No Electric Guitars in Prison

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Inmates do not have a constitutional right to play electric guitar in federal prison, a U.S. appeals court ruled.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a ban on guitars, keyboards or other electronic instruments for federal prisoners, ruling it does not violate their constitutional right to express themselves musically.

By a 2-1 vote, the panel upheld the rationale by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons for the ban and rejected a challenge by inmates Brett Kimberlin and Darrell Rice, who wanted to play electric guitars at a federal prison in Cumberland, Maryland.

In 1995, before the ban went into effect, the only instrument allowed in the Cumberland prison was the harmonica, but inmates who already had a guitar or electronic keyboard were allowed to keep them.

By a 2-1 vote, the panel upheld the rationale by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons for the ban and rejected a challenge by inmates Brett Kimberlin...

Brett Kimberlin. Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time. Brett Kimberlin claimed to be Dan Quayle's drug dealer. A writer told the story in the New Yorker, and "Doonesbury" picked it up and made him a cause celebre.

Then the same writer took Kimberlin to meet Quayle at a book signing and realized that he'd been had. He wrote up the experience in the New Yorker, apologized to Quayle -- but I don't recall "Doonesbury" ever retracting the charge.

Great recall button you have there.

I looked for some more info and found this from secure.mediaresearch.org. Trudeau is an ass...................

"No one in the media believed convicted drug dealer Brett Kimberlin (also known as "The Speedway Bomber") when he told them that he sold marijuana to Dan Quayle in the '70s. Not NBC News, not even Nina Totenberg, who leaked Anita Hill's allegations. No one thought Kimberlin's story was worth telling, until, of course, Garry Trudeau's "Doonesbury" series handed the media a convenient "news hook."

Kimberlin is suing former Bureau of Prisons chief Michael Quinlan and former Justice Department spokesman Loye Miller for "violating his constitutional rights" by putting him in solitary confinement. But any airing of Kimberlin's case should include the full truth about his past. In their recent coverage, The Washington Post and The New York Times omitted some rather important facts about Kimberlin:

He was convicted of perjury in 1974 for lying about -- drugs.

He has a reputation for litigiousness. This is at least Kimberlin's fourth lawsuit. In fact, after being convicted of the Speedway, Indiana bombings, he sued the widow of one of his bombing victims for "violating his constitutional rights."

The high-powered law firm Arnold & Porter took the Kimberlin case last year on a referral from Ralph Nader's Public Citizen Litigation Group. If Nader's lawyers had filed suit for Kimberlin, it might have been exposed as a transparent political maneuver to hamper Quayle's efforts against excessive regulation. But partisan political intrigue, a theme so common in Washington reporting, excited nobody at the Times or the Post".

I hear the train a-comin'; it's rollin' 'round the bend,
And I ain't seen the sunshine since I don't know when,
I'm stuck at Folsom Prison and time keeps draggin' on.
But that train keeps a-rollin'
On down to San Antone.
When I was just a baby, my mama told me. "Son,
Always be a good boy; don't ever play with guns."
But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.
When I hear that whistle blowin'
I hang my head and cry.
I bet there's rich folks eatin' in a fancy dining car.
They're prob'ly drinkin' coffee and smokin' big cigars,
But I know I had it comin', I know I can't be free,
But those people keep a-movin',
And that's what tortures me.
Well, if they freed me from this prison, if that railroad train was mine,
I bet I'd move on over a little farther down the line,
Far from Folsom Prison, that's where I want to stay,
And I'd let that lonesome whistle
Blow my blues away.

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