from the military), which lends credence to the findings of the UN investigation that the US acted recklessly and without regard to civilians in violation of international humanitarian law [2][3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volker_T%C3%BCrk

[2] US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth commented at a news conference on March 2, 2026, about “stupid rules of engagement,” suggesting that they may interfere with “fight[ing] to win.” These remarks are concerning in light of Hegseth’s actions in the past year that have weakened US military posts and mechanisms intended to ensure compliance with international humanitarian law, also known as the laws of war. - https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/03/02/us-defense-secretarys-me...

[3] "We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters." - https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4318...