Two kicked out of Bush event win court order

By Ann Imse
Rocky Mountain News
Nov. 01, 2006

Two people ejected from a speech by President Bush in Denver in 2005, allegedly because of an anti-war bumper sticker on a car they drove to the event, won a court order Monday they hope will uncover who gave the order to kick them out.

Leslie Weise and Alex Young, two of the three people removed from the taxpayer-funded event, are suing two Denver men for actually ousting them. But they believe a White House official gave the order.

Weise and Young say they did nothing disruptive at the speech and maintain the ouster violated their rights to free speech and protection from unreasonable search and seizure.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Wiley Daniel rejected a motion to dismiss the case by defendants Michael Casper and Jay Klinkerman, who worked as volunteers at the event.

That decision allows attorneys for Weise and Young to question the two Denver men under oath.

Daniel limited their questioning of the defendants to issues of whether they are entitled to governmental immunity. But the judge said in his order that includes "whether defendants were 'closely supervised' by government officials."

"I think it's pretty clear," Young said. "Whether they were closely supervised" must include "who the supervisors were and what their functions were."

Weise and Young arrived at the president's speech March 21, 2005, at the Wings Over the Rockies museum at Lowry in a car with a bumper sticker that said, "No More Blood for Oil."

Klinkerman, head of the Colorado Young Republicans at the time, has admitted to being the volunteer who stopped them at the entrance of the event. He directed them to another man wearing a dark blue suit, radio earpiece and lapel pin, which made Weise and Young think he was a member of the Secret Service.

The man, whom they believe was Casper, a General Services employee working the event as a volunteer, allowed them in but later found them in the crowd and forced them to leave before the president arrived. Weise and Young believe he was ordered to do so by someone higher up in the Bush party.