{From my personal archives}
[quote, via OCR from print]

THE WICHITA EAGLE 7A
TUESDAY, JUNE 6, 2006

Whistle-blowers may have no choice but to go public
BY KENNETH F. BUNTING
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

In a peculiarly parsed 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court said last week that the nation's 21 million public employees do not have the protection of the First Amendment when they raise concerns about wrongdoing as part of their job duties.

The decision, supported by the Bush administration and at odds with precedents from two judicial circuits, makes it easier for government employers to punish, and even retaliate against, government employees who air concerns about wrongdoing through internal grievance, complaint and communications channels.

Critics, including civil libertarians and attorneys for whistle-blowers, said the impact of the ruling, which drew three dissenting opinions, could be sweeping, silencing conscientious public employees and endangering public health and safety.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority decision, said public employees aren't acting as citizens, and therefore are not entitled to First Amendment protection, when they report perceived wrongdoing as part of their ordinary job responsibilities. But "employees who make public statements outside the course of performing their official duties retain some possibility of First Amendment protection because that is the kind of activity engaged in by citizens who do not work for the government."

The Bush administration is viewing the ruling as a victory of sorts. But it would be poetic justice for this excessively secretive, leak-phobic and cover-up-prone administration if the ruling's long-range impact was to inspire more whistle-blowers to go public instead of bringing complaints internally.

Justice David Souter sounded more in line with previous court precedents and common sense when he remarked in his dissenting opinion that "a government paycheck does nothing to eliminate the value to an individual of speaking on public matters. And there is no good reason for categorically discounting a speaker's interest in commenting on a matter of public concern just because the government employs him."

Kenneth F. Bunting writes for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

[endquote]

As government employees are not citizens, and doubting that many of them are authorized to work in the US under any existing US statutes, it is hereby moved that they all must immediately be extradited to whatever nation demonstrates the immediate desire - or grudging willingnes - to take them in.

It is suggested that the extraditions shall start with the most rank at the highest ranks and proceed downward, approximately in order of authority, so that those most likely to be harmful to the nation shall be removed first.

Is an offer of assylum heard from Iraq, Iran, or Afghanistan?

John