ACLU Sues Bush Staffers Over Excluding People With Opposing Views

ACLU sues over Bush event
By Karen E. Crummy
Denver Post Staff Writer
DenverPost.com

The White House has violated the First Amendment by repeatedly excluding Americans from public, presidential “town halls” when their views differ from those held by President Bush, according to a federal lawsuit filed in Colorado today by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Denver residents Leslie Weise, 40, and Alex Young, 26, allege that they were unlawfully removed by White House event staffers at a March 21 town hall discussion with the president because of a “no more blood for oil” bumper sticker on their car.

Although the two had tickets to the event discussing Social Security and had no intention of disrupting it, they were removed because the White House has “set a policy of prohibiting anyone from attending this public event if they held a viewpoint other than that held by the president,” according to the suit.

Similar incidents are alleged to have occurred in North Dakota, Arizona and New Hampshire.

“We want to know how high up this goes,” Young said. “We want to know if (White House political director) Karl Rove is involved in this.”

The defendants, White House staffers Michael Casper and Jay Bob Klinkerman, are accused of detaining Weise and Young and ejecting them from the event at the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum. Five other unidentified White House staffers are also named as defendants. ACLU lawyers said they hope to find their identity during the discovery process.