TODAY IS THE DAY TO SHOW YOUR SUPPORT (Feds Give Klamath Leader 72 Hours To Get To Court)

This morning, agents of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service served a leader at the Klamath headgates, Barbara Martin, with legal papers, including a complaint, motion for a temporary restraining order and motion for an order to show cause, and a temporary restraining order, barring her from "occupying, entering upon the area within the fence surrounding the [headgates], [or] interfering with, impeding, damaging, or obstructing the operations of the Bureau of Reclamation water control head gate".

The Justice Department obtained the temporary restraining order without notice to Ms. Martin on Friday, August 31st, claiming that "the undersigned was unable to contact Ms. Martin, and therefore did not advise him [sic] of this application". No record is given of just what effort was made to contact Ms. Martin, who spends a great deal of time at the headgates and is easy to reach. The temporary restraining order contains a typo that suggests it has been in the works since August 23rd.

Though served on Saturday morning, the order requires Ms. Martin to appear before United States District Judge Ann Aiken at 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, September 4th, in Eugene, Oregon, which is hundreds of miles away from Klamath Falls. (Interested members of the public could presumably attend; the address is 211 E. 7th Avenue.) Judge Aiken is the same judge who previously denied relief to the irrigators.

The Supreme Court has declared that the First Amendment does not protect "advocacy . . . directed to inciting and producing imminent lawless action and [which] is likely to incite or produce such action" (Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 447 (1969)). The complaint thus includes, as an exhibit, a declaration from Special Agent Scott G. Pearson, who relies, in part, upon a "confidential informant". Agent Pearson declares that Ms. Martin "circulated through the crowd calling for participants to effect a 'citizens arrest' of the federal officers and repeatedly attempted to incite the crowd to physically occupy the headgate structure". Ms. Martin denies these allegations. The papers do not explain why walking upon the headgates amounts to "lawless action". By contract, the headgates are under the management and operation of the Klamath Irrigation District, not the Bureau of Reclamation.

http://resourcescommittee.house.gov/104cong/esa/fees.htm

CLINTON ADMINISTRATION CLOSES
COURTHOUSE DOOR -- HON. DON YOUNG
(Extension of Remarks - September 25, 1996)

[Page: E1679]

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HON. DON YOUNG

in the House of Representatives

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1996

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, I rise to bring to your attention a terrible injustice. The victims of this injustice are hardworking, taxpaying American citizens who are being deprived of basic rights guaranteed to each citizen under the Constitution. Those rights are the right to due process of law and the right to equal protection of the law. Due process guarantees that when the Government might cause us harm, we should have a right to be heard. Equal protection requires equal treatment before the law.

If the Clinton administration has it's ways, our citizens will be gagged and denied the right to be heard when they want to complain about what their Government is doing to them under the guise of protecting endangered or threatened species. The lawyers argued that people's economic, social or recreational concerns are not within the `zone of interest' of the ESA and therefore, they cannot sue to have the Court decide if the Secretary had violated the law.

The judge threw the ranchers out of court, but they appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal. Once again. Secretary Babbitt's attorneys argued that the ranchers could not sue to have the Secretary's actions reviewed by the court, because they have no protections under the ESA. This is called the zone of interest test. The ninth circuit in Bennett v. Plent, 63 F. 3d 915 (1995) agreed with Secretary Babbitt's lawyers and once again threw these ranchers out of court ruling that they were not within ESA's zone of interest. The ranchers have now appealed to the Supreme Court. However, Secretary Babbitt's attorneys are now worried about the political consequences of having everyday people denied access to judicial review of Secretary Babbitt's decisions, so they have quit arguing that these ranchers are not protected by the ESA. Instead, they are still arguing that these ranchers should not be allowed to sue but are basing their arguments on other legal technicalities, such as claiming that the ranchers sued the wrong Government agency within Secretary Babbitt's vast Department. At the Supreme Court level the case is known as Bennett versus Spear.

Putting it in layman's language--Secretary Babbitt's lawyers have opened the door of the courthouse to the environmental lawyers, given them millions of dollars of taxpayers money to pay for their lawsuits, and invited them to keep coming back. This has spawned a cottage industry for so-called environmentalists. Although the Federal Government subsidizes hundreds of environmentalist's lawsuits, they have slammed the door of the courthouse to average citizens just trying to protect themselves from abuses by Secretary Babbitt's Department. I have attached a list of cases filed under the ESA and the attorney's fees received by the lawyers in each of these cases. This list was supplied to the Committee on Resources by the Department of Justice.

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Go to link to see list of Enviornmental Lawsuits and the amounts of OUR tax payer dollars they were granted to make their cases RE: the Endangered Species Act.

I know this is old, don't know if anything has come along to change this.

http://resourcescommittee.house.gov/104cong/esa/fees.htm

This is why people are beginning to THROUGHLY DESPISE the federal government, and they know it. They interpret "lawless action" according to their own interests, and openly defy anyone to do anything about it. If you do, then no holds barred. Jail, bankruptcy, burned alive. And some wonder why we have cynical days.

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Harpo11: "The environmental bullies are like a pack of dogs."