'Your policies in Iraq are reprehensible," Steven Howards told Vice President Dick Cheney in a chance June meeting at a Colorado ski resort. Ten minutes later, Howards says, a Secret Service agent was escorting him to jail on charges of assault, though he'd never touched Cheney. Now, Howards is suing.
The suit-filed in Denver-is at least the third of its kind to target the Secret Service in the past two years. The American Civil Liberties Union sued in 2004 on behalf of a West Virginia couple who said they were arrested for wearing anti-George Bush T-shirts to a presidential appearance, and in 2005 on behalf of a Denver couple who said their "No More Blood for Oil" bumper sticker got them ejected from a presidential speech. Two women who say they were arrested at a Bush rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for holding a sign and wearing a John Kerry button filed their own suit last year. "This isn't an isolated case," Howards said. "That to me is scarier for the future of this nation than Osama bin Laden ever will be."
A Secret Service spokesperson declined to comment on the Howards case, and the agency has said little about the other cases. But in the Iowa case, Justice Department lawyers argued that the Secret Service targeted the women simply for disobedience. "At no time,"they wrote, "did any political message play any role."
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/061008/16cross.htm
