U.S. Government Subverts 1st Amendment for Major League Baseball: Nationals Ballpark Stadium

I am not the only person who believes that they were criminally targeted by the government for prominently writing against Washington, D.C.'s National Ballpark:

Distributed by the DC Statehood Green Party
http://www.dcstateh oodgreen. org

DEBBY HANRAHAN WINS SETTLEMENT IN FIRST
AMENDMENT-FALSE ARREST LAWSUIT AGAINST AMTRAK; $35,000
TO GO TO LAWYERS GUILD, C.O. GROUP

For Immediate Release: June 5, 2007

Contacts:
Debby Hanrahan, (202) 462-2054
Jim Klimaski, Klimaski & Associates PC, (202) 296-5600

Long-time D.C. Statehood Green Party activist Debby Hanrahan has won a settlement in her First Amendment-false arrest lawsuit against Amtrak (The
National Railroad Passenger Corp.) and has directed that almost all of the settlement proceeds other than lawyers’ fees and her expenses go to two local civil liberties organizations. The two organizations will receive a total of $35,000.

Hanrahan, 68, a leading participant in the No DC Taxes for Baseball coalition which opposed public financing of a new baseball stadium, was arrested without any
warning by Amtrak police in the Grand Concourse in Washington, D.C.’s Union Station on November 22, 2004 during a public rally promoting the naming of the
Washington Nationals baseball team. For quietly holding a poster opposing public financing, she was charged with unlawful entry and jailed for 28 hours
before her release on her own recognizance after a court appearance.

Hanrahan said that a portion of the settlement will go for fees incurred by the law firm of veteran civil liberties attorney James Klimaski. Klimaski’s firm
took the case on a pro bono basis and spent hundreds of hours in legal work before Klimaski negotiated the settlement with Amtrak earlier this month. The suit
was filed in 2005 in D.C. Superior Court, after Hanrahan’s criminal attorney, Paul J. Riley, successfully got the criminal charge dropped in January 2005.

After lawyers’ fees, Hanrahan received $45,000. To help other persons falsely arrested in free speech and other civil liberties cases, Hanrahan has directed
that $25,000 of this go to the D.C. Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and $10,000 to the Center on Conscience and War’s MCN Legal Fund, an organization
that assists military conscientious objectors. The remaining $10,000 of the settlement will primarily cover expenses incurred by Hanrahan in her criminal
case, as well as deposition and expert witness costs in the civil case.

Hanrahan said that it was her intention from before she filed this suit to contribute proceeds other than attorneys’ fees and criminal and civil case expenses to progressive legal organizations.

“First, I wanted to show Amtrak through this suit that the First Amendment applies at public meetings held on its publicly-owned [U.S. Department of Transportation] space,” said Hanrahan. “Secondly, I wanted a settlement or verdict large enough to make meaningful allocations to organizations that stand up for people whose rights to freedom of speech, assembly and conscience have been violated.”

The offending poster Hanrahan held called attention in cartoon form to the spiraling cost of the stadium, then at $614 million (and now at least $100 million higher). The poster showed a beaming, top-hatted, cigar-chomping, “fat-cat” team owner with then-Mayor Anthony Williams exulting over the expensive new stadium amid crumbling public schools and libraries and a shut-down D.C. General Hospital.

The charge against Hanrahan was dismissed seven weeks and two court appearances after her arrest. In subsequent proceedings to expunge Hanrahan’s arrest
record, the U.S. Attorney’s office acknowledged in a written filing “that this court would find, by clear and convincing evidence that [Hanrahan] did not commit
the offense for which she had been charged.” As NBC4 reporter Tom Sherwood wrote on the NBC4 web site and in The Current newspapers at the time of her arrest: Hanrahan “held aloft a sign criticizing the baseball deal, but was not disruptive.”

“I hope this case and settlement send yet anot her reminder to police and public officials that they cannot infringe on individuals’ free speech rights because they don’t like the message,” Hanrahan said. “I was attending a public rally in about as public a place as you can imagine, to which members of the public were invited through radio and newspaper announcements, and which featured on the stage Mayor Williams and several members of the D.C. Council and Sports and Entertainment Commission. My ‘crime’ was being out of sync with the message of the rally, and for that I was given no warning and was grabbed in a painful shoulder hold by an Amtrak policeman, pulled out of the rally, arrested, charged with trespassing, incarcerated for 28 hours, and required to give a urine sample in the presence of both male and female court and U.S. Marshal personnel. And I had my free speech rights substantially chilled as I faced this criminal charge during a key time period in the baseball stadium financing fight with a big mid-December [2004] Council vote scheduled.”

Hanrahan praised the work of Klimaski and his associates in the civil case and of Riley in the criminal case. She said Klimaski, despite having a small firm without the deep pockets of major D.C. law firms, “nevertheless took a big financial risk in taking my case because he recognized that my arrest was an outrageous violation of my civil liberties, and that Amtrak had to be shown that there are consequences for arbitrarily arresting nonviolent protesters at public meetings held on public property.”

This case confirms that the government has used law enforcement criminally against those who prominently protest the dirty planning to cram a baseball stadium deal along the east side of Washington, D.C.'s South Capitol Street, blocking the U.S. National Capital Planning Commission's plans for a South Capitol - Frederick Douglass Mall.

2006 version with condos above underground parking


2007 version with above ground parking garages

Illustrations from: http://www.jdland.com/dc/stadium.cfm

Welcome to the state of affairs of planning for the Capital City of the United States of America!

http://www.whitehouse.gov/baseball/

League of Fans (Ralph Nader)

Standing for ACLU NSA Suit

In the wake of the court's denial of the U.S. National Security Agency surveillance law suit, due to a lack of "standing", I have contacted the ACLU about my situation. I got a reply:

Acknowledge: Standing for Spying Suit (Ticket# LTK69016040512X)...

Compact Header|Full Message View

ACLU Membership Questions

ACLU Membership Questions

Thank you for contacting the ACLU.

Your comments and questions are very important to us and a representative will respond to your query as soon as possible.

Sincerely,
ACLU

> Dear ACLU:

> I was illegally targeted by law enforcement last year as revenge for my internet writings.

> Please see my blogs

> Free Speech Beneath US Homeland Security

> and

> South Capitol Street Frederick Douglas Mall

> Douglas Willinger

Then later that same day, I received a second message from the ACLU:

RE: Standing for Spying Suit (LTK69016040512X)...

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ACLU Membership Questions

ACLU Membership Questions

Dear Mr. Willinger,

Thank you for contacting the ACLU.

State affiliates of the ACLU handle requests for legal assistance; lobby the state legislatures, and host public forums throughout the year. Your state affiliate is therefore best equipped to handle your concerns.

To find the contact information for your ACLU affiliate office; please visit http://www.aclu.org/ and select your state from the "Your Local ACLU" menu at the bottom of the page.

Please also consider becoming a member of the ACLU. To join, please visit http://www.aclu.org/contribute/contribute.cfm or call 1-888-567-ACLU.

Sincerely,
D. Barber
Correspondence Manager, American Civil Liberties Union

======= Subject: Standing for Spying Suit Dear ACLU:

I have since contacted the local NY chapter, and await a response.

Giving Standing to Sue

You can plausibly piss someone off

and your Constitutional rights shall be violated

The President scheduled to throw the 1st Ball at Nationals Ballpark's 2008 opening

Newsday editorial

A lawsuit challenging the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program was dismissed last week by an appeals court that ruled that the plaintiffs can't sue because they can't prove their calls were among those tapped. If that logic prevails, the courts will have rendered themselves powerless to do anything about what could well be an ongoing violation of the law and the Constitution.

Congress needs to fill that shameful void. It should either explicitly bar the government's unauthorized eavesdropping or pass a bill sponsored by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) that would give citizens standing to sue without a showing of individual harm.

Consider the no-win situation the ruling has created for citizens who think they could be targets of the government's secret monitoring of phone calls and e-mail without probable cause or warrants. The plaintiffs in this case are lawyers, journalists and academics with clients and contacts in the Middle East, making their international communications just the sort that the NSA monitors. Still, the court said they can't sue unless they establish that the NSA in fact monitored their calls. But only the NSA knows whose calls it monitored, and it's not saying.

So the NSA won't talk and the court won't make it - the government invoked the state secrets doctrine, which allows officials to withhold evidence that they contend would compromise national security if it were exposed.

The plaintiffs and their American Civil Liberties Union lawyers should appeal. When an administration is arguably violating federal law and the Constitution, the courts should never go willingly to the sidelines. Someone has to step up here, and if the courts won't, then Congress must.

Huffington Post "Standing to Sue"

How Courts May Subvert the Constitution

Alice Moore Batchelder

Julia Smith Gibbons

To what degree shall this decision be applied?

What about instances where there's a definitely suggestive time-line of politically motivated criminal law enforcement, but alas a lack of allowable discovery, as well as the police video being "just grey static"?

By Anne Broache

Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Published: July 6, 2007, 1:30 PM PDT

In a setback for foes of a controversial Bush administration wiretapping program, a federal appeals court on Friday threw out an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit that alleged illicit snooping on Americans' calls and e-mails.

In a 2-1 decision (PDF), the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati dismissed a federal district court ruling from last August that found the National Security Agency's Terrorist Surveillance Program violated the U.S. Constitution and ordered it to stop. The majority's ruling did not address the legality of the program; rather, it tossed out the case on narrow procedural grounds.

The move marked the first time an appeals court has weighed in on the numerous pending challenges to the spy program. Friday's decision isn't expected to have any direct impact on two related cases pending in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and more than 40 others that have been consolidated for consideration in a San Francisco district court.

ACLU Legal Director Steven Shapiro said his organization had not ruled out petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court for another look at the 6th Circuit's action.

"As a result of today's decision, the Bush administration has been left free to violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which Congress adopted almost 30 years ago to prevent the executive branch from engaging in precisely this kind of unchecked surveillance," Shapiro said in a statement. "It is important to emphasize that the court today did not uphold the legality of the government's warrantless surveillance activity."

The ACLU and the journalists, scholars, criminal defense attorneys and Islamic-Americans it represented had argued that the NSA program, which came to light in a November 2005 New York Times report, was trampling on federal laws and the plaintiffs' constitutional rights to free speech and privacy.

Their arguments rested on what they called a "well-founded belief" that the government was tapping their regular overseas communications--some of which, because of the nature of the plaintiffs' professions, they have an ethical duty to keep confidential--without the necessary court approval.

Judges Alice Batchelder and Julia Smith Gibbons, both appointed by President Ronald Reagan, concluded in separate opinions that the parties that sued the NSA didn't have standing to bring their case in the first place. They ordered that the suit be sent back to a lower court and roundly dismissed.

The two judges' reasoning, which differs at times, boils down to one general result: the parties that sued the NSA hadn't shown adequate evidence that they have been "personally" subject to the eavesdropping program. Even if the plaintiffs had wanted to supply evidence to back such a claim, they would have been stymied by the government's assertion of its "state secrets" privilege, which permits the derailing of lawsuits that might otherwise lead to the disclosure of military secrets.

Ruling on NSA Warrantless Wiretapping

Ronald Lee Gilman, the dissenting Judge

http://thatslifeinthecity.blogspot.com/2007/07/ruling-on-nsa-warrantless-eavesdropping.html

While the two judges in the majority did not rule on the legality of the program, the third judge -- Judge Gilman -- agreed with Judge Taylor's finding that the President's program violated FISA. He thus wrote that he "would affirm its judgment," and he rejected the administration's standard two defenses for that behavior (i.e., (1) that Authorization For Use Of Military Force , (AUMF), implicitly authorized FISA violations and (2) the President has "inherent authority" under Article II to eavesdrop with no warrants). In fact, just as was true for Judge Taylor, Judge Gilman found that while the "standing" issue was a close one, the actual merits -- i.e., whether the President broke the law -- was not close:
The closest question in this case, in my opinion, is whether the plaintiffs have the standing to sue. Once past that hurdle, however, the rest gets progressively easier . . . .

See previous related blog entries:

Secret Surveillance Evidence Unsealed In AT&T Spying Case

Bush Asks To Expand Spy Power

AT&T Says NSA Spying 'Too Secret' For Court

Justice Department Inspector General To Review Domestic Spying Program

ACLU Slams Senate Judiciary Committee’s Approval Of NSA Spying Bills

New Republican Bill Says Bush Spy Program Is Legal And Puts Pressure On Journalists

Domestic Spying Inquiry Killed

Pentagon Admits Spying On Gay Groups

Republicans Kill Request For Spy Program Inquiry

Reminder: Monday Is Wiretap The Internet Day

HOW THE NSA WARRANTLESS WIRETAP SYSTEM WORKS

Justice Department Will Appeal NSA Wiretap Ruling

Federal Judge Orders Wiretaps To Stop

Did New York Times Know About Wiretaps Before 2004 Election?

When It Comes To Questions About Government Wiretapping, "Trust Us" Isn't Good Enough

Appeals Court Backs Bush On Wiretaps

Court Skeptical Of FCC On Broadband Wiretap Access

U.S. Defends New Internet Wiretap Rules

Does New Presidential Directive Give Bush Dictatorial Power?

Bush Moves Closer Toward Martial Law And Dictatorship

Bush Takes One Giant Step Forward Towards Dictatorship

Former Supreme Court Judge Warns That U.S. May Be Heading Towards Dictatorship

American Bar Association Task Force Says Bush's Bill-Signing Statements Are Violating The Constitution

King George Bush?

Justice Department Audit Finds FBI Misused Patriot Act Powers

Bush Power Under Consideration Of Supreme Court

Republican Jon Kyl Revealed To Be Secret Blocker Of 'Open Government' Bill

2,176 Secret Warrants Issued In 2006

NSA Says It's Too Secret To Be Sued

Secret U.S. Program Tracks Global Bank Transfers

NSA Has Been Secretly Collecting Phone Call Records Of Millions Of Americans