The language of Raimondo's veto message closely followed that of opposition letters written by the ACLU and two state-media coalitions, which warned, among other objections, that the bill was overly broad.
"We are deeply distressed that this event threatens to create a hostile and physically dangerous environment to the students, staff, faculty and alumni who come out to express their opposition," the letter states.
"Members of the [American Studies Assn.] who oppose Israeli policies are, of course, entitled to their views and to act on them, but they should find other means … to register that opposition," a letter from the 48,000-member American Assn. of University Professors said last month.
As Peter Eavis of The New York Times noted on DealBook, the opposition comment letters substitute dire theoretical predictions for specific real-life examples.
Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, served as the voice of the opposition, reading letters from gun owners who fear infringement on their constitutional rights, among them a pair of first-time gun owners.
Docomomo, an organization concerned with the documentation and conservation of the modern movement in architecture, has encouraged its members to express their opposition, yielding letters and e-mail messages from Argentina, Britain, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Macedonia, Panama, Portugal and Spain, and from across the United States.
Shelly Yacimovich, the leader of the Labor Party and head of the opposition, sent a letter to government ministers urging them to oppose the new budget.
Among the 195 pages of comments submitted this year about the proposed ban, only one speaks in firm opposition: a March 2007 letter from the government of China.
Mr. Abdaladze, who had hired a prominent lawyer in the political opposition, published a letter saying that the charges were in retaliation for him having distributed photographs of a May 26 rally that had been violently broken up by the police.
The councillors' opposition follows a letter from police authority leaders and senior officers to yesterday's Observer, in which they denounced the proposals as "uncosted" and "driven by dogma".
