A man was arrested for spitting on a congressman. No, he was let go.
Protesters shouted the "n-word" at black lawmakers. Witnesses say it never happened.
A gay congressman was called a slur. Yet he was accused of swearing at someone in the crowd before that.
These are the conflicting claims that have emerged from the series of tense encounters lawmakers say they endured with Tea Party protesters on Capitol Hill Saturday, in the final raucous hours before Congress approved the health care reform bill.
Claims that the protesters hurled anti-gay and racist epithets at them tore through the blogosphere in the run-up to the vote and were used to decry the protests, but Tea Party supporters are challenging those accounts, saying they didn't hear them, or at least that those responsible were not part of the Tea Party protest.
"Never did I hear any type of racial slur," said William Owens, a black Tea Party activist from Nevada who joined in the D.C. protests Saturday.
Protesters shouted the "n-word" at black lawmakers. Witnesses say it never happened.
A gay congressman was called a slur. Yet he was accused of swearing at someone in the crowd before that.
These are the conflicting claims that have emerged from the series of tense encounters lawmakers say they endured with Tea Party protesters on Capitol Hill Saturday, in the final raucous hours before Congress approved the health care reform bill.
Claims that the protesters hurled anti-gay and racist epithets at them tore through the blogosphere in the run-up to the vote and were used to decry the protests, but Tea Party supporters are challenging those accounts, saying they didn't hear them, or at least that those responsible were not part of the Tea Party protest.
"Never did I hear any type of racial slur," said William Owens, a black Tea Party activist from Nevada who joined in the D.C. protests Saturday.
