Bus not searched -- Maori Party MP agrees

Last week a reported one thousand people -- many of whom were children who should have been at school -- marched in Whakatane and around the country to protest the boarding of a Kohanga Reo bus by armed police. One of those leading the charge in making the claim was Maori Party MP Te Ururoa Flavell, who started talking about tamariki, Rosa Parks, the Montgomery Bus Boycott and of "activists and peacemakers [sic] throughout the world, [who] know of the significance of the Montgomery Bus Boycott which signalled the start of a revolutionary era of non-violent mass protests in support of civil rights in America." Crikey. Talk about hyperventilation!

This morning he's retracted. He now accepts that a bus full of Kohanga Reo kids was not searched by police. The Radio New Zealand website summarises the report:

The police say they did not search a school bus carrying young children during their raids in the eastern Bay of Plenty last week... Assistant Police Commissioner Jon White told Morning Report that a school bus carrying young children was escorted through a checkpoint... Maori Party MP Te Ururoa Flavell says he accepts the police explanation, but still thinks they overstepped the mark...

Fine. He accepts the explanation, and wants to save face. Fine. So let's move on and stop with the sidetracking and the nonsense, shall we.

UPDATE 1: Hone Harawira is still berating the police "for fraudulently raising the alarm by screaming terrorism without having the facts." Not to say that Harawira and his colleagues haven't been feverishly raising temperatures by fraudulently screaming "storm trooper tactics" without having the facts, and screaming "terrorism" without noting that the Numbnut Seventeen have been held so far only on charges brought under the Arms Act and the Crimes Act, and that those "screaming terrorism" are mostly those on his side of the aisle in both the media and the House.

This is truly a time for cool heads, not for numbnuts.

UPDATE 2: Cool head Graham Edgeler looks at the difficulties in eventually laying charges under the Terrorism Suppression Act and concludes that the bar for such charges is set fairly high -- and my own conclusion is that is just as it should be.