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As public hearings in the impeachment inquiry against President Trump once again put whistleblowers in the national spotlight, a local whistleblower will be posthumously honored this week for his efforts exposing substandard care at the Manchester VA Medical Center.

Dr. William Ed Kois, the late VA Medical Center doctor who prompted a nationwide review after exposing poor conditions at the Manchester VA hospital, is the recipient of the 2019 Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment Award. Kois, who died in July in a car crash in Hampton, will be posthumously honored at the 17th annual First Amendment Awards event this Tuesday, Nov. 19 at 7 p.m. at the Palace Theatre.

Kois used his medical training as a spinal cord specialist to help ease pain and improve the lives of his patients. He used his sense of what is right and his First Amendment rights of free speech, free press and petitioning the government to touch the lives of countless other VA patients.

He led a group of 11 physicians and employees who contacted a federal whistleblower agency and the Boston Globe Spotlight Team to say the Manchester VA was endangering patients.

Bipartisan support for protection of federal whistleblowers was on display last Thursday during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing about a Department of Veterans Affairs internal watchdog report. The inspector general found that an office meant to protect whistleblowers instead inflicted injury.

Employee confidence in the departments willingness and ability to deal appropriately with whistleblowers has been damaged and it could take a long time to heal.

Departing from her prepared opening statement, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., chairwoman of the veterans affairs subcommittee, said the findings by the VAs inspector general were incredibly disturbing ... The fact that this office seemed to be used as a political weapon, rather than a tool to be able to help veterans get the service they need, that they deserve, that they earned, was a travesty.

After Texas Rep. John Carter, the top Republican on the panel, read the report about the VAs Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection, he concluded that pretty much the whole thing is a wreck ... that everything is broken.

One wrecked part of the office was its responsibility to keep secret whistleblowers identity when they requested anonymity. Inspector General Michael Missal told the hearing the office failed to fully protect whistleblowers from retaliation. Former officials in the office, he added, took the position that allegations of whistleblower retaliation could not be investigated unless the whistleblower was willing to disclose his or her identity.

Missals statement came one day after House Intelligence Committee Democrats rejected a Republican move to subpoena the CIA whistleblower in the Ukraine scandal. Those revelations in the whistleblowers complaint led to the impeachment inquiry examining President Donald Trumps alleged effort to use foreign policy for his personal political benefit.

Anonymity is important because many whistleblowers, fearing management reprisals, would not report government wrongdoing without it. VA has a shameful history of retaliation against whistleblowers, particularly after the scandal over the coverup of long patient wait times erupted in 2014.

A Trump executive order established the office, supposedly for whistleblowers protection, in April 2017. Congress codified it with legislation two months later.

We are sending a strong message, Trump said then about whistleblowers. We will make sure that theyre protected.

Instead, the office failed to establish safeguards sufficient to protect whistleblowers from becoming the subject of retaliatory investigations, Missal testified in the Rayburn House Office Building.

Former leaders of the office didnt know what they were doing, according to the reports findings. They made avoidable mistakes early in its development that created an office culture that was sometimes alienating to the very individuals it was meant to protect, Missal said.

He said those leadership failures have had a chilling effect on complainants still being felt today, though he acknowledged the offices improvement under the current leadership of Assistant Secretary Tamara Bonzanto.

Also scheduled to be honored at the 17th annual First Amendment Award event this Tuesday are David Tirrell-Wysocki, the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications long-time director and former newsman, who will be recognized with the Nackey S. Loeb Quill and Ink Award.

Tirrell-Wysocki has been at the Loeb School since it was founded in 1999, serving as executive director since 2007. He grew the schools offerings and partnered with other organizations. He is retiring at the end of the year.

Fox Business Network host Trish Reagan is the events featured speaker.

The First Amendment Award event is the main fundraiser for the nonprofit school, which was founded by Nackey S. Loeb, the late President and Publisher of the New Hampshire Union Leader and Sunday News. It offers free and low-cost classes to children and adults. Instructors from media outlets and businesses around the state teach courses on the First Amendment, journalism, photography, broadcasting, audio and video production, social media and public speaking.

Tickets for the First Amendment Award event are available at http://www.palacetheatre.org or by calling the theater box office at 668-5588.

The presenting sponsor is Peoples United Bank. Other sponsors and supporters are Eversource Energy, The Brodsky Prize, AutoFair, Bryant Corky Messner, AT&T, Brady Sullivan Properties, McLane Middleton and The Common Man Family of Restaurants.

Media partners are the New Hampshire Union Leader, WMUR-TV and WGIR.

Information from The Washington Post was used in this report.

More here:
Late VA whistleblower Kois to be honored at 17th annual First Amendment Awards - The Union Leader

A visitor to the peaceful village of Hiram, Maine, might well wonder why a Spanish American War monument overlooks the principal intersection. Only a handful of local residents served in any military capacity during that conflict, while 110 men and boys went from Hiram to fight in the Union army between 1861 and 1865, and 42 of them never returned. Another 27 served during World War I, from that town of something over 1,000 citizens. Yet Hiram has no specific monument to veterans of the Civil War, which is our most memorialized war, or to those of the First World War.

The generation that donned uniforms in 1898 had grown up in the shadow of the Union veterans, who were regarded with an admiration approaching awe during the late 19th century. Through the Grand Army of the Republic, the veterans relentlessly propagated the example of their own selfless and heroic service to their country, and young men inevitably envied the reverence those old soldiers attracted. Not since 1861 had the United States faced a crisis that demanded an effusive patriotic response, and as the century came to a close the population seemed primed for an opportunity to show that the national spirit still flourished.

As in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the policy decisions that led to the Spanish American War were guided by the political ambitions of expansionist factions within the U.S. government. The popular reaction, meanwhile, was manipulated by exaggerated or perfectly false stories circulated in the American press. In 2003 it was rumored weapons of mass destruction; in 1898 there was the bogus claim that Spanish agents had sunk the USS Maine in Havana harbor. In both cases, that combination led to an unnecessary war that brought disastrous consequences. We can't yet say which of them produced the worse results.

Because of the attenuated condition of the Spanish empire, it was a quick war. Land and naval actions in Cuba and Puerto Rico gave us complete control of those islands within a few weeks. After a short sea battle at Manila, American forces seized the Philippines, and an expedition to Guam took that island without a fight. That led almost immediately to the annexation of Hawaii, because Pearl Harbor suddenly became an important coaling station for U.S. ships on their way to those new possessions in the far Pacific.

This was all very satisfactory to the expansionists, including Teddy Roosevelt, who had been so "bully" on thrashing those belligerent Spaniards. As assistant secretary of the Navy, Roosevelt ought to have known about the notorious design flaw in battleships like the Maine, in which coal bunkers prone to fire lay tight against the powder magazines. He did not mention that defect as a potential explanation for the explosion in Havana.

What we gained from the war with Spain were the islands that made us a threat to the rising power in Asia. On Dec. 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was the target of the Japanese attack that crippled our Pacific fleet and finally lured us into World War II. Guam fell four days later. The last American troops in the Philippines surrendered five months later.

The attack on Pearl Harbor alone killed more Americans than died from all causes during the Spanish American War, most of whom fell victim to disease. Maine and New Hampshire each raised one volunteer infantry regiment in May of 1898, and both of them idled the summer away in camp on the Chickamauga battlefield, in Georgia. A few dozen in each regiment died there, mainly from poor sanitation, and the rest came home in September, bored stiff.

The most notable casualty among the soldiers from Oxford County was 2nd Lt. Lucian Stacy, from Porter, who had graduated from West Point in 1896. He went to Cuba with the 20th U.S. Infantry, taking part in the campaign for Santiago, but he came down with malaria after the fighting ended. He had just arrived at home on convalescent furlough when he died on Sept. 4, the day before his 29th birthday. His parents buried him in Kezar Falls.

A second crop of recruits went off to suppress the Philippine "insurrection," after the natives of those islands objected to the Americans simply imposing another imperial regime in place of the Spanish. Alvin Lord, a teenager from Cornish and a former employee of North Conway's Kearsarge House, enlisted for that service on Jan. 29, 1899. The following August he died at his post, defending his country's spanking-new territory against its defiant denizens from a fortified island in Manila Bay called Corregidor. A generation later, thousands of other Americans would find that bastion rather worthlessand more difficult to defend against a better-armed enemy.

William Marvel is a resident of South Conway.

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William Marvel: Wars of the First Amendment - Conway Daily Sun

NASHVILLE, Tenn Two families are tired of feeling like "second-class citizens" in the Smith County public school system due to their beliefs, according to a press release from the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee and the ACLU.

According to them, school officials unlawfully promoted religion in public schools, violating the First Amendment.

The lawsuit alleges that officials directed prayer during mandatory assemblies, distributed and displayed Bibles during classes, posted Bible verses in hallways and broadcast prayers at sporting events.

It also states that coaches participated in prayer with student-athletes and that a cross painted on the wall of an athletic facility violates the separation between church and state.

When I was in the military, I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution, which includes religious freedom, Kelly Butler said in a press release, a father to several children who attend Smith County schools. Its wrong for the public schools to make my family feel like second-class citizens because of our beliefs.

The ACLU and the ACLU of Tennessee posted tweets about the lawsuit, Butler v. Smith County.

The release said Butler and another family involved in the lawsuit are both atheists. They are also seeking a preliminary injunction to stop the practices outlined in the lawsuit.

Read this article:
Smith County School System sued over first amendment violations, promotion of religion - WBIR.com

Updated: May 25, 2018:

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Read more from the original source:
The First Amendment Battleground: SCOTUS Asked to Review Two Ninth Circuit Decisions on the Constitutionality of the TCPA - JD Supra

Confirmed Judges, Confirmed Fearsis a blog series documenting the harmful impact of President Trumps judges on Americans rights and liberties.

In October 2019, Trump Eleventh Circuit judges Kevin Newsom, Elizabeth Branch, and Britt Grant voted to deny full court rehearing and affirmed the denial of a prisoners right to seek damages for violation of his First Amendment right to file a grievance against a prison officer. The case is Carter v. Allen.

Demetruis Carter was a prisoner who alleged he was subject to a sexually inappropriate touch by a prison officer. Carter told the officer he would file a grievance and was then put in segregation. The day after Carter filed the grievance, prison officers, including the officer in question, conducted a shakedown of the dorm in which Carter resided. After one of the officers produced a contraband cellphone, he accused Carter of hiding it and Carter was charged with a violation. Later, the wardeninstructed the officer in question to conduct another shakedown and search of Carters dorm. Carter told the warden he was uncomfortable with that officer due to the past grievance he had filed and was again placed in segregation.

Representing himself, Carter sued for violation of his First Amendment right to complain about the prison officers inappropriate behavior towards him. The claim proceeded to a jury trial. Before the trial began Carter requested appointment of counsel. His request was denied. The jury later returned a verdict against him.

Carter filed a motion for a new trial and was denied. He appealed the denial as well as the jury verdict. A three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit granted Carters request for counsel, but affirmed the jury verdict anyway. In particular, the panel ruled that Carter could not seek damages under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) because he suffered no physical injury.

Carter petitioned the Eleventh Circuit for an en banc rehearing of the case. A majority of the judges, including all of Trumps judges, denied a rehearing.

Judge Beverly Martin dissented. She explained that in every other circuit, people in prison are allowed to seek damages for violations of their First Amendment rights but not so in the Eleventh Circuit. The physical injury requirement under the PLRA only pertains to claims for mental and emotional injury, she continued.A prisoner does not discard his basic First Amendment rights at the prison gate, but Judges Newson, Branch and Grant instead voted to deny Demetruis Carter the opportunity to pursue justice. Their decision sets a dangerous precedent for incarcerated people in the Eleventh Circuit who suffer mistreatment, abuse or assault, in any form, at the hands of prison officers.

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Trump Judges Vote to Deny Full Court Rehearing and Affirm Denial of Damages for Violation of a Prisoner's First Amendment Rights: Confirmed Judges,...