With Duggins' NAHA command bunker silent throughout, city council attorney Stein answers the question about public housing residents and political signs.

City council Democrats remain comatose, but we have an answer to a question that arose a month ago.

For background, first this on February 22.

Do New Albany Housing Authority residents enjoy freedom of speech as it pertains to political campaign yard signs?

The Green Mouse has learned that earlier this week a resident at the New Albany Housing Authority planted a David White for Mayor yard sign in his yard.

It wasn't as big as this one, but still.

Then this on February 23.

Political yard signs at NAHA? As DemoDisneyDixieDickeycrats doze, Al Knable seeks an answer.

Once again, Knable takes the first step on an issue pertaining to human rights and freedoms.

It isn't known whether noted human rights campaigner Greg Phipps had anything to say on Thursday about free speech on the New Albany Housing Authority campus, or if he was joined in his concerns by fellow Democrats Bob Caesar, Pat McLaughlin and Matt Nash.

Then again, not one of them has had the first coherent thing to say about NAHA since the inception of Jeff Gahan's hostile takeover of public housing in 2017.

At tonight's council meeting, Knable returned to the topic and queried council attorney Amy Stein, who revealed the results of her research: NAHA has the legal ability to decree that signs in common areas are either allowed, or not allowed. NAHA cannot allow some and prohibit others. However, as it pertains specifically to political signs, the private space of NAHA residents trumps the commons, and NAHA cannot prevent residents from placing political signs in their windows.

The same question was submitted to the Human Rights Commission, and it isn't clear whether it will or won't discuss the issue at the HRC's next meeting.

Thanks to Knable and Stein for their diligence.

Political yard signs at NAHA? As DemoDisneyDixieDickeycrats doze, Al Knable seeks an answer.

Yesterday at NA Confidential:

Do New Albany Housing Authority residents enjoy freedom of speech as it pertains to political campaign yard signs?

Consequently I've been scolded by the Green Mouse for missing Thursday evening's city council meeting. According to at-large councilman Al Knable:

At last night’s council meeting I asked our (council) attorney to confer with city attorney and NAHA to at least obtain a stated policy and compare to existing statutes/precedents. Stay tuned.

Once again, Knable takes the first step on an issue pertaining to human rights and freedoms.

It isn't known whether noted human rights campaigner Greg Phipps had anything to say on Thursday about free speech on the New Albany Housing Authority campus, or if he was joined in his concerns by fellow Democrats Bob Caesar, Pat McLaughlin and Matt Nash.

Then again, not one of them has had the first coherent thing to say about NAHA since the inception of Jeff Gahan's hostile takeover of public housing in 2017.

Principle?

That's a transitory and malleable thing when you're a DemoDisneyDixieDickeycrat in New Albany.

Do New Albany Housing Authority residents enjoy freedom of speech as it pertains to political campaign yard signs?

The Green Mouse has learned that earlier this week a resident at the New Albany Housing Authority planted a David White for Mayor yard sign in his yard.

It wasn't as big as this one, but still.

The resident promptly was told by maintenance (wait -- doesn't councilman Matt Nash now work in maintenance at NAHA?) to remove the sign. He asked if he could put the sign on his door or in the window, and learned that they'd have to go ask the esteemed Gauleiter Duggins first.

Scanning the Interwebz, it appears this controversy isn't uncommon.

Another issue which has not been discussed in great detail by the courts is the regulation of political signs in front yards in a community governed by a homeowners association. In general, the First Amendment protections do not extend to private residences governed by a homeowners association. If the regulations governing the display of political signs involve a contract between two private parties and the government is not involved, then the regulations will be valid. If, on the other hand, the government is an actor, then a complete ban on political signs will probably be invalid. The Washington Supreme Court recently held that a local housing authority could not prohibit the posting of political signs on the doors to residences in a public housing complex.

There was a case with yard signs at a public housing site in Massachusetts.

Political signs can only be displayed in a tenant's interior window or spaces where a tenant has exclusive control," (management) said. "So we asked Mr. Rose to remove the signs, he didn't, and our maintenance department did and returned them."

But Harvey Silverglate, a civil liberties litigator, said Rose would prevail if he took the matter to court.

"That rule prohibiting political signs would be declared unconstitutional," he said. "It may be permissible for the housing authority to limit the size of the signs or the exact placement, but a blanket prohibition is too broad and too restrictive of speech."

And one from Michigan.

Public housing residents remove campaign signs after eviction threats

Public housing residents in Traverse City have removed campaign signs after officials threatened to evict them. The Traverse City Housing Commission took action after some residents displayed signs in favor of a public vote on buildings taller than 60 feet. It's a question on Tuesday's ballot.

The housing director says the signs violate the lease. But some disagree.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan sent a letter to the commission saying the ban on displaying window signs without approval is violation of the first amendment.

One local attorney said this.

I don't know the precise answer to that question, but I can't imagine an outright ban that would pass constitutional muster.

Another added:

Haven’t researched the nuts and bolts for Indiana, but a landlord cannot prohibit political speech. They can impose some reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions. Displaying a political sign from the inside of your unit should be fine.

As of this precise moment, it isn't know whether the NAHA resident in question has received an answer. Oddly, if there's a policy prohibiting yard signs at the housing authority, it would prevent a sitting mayor like Jeff Gahan from commissioning Duggins to compel NAHA population to "voluntarily" displaying Gahan's signs as a form of coerced adoration.

Maybe Duggins could threaten them with a TASER.

#GoldenOldies

Howard Zinn: "Let us not be disconsolate over the increasing control of the court system by the right wing. The courts have never been on the side of justice."

As a prelude to the Dred Scott Decision Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation drama, our own Dan Canon took to Salon to pour acid on the situation.

I too am savagely impartial and should be a Supreme Court Justice

Brett Kavanaugh’s WSJ op-ed has made me see the light. I too can be indifferent in court!

I was moved by Judge Brett Kavanaugh's opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal last night. After all, he is a white, straight, middle-aged male lawyer, just like me. He's also a father, a son, a nephew, a cousin, probably a second cousin, perhaps even a godfather or a dutch uncle or something. And like me, he enjoys beer. Not plebeian beer, I bet; just the good stuff. We have a lot in common.

Sure, I didn't go to Yale or Harvard or Georgetown, and I barely even passed the bar, but yet I feel a close kinship to the judge for one major reason: we are both fiercely impartial. In fact, I would go so far as to say that (with all due respect) I am even more impartial than Judge Kavanaugh. And it is my commitment to extreme, nonpartisan, militant impartiality that leads me to believe that I am at least equally qualified to serve on the Supreme Court. If Kavanaugh's nomination peters out (and I do not mean that as a joke, though I concede it was an unfortunate choice of words in this context), or if, God forbid, some other deistic guardian of neutrality on the High Court should die or retire, I would accept President Trump's nomination ...

Ouch. 

As usual, Howard Zinn is on target even though he's dead. This article was published on October 21, 2005 and is reprinted here in its entirety.

Local dilettantish progressives, please read it. 

---

Howard Zinn: Don’t Despair about the Supreme Court, by Howard Zinn (Progressive)

It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds.

John Roberts sailed through his confirmation hearings as the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, with enthusiastic Republican support, and a few weak mutterings of opposition by the Democrats. Then, after the far right deemed Harriet Miers insufficiently doctrinaire, Bush nominated arch conservative Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O'Connor. This has caused a certain consternation among people we affectionately term "the left."

I can understand that sinking feeling. Even listening to pieces of Roberts's confirmation hearings was enough to induce despair: the joking with the candidate, the obvious signs that, whether Democrats or Republicans, these are all members of the same exclusive club. Roberts's proper "credentials," his "nice guy" demeanor, his insistence to the Judiciary Committee that he is not an "ideologue" (can you imagine anyone, even Robert Bork or Dick Cheney, admitting that he is an "ideologue"?) were clearly more important than his views on equality, justice, the rights of defendants, the war powers of the President.

At one point in the hearings, The New York Times reported, Roberts "summed up his philosophy." He had been asked, "Are you going to be on the side of the little guy?" (Would any candidate admit that he was on the side of "the big guy"? Presumably serious "hearings" bring out idiot questions.)

Roberts replied: "If the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy's going to win in court before me. But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy's going to win, because my obligation is to the Constitution."

If the Constitution is the holy test, then a justice should abide by its provision in Article VI that not only the Constitution itself but "all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land." This includes the Geneva Convention of 1949, which the United States signed, and which insists that prisoners of war must be granted the rights of due process.

A district court judge in 2004 ruled that the detainees held in Guantanamo for years without trial were protected by the Geneva Convention and deserved due process. Roberts and two colleagues on the Court of Appeals overruled this.

There is enormous hypocrisy surrounding the pious veneration of the Constitution and "the rule of law." The Constitution, like the Bible, is infinitely flexible and is used to serve the political needs of the moment. When the country was in economic crisis and turmoil in the Thirties and capitalism needed to be saved from the anger of the poor and hungry and unemployed, the Supreme Court was willing to stretch to infinity the constitutional right of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. It decided that the national government, desperate to regulate farm production, could tell a family farmer what to grow on his tiny piece of land.

When the Constitution gets in the way of a war, it is ignored. When the Supreme Court was faced, during Vietnam, with a suit by soldiers refusing to go, claiming that there had been no declaration of war by Congress, as the Constitution required, the soldiers could not get four Supreme Court justices to agree to even hear the case. When, during World War I, Congress ignored the First Amendment's right to free speech by passing legislation to prohibit criticism of the war, the imprisonment of dissenters under this law was upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court, which included two presumably liberal and learned justices: Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis.

It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order to uphold justice.

It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order to uphold justice.

The distinction between law and justice is ignored by all those Senators--Democrats and Republicans--who solemnly invoke as their highest concern "the rule of law." The law can be just; it can be unjust. It does not deserve to inherit the ultimate authority of the divine right of the king.

The Constitution gave no rights to working people: no right to work less than twelve hours a day, no right to a living wage, no right to safe working conditions. Workers had to organize, go on strike, defy the law, the courts, the police, create a great movement which won the eight-hour day, and caused such commotion that Congress was forced to pass a minimum wage law, and Social Security, and unemployment insurance.

The Brown decision on school desegregation did not come from a sudden realization of the Supreme Court that this is what the Fourteenth Amendment called for. After all, it was the same Fourteenth Amendment that had been cited in the Plessy case upholding racial segregation. It was the initiative of brave families in the South--along with the fear by the government, obsessed with the Cold War, that it was losing the hearts and minds of colored people all over the world--that brought a sudden enlightenment to the Court.

The Supreme Court in 1883 had interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment so that nongovernmental institutions hotels, restaurants, etc.-could bar black people. But after the sit-ins and arrests of thousands of black people in the South in the early Sixties, the right to public accommodations was quietly given constitutional sanction in 1964 by the Court. It now interpreted the interstate commerce clause, whose wording had not changed since 1787, to mean that places of public accommodation could be regulated by Congressional action and be prohibited from discriminating.

Soon this would include barbershops, and I suggest it takes an ingenious interpretation to include barbershops in interstate commerce.

The right of a woman to an abortion did not depend on the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. It was won before that decision, all over the country, by grassroots agitation that forced states to recognize the right. If the American people, who by a great majority favor that right, insist on it, act on it, no Supreme Court decision can take it away.

The rights of working people, of women, of black people have not depended on decisions of the courts. Like the other branches of the political system, the courts have recognized these rights only after citizens have engaged in direct action powerful enough to win these rights for themselves.

This is not to say that we should ignore the courts or the electoral campaigns. It can be useful to get one person rather than another on the Supreme Court, or in the Presidency, or in Congress. The courts, win or lose, can be used to dramatize issues.

On St. Patrick's Day, 2003, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, four anti-war activists poured their own blood around the vestibule of a military recruiting center near Ithaca, New York, and were arrested. Charged in state court with criminal mischief and trespassing (charges well suited to the American invaders of a certain Mideastern country), the St. Patrick's Four spoke their hearts to the jury. Peter DeMott, a Vietnam veteran, described the brutality of war. Danny Burns explained why invading Iraq would violate the U.N. Charter, a treaty signed by the United States. Clare Grady spoke of her moral obligations as a Christian. Teresa Grady spoke to the jury as a mother, telling them that women and children were the chief victims of war, and that she cared about the children of Iraq. Nine of the twelve jurors voted to acquit them, and the judge declared a hung jury. (When the federal government retried them on felony conspiracy charges, a jury in September acquitted them of those and convicted them on lesser charges.)

Still, knowing the nature of the political and judicial system of this country, its inherent bias against the poor, against people of color, against dissidents, we cannot become dependent on the courts, or on our political leadership. Our culture--the media, the educational system--tries to crowd out of our political consciousness everything except who will be elected President and who will be on the Supreme Court, as if these are the most important decisions we make. They are not. They deflect us from the most important job citizens have, which is to bring democracy alive by organizing, protesting, engaging in acts of civil disobedience that shake up the system. That is why Cindy Sheehan's dramatic stand in Crawford, Texas, leading to 1,600 anti-war vigils around the country, involving 100,000 people, is more crucial to the future of American democracy than the mock hearings on Justice Roberts or the ones to come on Judge Alito.

That is why the St. Patrick's Four need to be supported and emulated. That is why the GIs refusing to return to Iraq, the families of soldiers calling for withdrawal from the war, are so important.

That is why the huge peace march in Washington on September 24 bodes well.

Let us not be disconsolate over the increasing control of the court system by the right wing.

The courts have never been on the side of justice, only moving a few degrees one way or the other, unless pushed by the people. Those words engraved in the marble of the Supreme Court, "Equal Justice Before the Law," have always been a sham.

No Supreme Court, liberal or conservative, will stop the war in Iraq, or redistribute the wealth of this country, or establish free medical care for every human being. Such fundamental change will depend, the experience of the past suggests, on the actions of an aroused citizenry, demanding that the promise of the Declaration of Independence--an equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--be fulfilled.

(Psst -- it's not about the flag or the military, and it never has been.)

I'm often reminded of Thomas Jefferson's words:

"Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

To avoid misinformed confusion, readers old enough to remember the Vietnam War era will recall Tricky Dicky Nixon's law-and-order platform, as a blunt missile aimed squarely against "anti-American" war protesters (attacking the flag and our soldiers overseas) and African-Americans (being all uppity about rights and freedoms).

A space alien (or Mr. Spock) might ask: But was the overseas war just, and did the civil rights protesters have a point?

If you're saying to yourself, well, I never protest, and when I do it is done tastefully, so as to be inoffensive to others ... you just might be revealing yourself as a privileged societal cog unable to fathom injustice.

Would you have participated in the American Revolution?

If so, on which side?

You see, etiquette typically goes out the window when TJ's tipping point occurs, as it did in America in 1776, or in Russia in 1917.

Of course, the plain fact is that NFL protests have been breathtakingly sober and polite. If you're upset about free speech and conscience, but not troubled by the mangled brains of players who perform so you can remain safely inside your bubble, there isn't much more anyone can say except "dude, I'm so very sorry for you."

It’s Not About the Flag or the Military. It Never Has Been.

When athletes protest during the national anthem, they are acting on behalf of people who can’t speak as loudly.

By Andrew Cohen (Brennan Center for Justice)

President Trump’s weekend attack on athletes exercising their constitutional right to protest followed the longtime model used by police unions. Instead of acknowledging the legitimacy of the complaint that there is discrimination and misconduct in policing — Trump, like the unions, changed the subject, lashing out at the athletes as unpatriotic, even anti-American. The protests were mischaracterized as attacks on the flag, the anthem, the military, or the nation itself. As if it were ordained somewhere that one must stand, as opposed to kneel, for the anthem.

This is nonsense, of course. There is nothing more American than protesting injustice when it is manifest, nothing more patriotic than speaking for those who do not have a voice or whose voices are rarely heard. When people protest police misconduct, and racial disparities in our criminal justice systems, they are acting to improve the conditions of their fellow Americans, acting to force necessary reform on people (like Trump) and institutions (like police unions) that resist this change. This is “anti-American” or unpatriotic only if you believe the protections of the First Amendment are overrated or unnecessary. And only if you believe it’s unpatriotic to want to make America more just ...

Dunman: "Civic ignorance has reached a sort of pandemic level in our country in recent years."

When there's nothing real about popular culture, popular culture isn't real. I continue to maintain that a purely materialist, consumer-driven society produces dolts, and speedier communications merely produces them more rapidly than before.

Meanwhile, Joe Dunman is a civic institution 'round these parts.

Anyone out there still read?

Commentary: Civic ignorance puts our own rights at dire risk, by Joe Dunman (Insider Louisville)

... Beyond exploring the gritty, technical details of search and seizure, religious establishment, and strict judicial scrutiny, the main purpose of my course is to defeat civic ignorance. I want my students to understand how things are supposed to work in American government. How the rights of individuals should receive deference, respect, and protection from the power structures we have created.

Unfortunately, civic ignorance has reached a sort of pandemic level in our country in recent years. Nobody seems to know how anything is supposed to work. And this problem is not confined to the steaming garbage dump of online news comments sections. It has infected many of our elected leaders, as well.

Dunman: "Supreme Court should approach same-sex marriage issue from a contemporary constitutional perspective."

I've been linking quite often to Joe Dunman. As noted previously, It's gotten to the point that when I see Joe Dunman's name on the IL mailing, I just click through to read whatever he's written, irrespective of the topic.

"Property values weren’t magically determined by some invisible hand of the market, but by a concerted effort of people and policy to enforce racial segregation."

Thanks to motorized oligarchs like Kerry Stemler, "We still pursue an elusive automobile paradise like a swamp-lost Conquistador seeking the Fountain of Youth."

"Controversial new bike lanes" in Louisville prompt bold new displays of automotive dumbassery.

"The lesson to learn from Hobby Lobby is that employers shouldn’t be in the business of providing health care to their employees."

Southern Indiana same-sex marriage suit a suitable counterpoint to Pence's Brown Suits.

Here is the most recent. Steel-toed boot, meet egg.

Joe Dunman: Supreme Court should approach same-sex marriage issue from a contemporary constitutional perspective (Insider Louisville)

Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit became the first federal appeals court to uphold the prohibition of same-sex marriage since a tide of challenges were filed in the wake of United States v. Windsor in 2013. Three months after hearing oral arguments in six total cases from all four states in the Circuit — Michigan, Tennessee, Ohio and Kentucky — the Sixth Circuit ruled in favor of the states ...

... As Americans, we value tradition. But some American traditions, such as slavery, racial segregation and the disenfranchisement of women and minorities, still linger in our legal history. Because of them, it is dangerous to rely too heavily on the past to decide constitutional questions that face us today. It is my personal hope that the Supreme Court will approach same-sex marriage from a more contemporary constitutional perspective.

As "Utah’s same-sex marriage ban falls," we hope for a Hoosier sequel.

It really couldn't happen to a better state, home to one of the classic ales in the craft beer pantheon, Polygamy Porter.

Wait; it could.

It needs to happen to Indiana. At NPR, we learn that Utah's governor has "condemned the ruling as judicial activism that overrides the will of the people."

Just like back in olden times, when the "will" of the South's inhabitants favored slavery, and this certain war had to be fought ...

Utah’s same-sex marriage ban falls, Lyle Denniston (SCOTUSblog)

Directly applying the Supreme Court’s decision striking down the federal Defense of Marriage Act to a state’s ban on same-sex marriage, a federal judge in Salt Lake City ruled Friday that Utah’s voter-approved state constitutional amendment violates the federal Constitution.

“The Constitution protects the choice of one’s partner for all citizens, regardless of their sexual identity,” U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby ruled in a fifty-three-page opinion. He was the second federal judge to nullify a ban imposed by a state’s voters at the ballot box; the first such ruling nullified California’s “Proposition 8″ — a ruling that the Supreme Court left intact in June but without a direct ruling on it.

If Judge Shelby’s ruling withstands an appeal, it would make Utah the eighteenth state where same-sex marriages are allowed, and the seventh in which equal marriage rights were established by a court ruling.

Pierce on Newtown: "The bell tolls for all of us."

Part one of four.

The Bell Tolls For All Of Us, by Charles P. Pierce (Esquire Politics Blog)

... When we go on forever on the blog here about the value of a political commonwealth, and how it is a product of the ongoing creative process of self-government, this kind of response is what we're talking about. There are things we must do together, in a political context, because these things are too big — and, in this case, too monstrous — for us to handle alone. Self-government and its institutions — public schools, police and fire departments, the ridiculously underfunded mental-health facilities, and all the people to whom we increasingly begrudge their salaries — are the only things keeping us from falling back into barbarism, and the only things keeping us safe and sane when one of us falls back into it on their own.

We are our brother's keeper. The bell tolls for all of us. These very old — and, yes, Bryan, very Christian — concepts really do undergird our experiment in self-government. We all have an investment in the institutions through which we apply these concepts to each other and to ourselves. We have to nurture those institutions and guard them, because they are so very much more easily destroyed than they are to build. And, yes, dammit, we have to pay for them, and we have to pay the salaries of the people who work for them, because we are their keepers, too, and because the bell tolls for them the same way it tolls for all of us.