Okay, this scares the SHEE-AT out of me. Excerpt: ALBANY, N.Y. - A man was charged with trespassing in a mall after he refused to take off a T-shirt that said "Peace on Earth" and "Give peace a chance." Mall security approached Stephen Downs, 61, and his 31-year-old son, Roger, on Monday night after they were spotted wearing the T-shirts at Crossgates Mall in a suburb of Albany, the men said. The two said they were asked to remove the shirts made at a store there, or leave the mall. They refused. The guards returned with a police officer who repeated the ultimatum. The son took his T-shirt off, but the father refused. "'I said, `All right then, arrest me if you have to,'" Downs said. "So that's what they did. They put the handcuffs on and took me away." Hold on where I check which country I'm living in, since I didn't think I was living in Iraq, where it's a crime to express a differing opinion from the rabidly hawkish government -- but they're the bad guys and we're trying to bring freedom and democracy to them, right? And we're supposed to lead by example, right? Excuse me? Since when was it a crime to wear a t-shirt in public? They weren't causing a disturbance, they weren't organizing a gathering, they weren't protesting anything. They were walking around, wearing a shirt that was sold in the mall where they were at when they were thrown out. Regardless of whether or not the mall is private property, it's designed as a public gathering area for commerce, and you can't deny someone shopping rights because they're wearing a t-shirt that was as innocuous as that. Whether or not the mall management agreed or disagreed with their t-shirts' sentiment, it wasn't something incendiary or profane like "fuck the police" or "kill whitey" or something like that. On top of that, if the mall management was so opposed to someone wearing that shirt, they shouldn't have allowed the store to sell it within their mall in the first place! Did the mall management go to the music stores within its property and tell them to throw out all the John Lennon CDs they had in stock? This opens up a huge can of worms in terms of civil liberties and the First Amendment. I seriously hope this guy gets himself a good lawyer and sues the hell out of the mall management. Next thing you know, we'll be asked to leave stores because our outfits don't match the color of the alert level of that day.