LOL! free to express their opinion!!??? Where were you during the Bush regime?
Retired steelworker William Neel, 66, headed out to a Pittsburgh road where Bush's motorcade was to pass last year with a hand-lettered sign - "The Bushes must surely love the poor; they have made so many of us!". He wanted to protest the president's economic policies. Neel never got to display his sign. He spent the presidential visit in custody. As he arrived and milled among Bush supporters, cops told him the U.S. Secret Service, a unit of the Homeland Security Department that protects the president and other key officials, wanted him to move to a "free-speech area".
The "free-speech area" was behind a remote baseball diamond enclosed in a six-foot high chain-link fence.
When Neel refused to go he was handcuffed and taken to a firehouse serving as headquarters for the Secret Service during the president's visit. The ACLU got the "disorderly conduct" charge that was filed against him dismissed.
A favorite tactic of the Bush administration is to herd out of view of his motorcade, and into "designated protest zones," people protesting the president's many controversial policies and actions. Those who refuse to go into protest zones are then arrested. In contrast, avowed Bush supporters are allowed to remain alongside the presidential motorcade and within his earshot.
This tactic is being used nationwide to suppress dissent and undermine the essential First Amendment right to express disagreement in a public forum with the policies of governmental officials. The ACLU identified about 20 separate incidents where protesters were segregated or removed during presidential or vice-presidential events.
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/free_speech_zones.html
You Teabaggers have a very short and selective memory.