[EternalVigilance]

Some media pundits have expressed surprise that the District has offered protestors "prime real estate" along the parade route along Pennsylvania Avenue.

I'd give 'em prime real estate alright.

Guatanamo, Cuba beachfront...

[muawiyah]

Presumably the judge will be taken into custody to stand trial alongside the folks in New Jersey who continued to aid the "Blind Sheikh" who bombed the WTC.

Concerning A.N.S.W.E.R and assorted scum, we know where they are this time.

[QQQQQ]

This is outrageous. The judge needs to be impeached and tried for endangering the President's life.

[jimtorr]

I see no problem here. cANSWER can have all the information it wants, on Friday.

[thoughtomator]

What did I tell you... the Left is planning an assassination at the inaugural. (No they don't think it through far enough to realize they end up with President Cheney).

[Eagles6]

Speechless, but not surprised.

[Vicki]

This just can't be true. It's insanity.

[thegreatbeast]

Kessler & Kay should be horsewhipped while locked in stocks. The order to divulge and disclose this kind of operational intelligence with the identities of undercover officers should simply be ignored. Let Kessler try to enforce her order herself.
Clinton, you evil f___!

[Cicero]

I have to agree that there have been such numerous calls from leftists to assassinate the president, in one form or another, and to stir up rage with their violent talk, that you can't help thinking that they are deliberately egging people on, and hoping that some borderline nut case will take them up on it.

I think it began with that call on national TV to murder Henry Hyde and his family. No one was punished for that episode, although they certainly should have been, or for later books and movies calling for the president's assassination, or the famous TV image of Bush in the crosshairs, so they think they can get away with it. And so far they're absolutely right.

No one could have done this while Billy Jeff was in office.

[armyman]

Americans may be stunned to learn that the District of Columbia has been forced by a federal judge to hand over intelligence data on police tactics, training, and strategies from the last inauguration to an organization with documented ties to terrorist groups and Saddam Hussein.


If the average american citizen did this exact same thing, they would currently be in the custody of the secret service and they would remain there till after the inaguration, and they would remain under very close observation for a very long time. The sickening thing is that the judge will get away with this.

[combat_boots]

Remember these names: Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Ramsey Clark, Judge Gladys Kessler and Bill Clinton.

These are the organizations steering ANSWER:

IFCO/Pastors for Peace
Free Palestine Alliance - U.S.
Haiti Support Network
Partnership for Civil Justice - LDEF
Nicaragua Network
Alliance for Just and Lasting Peace in the Phillippines
Korea Truth Commission
Muslim Student Association - National
Kensington Welfare Rights Union
Mexico Solidarity Network
Middle East Children's Alliance

Also connected is FARC, of Colombia.

[combat_boots]

Photo:  Beverly Rezneck  Chambers:  (202) 354-3440 Courtroom Deputy:    Tonya Hightower (202) 354-3147 Court Reporter:    Susan Tyner (202) 371-2230

Judge Gladys Kessler Judge Kessler was appointed to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in July 1994.  She received a B.A. from Cornell University and an LL.B. from Harvard Law School.  Following graduation, Judge Kessler was employed by the National Labor Relations Board, served as Legislative Assistant to a U.S. Senator and a U.S. Congressman, worked for the New York City Board of Education, and then opened a public interest law firm.  In June 1977, she was appointed Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.  From 1981 to 1985, Judge Kessler served as Presiding Judge of the Family Division and was a major architect of one of the nation’s first Multi-Door Courthouses.  She served as President of the National Association of Women Judges from 1983 to 1984, and now serves on the Executive Committee of the ABA’s Conference of Federal Trial Judges and the U.S. Judicial Conference's

http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/kessler-bio.html

 

 

[nicmarlo]

FYI, ping:

...Americans may be stunned to learn that the District of Columbia has been forced by a federal judge to hand over intelligence data on police tactics, training, and strategies from the last inauguration to an organization with documented ties to terrorist groups and Saddam Hussein.

The District of Columbia was forced by court order to turn over this information to the International Action Center (IAC), a group involved in Thursday's protests of the second Bush inaugural through the A.N.S.W.E.R Coalition.

[pfony1]

I wonder why the government did not respond to this stupid lawsuit with the counter-charge that ANSWER, WPP etc. are unregistered agents of foreign countries. This could easily be proved by an investigation of the sources of funding for the cadre of professional protestors that tells the unpaid useful idiots what to do.

It is long past time for THAT "discovery" process to begin...

[kcvl]

Clinton records on pardon applications denied

* A federal district judge in Washington, D.C., denied a public interest group's request for pardon records from the Clinton administration.

April 2, 2003 -- Documents concerning pardon applications considered or granted by former President Bill Clinton are privileged presidential communications, Judge Gladys Kessler of the federal district court in Washington, D.C., ruled March 28, denying Washington, D.C.,-based Judicial Watch records it sought under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

Judge Kessler said that "as strong a supporter as the Court is of FOIA's liberal disclosure of government documents and as great as the public interest in disclosure of the documents requested . . . may be, the case law concerning the ability of the government to withhold certain documents under the presidential communications privilege is clear."

[kcvl]

Tuesday, February 05, 2002
The Bush Administration lost its fight earlier this week with the partisan and hatemonger Mary Frances Berry of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. A federal judge, Gladys Kessler, ruled that appointees to the commission are entitled to full six-year terms, even if they are specifically appointed to fill the term of another commissioner. The ruling allows presidents to stack the commission if they wish, by having appointees step down right before a change of administration, and then appoint members en masse. It would take a two-term president to have any hope of cleaning the commission up. The Bush Administration has said that it will appeal the ruling.

******

And just who is this judge, Gladys Kessler? Well, she's a Clinton appointee who's been in the news before. She was one of three Clinton-appointed judges who decided to take Linda Tripp's suit against Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon and the Clinton adminstration out of Judge Royce Lamberth's courtroom. Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, was hearing the case that involved the illegal disclosure of details from her personnel file at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Kessler also put a hold on the release of the FEC's investigation into the illegal campaign collusion between the Clinton re-election campaign and the AFL-CIO. The two had coordinated campaign messages in Clinton's 1996 campaign, in clear violation of federal law.

[kcvl]

Feature: D.C. judge in center of storm
By Sharon Otterman
Published 8/9/2002 7:02 PM

WASHINGTON, Aug. 9 (UPI) -- When U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler ruled last Friday that the names of hundreds of immigrants detained after Sept. 11 should be made public, she touched off a political firestorm. The Justice Department accused her of increasing the risk of terror attacks -- and conservative groups charged her with political bias.

But being at the center of controversy is a position increasingly familiar to the 64-year-old judge.

Since President George W. Bush took office, Kessler has handled some of the highest-profile federal cases. Before the detainee decision, Kessler ruled in February that the secretive Energy Task Force led by Vice President Dick Cheney must make thousands of documents public.

Kessler is also handling a third case that casts the Bush administration in a bad light. That suit alleges that the Department of Justice and the Bush-Cheney Inaugural Committee illegally limited public protest at Bush's swearing-in January 2001.

U.S. District Court judges are assigned cases randomly, legal experts said. But for Kessler, a Clinton appointee with a history of ruling in favor of the public's right to know, the turn of the court calendar has turned her into a judicial stumbling block for the administration.

While conservative groups charge that her political stance regularly creeps into her rulings, her friends and colleagues describe her as a brave woman who judges according to the law.

"There's a beauty in the fact that someone as judicious as she is is a judge," said Judith Lichtman, a long-time friend and president of the National Partnership for Women and Families.

Ken Boehm, chairman of the conservative National Legal and Policy Center, disagreed.

"Kessler has a reputation for being one of the most political judges on the D.C. circuit," he said. "Judges can have whatever kind of politics they want, but politics are supposed to stop at the chamber door."

Early in her career, Kessler was involved with Democratic politics, and served as a legislative aide to a number of Democratic congressmen shortly after graduating from Harvard Law School in 1962.

Before becoming a D.C. Superior Court judge in 1977, she also worked for the National Labor Relations Board, an organization traditionally associated with Democrats.

Off the bench, Kessler continues to supports women's issues in the National Association of Women Judges. She assists with educational efforts to promote equal treatment in court for women and minorities, and is also involved in supporting programs that help women in prison, said Constance Belfiore, the executive director of the National Association of Women Judges.

Kessler herself declined to comment for this article. But her supporters insisted that her political opinions do not affect her rulings.

They pointed out that Kessler has also supported Bush administration positions, most notably in a January decision to toss out a Puerto Rican lawsuit aimed at stopping the military from using the island of Vieques for bombing practice.

"She has her own personal beliefs, like anyone does, but she takes her role as an impartial judge very, very seriously. At the same time, she has a lot of courage. If the law does support her, she will make the ruling," said Brenda Smith, Kessler's former law clerk and an associate professor at American University's School of Law.

Kessler's recent rulings have turned her into somewhat of a hero to a growing number of civil liberties groups, especially those which have involved requests for secret government information.

Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy, a small organization that is part of the Federation of American Scientists, called Kessler's March 2001 decision to release some government documents to nuclear energy workers "a work of art."

"Kessler is one of the few judges who has displayed an understanding of the Freedom of Information law and has applied it the way Congress originally intended. She distinguishes carefully between those things the law is intended to protect and those things which should be withheld," Aftergood said.

Other judge watchers, even conservatives, have praised Kessler's ability to come to compromise solutions in rulings. Catholic University Law School Dean Douglas W. Kmiec, who headed U.S. Department of Justice's office of legal counsel in the Reagan and Bush administrations, called Kessler's ruling in the Sept. 11 detainee case "reasonable."

"I'm generally a supporter of the attorney general's efforts, but in these matters, there is always a burden of proof on the prosecution," Kmiec said. "I think that Kessler made a reasonable ruling, one that is faithful to due process, and at the same time, does not close the door to national security concerns," he said.

Boehm, however, cited a number of recent rulings that he said showed a clear partisan slant. Among them was a case earlier this year in which Kessler ruled against a Bush administration nomination to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. The ruling was later reversed by a three-judge panel, Boehm said.

But her supporters said that critics were just upset that the tough judge's rulings were not in their favor. They described Kessler as a wise woman who enjoys reading novels and going to the theater when she's not working.

"You may or may not agree with her decisions, but all say that they are very well reasoned. She does her homework," Belfiore said.

[Flyer]

". . .hand over intelligence data on police tactics, training, and strategies from the last inauguration"

Not current info, if I read this correctly.

[nightdriver]

"Judge Gladys Kessler, who handled the case, issued the orders disclosing the security data. (Kessler was appointed to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in July 1994 by former president Bill Clinton and confirmed by the Senate.)"

Figures.

When are we going to wake up and, instead of "new tone," or "kinder gentler," we drop the boom on these subversive judges that X42 put in power?

[OXENinFLA]

WTF!!!