And here's Levin's EPIC response to such ire:NYP: Tourists travelling to Omaha Beach to pay their respects to the 9,387 military dead at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial will find it closed, a victim of the U.S. government’s partial shutdown.
The site overlooking the D-Day invasion beaches is one of 24 U.S. military cemeteries overseas that have closed to visitors since Monday. Ten more cemeteries in in France, as well as others in various European countries as well as Mexico, Panama, Tunisia and the Philippines, will remain closed for the duration of the shutdown.
The cemeteries are maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission, set up after the First World War. Nearly 125,000 U.S. servicemen and women are buried at its cemeteries, and an additional 94,000 are commemorated on tablets of the missing.
"I want to say this loud and clear to the people on Capitol Hill who are listening, to this administration. You lay one damn hand on one of those World War II vets at that memorial and I’ll bring half a million people to that damn memorial! You got that?!Not to mention, it costs the government more to shut down parks and memorials than it costs to leave them alone...many of which are privately owned, including this one, and shouldn't be touched by the government anyway!
I’m sitting here stewing thinking about this – playing these damn games? You’ll ignite a movement in this country like you’ve never seen before! The biker patriot army – veterans from all over the country, every single war and battle in this country, Republican, Democrat, Independent, whatever!
I’ll be damned if one president, with his feet up on the desk in the oval office, with a smirk on his face, looking at his golf card…I’ll be damned if this president or anybody else is going to shut down that WWII memorial. Period! These men are in their 80s and 90s.
So let me repeat! You lay one hand on one of those men and arrest them for going to their memorial, which they fought for, which was not paid by you dammit, it was paid by the American people – we will come out of every town and city in this nation! We will come out of every county. And both coasts! Both borders! And we will march on Washington against your tyranny!
You’ve been warned!"
Related link: Monuments and memorials remained open during previous shutdown
UPDATE: Citizen activism has prompted a 'change of heart'...or a swift boot in tha...
WaPo: At Marion Park on Capitol Hill, two fence gates were chained closed, but one was not, and a group of children played inside.
At the Korean War Veterans Memorial, on the Mall, the entrance was blocked with barricades, but visitors just walked around the barriers and entered.
At the closed-off National World War II Memorial, two days of assaults by veterans prompted the National Park Service to announce that they had the legal right to be there and would not be barred in the future.
Across federal Washington on Wednesday, the government shutdown was leaking badly — partly as a result of citizen contrarians, war veterans, politicians and the difficulty of enforcement by the National Park Service.
