Ellen Murphy's court date has been changed. Her jury trial will be on Tuesday, March 20 ( not Feb 27 as posted below last week). It was changed - after being set by the Muni Court at the earlier hearings. It is sometimes a game to keep track of the changes to times, dates and even the court rooms for Muni Court and sometimes seems as though the court does not want the public to show up at all. So - I will do my best to check on possible changes to the times and post them here for you. You can let others know of the changes.

Here is the schedule for Ellen Murphy's trespassing case:
Tue, March 5 at 1:30 pm - readiness hearing
Mon, March 19 at 1:30 pm - status conference
Tue, March 20 at 9:00 am - jury trial

All are at Bellingham Municipal Court - not the County Court House. For more details, read the posts below. I hope many citizens show up and witness the efforts of US Rep. Rick Larsen to criminalize Ellen for daring to sit in his office during his normal office hours waiting for answers from him to her direct questions about his fence-sitting the Iraq war issue.

And it seems the Western Washington University campus police are only too eager to arrest students for exercising their rights to speech against the war. Of course it seems they prefer to arrest an ethnic Asian student rather than any nice white ones. And threaten him with several days in jail just waiting for his arraignment.

Karim Ahmath was passing out flyers in the Viking Union on Thursday, Feb. 15, where the Army and other military recruiters were soliciting. It seems that an Army recruiter started chastising Karim - who spoke back. The argument got a bit heated but less so than some of the other arguments between white students and recruiters. Campus police arrested and handcuffed Karim. He was booked and released - but only after being threatened with jail over a long weekend. Seems the county jail told campus police that they did not have room for Karim.

Today Karim was arraigned - and will have a jury trial on May 15 in Whatcom County District Court. He could face jail if convicted. I am told that many students showed up for his arraignment today. He supposedly disturbed the peace of the Viking Union.

Having witnessed recruiters in action in the past it would probably be more fair to charge the Army recruiter with harassment and disturbing the peace. He apparently started the arguing with Karim who was quietly passing out flyers the recruiter did not like. Karim stood up to him. I remember April 1968 when Western came down heavy on Vietnam veterans protesting the recruiters on campus. A kangaroo court was set up by Western and they tried to expel several students. It ended up discrediting Western's administration.

I will try and post the other preliminary dates for Karim's court case as I learn about them. And let's hope the other local media - weekly and Herald - follow this website yet again and cover this case. They will both be very careful though as Western advertises a lot with each of them. Sadly, the Western Front has nothing in today's issue and nothing in previous issues. Not even the Cops Box. Hmmm.