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The
Bothwell Letter
News from the Law Offices of Anthony P. X. Bothwell
350 Bay Street, Suite 100 PMB314, San Francisco, CA 94133-1966 Tel.
(415) 370-9571
Jan 01, 2003 Vol. V / No. 1
contact@apxbothwell.com
Pro bono
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE IS FORCED TO STOP DESECRATIONS
Every lawyer has a duty to do some work pro bono publico, for public
good. From my window I see, inside the Golden Gate, the strobing lighthouse
of Alcatraz, where American Indian Movement occupiers demanded justice
33 years ago. I am working with descendants of those who survived a
19th century holocaust of millions, heirs of 2 billion acres from Atlantic
to Pacific. My pro bono efforts focus on present-day battles for Native
American rights.
National Park Service (NPS) police treat 25,000 Oglala Sioux so badly
that their South Dakota homeland, Pine Ridge Reservation, is known as
“the Mississippi of the North.” NPS officers tailed me,
harassed Sioux organizers, and tore down roadside signs on Indian land
pointing to the Stronghold (seen in the fact-inspired movie, Thunderheart),
where we were to meet one night last summer. I drove an S.U.V. for hours
over remote buttes, evading herds of cattle, staring down longhorns,
offroading near unseen cliffs, to attend powwows with descendants of
survivors of Custer’s Wounded Knee Massacre.
Lakota scouts watched night raiders in Blackhawk helicopters invade
Oglala Sioux Nation. Agents used low-power explosives and high-tech
gear to search for zeolite, wanted for use in high-level radioactive
waste storage facilities. Heavy earth-moving equipment desecrated sacred
land in the area of final resting places of Ghost Dancers, survivors
of Wounded Knee. Tribal leaders sent signals to the U.S. Justice Department
that these violations of federal and international law are intolerable.
Recruiting nonviolence trainers and announcing plans for mass civil
disobedience, we succeeded, at least for a while, in stopping excavations
of sacred sites.
Hot news
TIME MAGAZINE AND TV SPOTLIGHT F.A.A. AGE DISCRIMINATION
Proactive news media relations, within proper ethical boundaries, can
ensure the public’s right to know about legal challenges to government
abuse of power. Long before becoming a lawyer, I clerked in the Washington
Post newsroom, was an Associated Press broadcast editor and later was
press spokesperson for U.S. Senate campaigns and others. My law office
facilitates press coverage in appropriate cases.
TIME magazine ran a full-page story on the petition I filed seeking
exemption of 10 Professional Pilots Federation members from a Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) rule that mandates retirement of airline
pilots after age 59. Aviation Week magazine quoted a former FAA general
counsel as saying our case, unlike prior challenges to the rule, may
win. WNBC New York and others also reported on our petition. We have
internal documents showing that FAA officials, thinking they were doing
a favor for airline executives, fraudulently distorted age-safety data
to force retirement of the ablest pilots. Exemptions can aid the war
against terrorism by keeping the most experienced, safest pilots available
in command civilian airliners.
Whistleblowers
NUCLEAR WEAPONS LAB GUARDS FILE SUIT FOR RETALIATION
I have teamed up again with attorneys of the Government Accountability
Project (GAP) on behalf of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory employees
who have blown the whistle on safety and security violations. A few
years ago we won more than $300,000 for Dave Lappa, a prominent nuclear
engineer forced out of his job for refusing to sweep under the rug evidence
of willful violation of plutonium safety regulations. Recently, as GAP’s
local counsel, I filed a complaint in Superior Court in Alameda County
on behalf of Charles Quinones and Mathew Zipoli, president and vice
president of the Security Police Officer Association. The two union
leaders were fired by lab management after they complained about management’s
failure to take adequate steps to safeguard weapons-grade nuclear materials
against possible terrorist attack. The new suit names the University
of California Regents, who manage the lab for the U.S. Department of
Energy, and several managers as defendants.
Tax help
TAXPAYER RIGHTS ASSERTED IN CHALLENGE TO IRS COLLECTORS
Every taxpayer has rights as well as duties. For 13 years as an IRS
tax law specialist and revenue officer, I advised taxpayers and their
representatives, enforced tax regulations and trained IRS employees.
As a National Treasury Employees Union official, I won grievances against
IRS managers who engaged in discriminatory practices. Now I advise my
clients on tax consequences of litigation and assist on other tax matters.
The IRS Restructuring and Reform Act, enacted after hooded agents revealed
horror stories in U.S. Senate hearings, is essentially cosmetic. I now
am co-counsel on a case filed in U.S. District Court in the Central
District of California, challenging IRS abuse of “jeopardy assessment”
procedures. In coordination with Los Angeles law offices, I am investigating
wrongful tax collection practices that led to the death of a taxpayer.
Testing bias
LAW REVIEW THROWS LIGHT ON L.S.A.T. RACE AND ETHICS ISSUES
The lead story in the latest issue of Thurgood Marshall Law Review exposes
discrimination and conflict-of-interest problems associated with the
Law School Admission Test (LSAT). Based on my five-year study, it finds
the test “inherently and unfairly biased against minorities.”
The study also documents “ethically questionable” financial
links between American Bar Association accreditors and the supposedly
independent council that runs the LSAT. My article concludes, “Today
there is an overabundance of lawyers who proved they were good at standardized
multiple-choice tests of, by and for Anglo sophisticates. There is a
shortage of lawyers of every race, faith and origin who have the positive
human attributes such as integrity, resoluteness and caring for others
– qualities unmeasured by a computer.” I have proposed abolition
of the LSAT – and admission of law school applicants based on
total background and attributes relevant to becoming the kind of good
lawyer today’s society needs. Mario Obledo, former attorney general
of Texas, urged using the arguments in my study as the basis for a lawsuit
on behalf of Mexican American law school applicants.
Adjunct professorship
CLASSES OFFERED ON LEGAL ISSUES AND NEGOTIATION SKILLS
My course offerings at John F. Kennedy University: Legal Issues; Negotiation
Methods; E-Commerce Law (School of Management). Law, Democracy &
Society; Terrorism & Psychology (School of Liberal Arts). Taxpayers’
Rights; International Business Transactions; Terrorism & Law (School
of Law).
ANTHONY P. X. BOTHWELL, Esquire:
The State Bar of California; Bar of the U.S. District Court (N. Calif.);
American Bar Association; International Bar Association. Georgetown
Univ. School of Foreign Service, BSFS; Boston Univ. School of Public
Communication, MS; John F. Kennedy Univ. School of Law, JD; Golden Gate
Univ. School of Law, LLM summa cum laude. Who’s Who in America
(2002–). Who’s Who in the World (2003).
Principal Areas of Practice: Civil rights, civil liberties,
human rights, international trade, federal income tax, medical/dental
malpractice, and personal-injury accidents.
Contact: Atty. Tony Bothwell, Attorney at Law, 100
First Street, Ste. 100, PMB241, San Francisco, CA 94105-2632. Tel. (415)
370-9571. FAX (415) 362-5469. contact@apxbothwell.com
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