Read this:
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech … or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Then read this:
DENVER — Lawyers for two men charged with illegally ejecting two people from a speech by President Bush in 2005 are arguing the president’s staff can lawfully remove anyone who expresses points of view different from his.
Young and Weise filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Denver, saying they were ejected shortly after they had arrived in a car that had an anti-war bumper sticker, although they had done nothing disruptive. The suit charged Casper and Klinkerman with violating Young’s and Weise’s First Amendment right to free speech.
Casper and Klinkerman lost their motion for dismissal, and last week their lawyers filed an appeals brief arguing that their clients had the right to take action against Young and Weise because the two held views different from those of Bush.
“The president’s right to control his own message includes the right to exclude people expressing discordant viewpoints from the audience,” says the brief.
Now, you can look through the Constitution all you want, but you won’t find any provision that gives the President the power to exclude from public events those who may disagree with him, or the power to “control his own message.” Nor to my knowledge has Congress ever passed such a law granting him that authority, and even if it had that law would be prima facie unconstitutional (for those of you that don’t read Latin, or haven’t been to law school, prima facie is a cute little phrase lawyers like which means “on its face” or “at first sight”, or, to use a more updated translation, “so obvious even Homer Simpson gets it”).
(cont.)
Apparently the lawyers for the brownshirts defendants who ejected Young and Weise from this public, federally funded event are basing their defense on a case from 1992 in which a federal appeals court held that a man wearing a Clinton button could be excluded from a rally for the First President Bush. However, as Weise and Young’s attorney notes, that case involved a private organization, not the federal government:
Martha Tierney, an attorney for the two people who sued Casper and Klinkerman, said Monday the Ohio case does not apply to her clients’ case because the event at the center of the 1992 case was funded by a private organization, the Strongsville, Ohio, Republican Party.
“A private organization is entitled to limit the kinds of speech that the public can have if it comes to attend its event,” Tierney said. “But the government is under a different standard and can’t limit speech just based on viewpoint at a public, taxpayer-funded event.”
Who knew that Bush supporters (and Republicans generally) wanted to privatize the Executive Branch? Then again, it is consistent with their efforts to privatize prisons, education, and even the War on TerrorTM (Halliburton and Blackwater, anyone?). Nonetheless, I hope the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals (the federal appeals court which is hearing the brownshirts’ defendants’ appeal) swats them down on this crazed attempt to equate the Office of the President with a private corporation. It would be a very dangerous setback to our “freedoms” if we lose the right to free speech and the right to peaceably assemble, which are set forth in the First Amendment, merely because we disagree with what the President of the United States has to say at a public event.
US Constitution
((Free Speech))
Leslie Weise
