"CLUES," AN INTERACTIVE LEGAL GAME

CLUES (Cyber Law; Understanding, Equality, Symbiosis), an interactive legal telepresence game, is being brought to the World Wibe Web pages on the beliefs that freedom is threatened by exaggerated fears for "security," and that communication may cast out ignorance.

This game page forum gives us, as participants, hotlinks straight into the chambers where the decisions Americans will have to live by in the future are made. Essentially, the purpose of the Legal Telepresence game is to preserve the fundamental principles of civilization into the 21st Century.

PURPOSE STATEMENT

As optimistic computer networkers and webbists, we are trying to find ways to use the new global communications networks for real life applications.

Playing CLUES should be like a pledge of allegiance - a commitment to make America a better place, with better laws, better courts, better cops; a place with meaningful security, justice and happiness; an America to make human beings proud.

Anyone, including anarchists, are free to play this game, provided they can subscribe, in theory at least, to the following (two) basic premises:

1) "The very essence of civil liberty certainly consists in the right of every individual to claim the protection of the laws, whenever he receives an injury." Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 149, 161 (1803).

2) "The right to speak freely and to promote diversity of ideas and programs is ... one of the chief distinctions that sets us apart from totalitarian regimes." Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 4 (1945).

Perhaps, given sufficient patience, the CLUES principles can be applied as a means of compromising any divergent perceptions of reality to a closer approximation of actual reality.

OVERVIEW

Players will gain a perspective on what happens when a common American citizen, well-prepared, stands up in court where a situation requires judicial relief. Using the game will allow lawyers, judges, law students and legal enthusiasts world wide a rare glimpse into the Federal Court system.

As the game progresses, the game database will become a catalog of contemporary patterns of the use of state authority in dealing with unpopular opinions.

"The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men. It will certainly cease to deserve this high appellation, if the laws furnish no remedy for the violation of a vested legal right." Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 138, 163 (1803).

HOW TO PLAY

To play the game, one must make the wisest most honest legal response to the current situation of the case presented.

The introduction page will give the current status of the case, with links to the docket sheet and the latest filings.

One's task, if one's interested in free thought and expression, will be to analyze the case presented on the web site and respond with your proposed legal filing. All filings will be kept up to date along with backgrounds and some filings in related cases. Your familiarity with the details of the case will be limited only by the depth of links traveled in finding the information. Footnotes are often informative.

The best proposed filings will be posted to give an example of the ideas generated from other sources.

Thank you for being part of this global democracy experiment - including those living in places other than the United States. We wish you honesty, wisdom and justice.

And now, to introduce you to the opening moves of the game, here are THE FACTS:


THE CASES AT BAR

Remember the terrible Evil Empire, and how appalling we thought it was when the police harassed and arrested people for demonstrating in Red Square> Now, it's allegedly taking place here in Lafayette Park. The problem is how to force the judicial system to respond in its own best interests to the basic premises.

In 1981 a Vigil began on the north side of the White House in Lafayette Park. The National Park Services calls Lafayette Park "the symbol of our free and democratic nation." As such the Park sets the judicial trend of civil rights across the country. 1981 the Vigil enjoyed absolute protection from police harassment under the First Amendment.

Over the years a succession of regulations, each built upon the abstract premises of the previous, has turned some aspect of free expression into a crime, subject to the discrimination of the individual enforcing agent. It's tough to talk about anything when police can arrest, assault, or intimidate you under the pretext of enforcing a regulation. As a result the Vigil has spent as much time defending the First Amendment against petty regulatory abuse.

Years of inconclusive legal battles have been "resolved" by the courts' refusal to examine the facts on the grounds of "official immunity." This fact has raised serious doubts concerning the ability of the judicial system to halt the nationwide erosion of individual liberty at the hands of authoritarian power. Now two real-time tests of the basic premises are currently in progress before United States District Court Judge Charles R. Richey in Washington, D.C.

White House Shooting Case

In the first case, Thomas v. United States, USDC CA 94-2427, The White House Shooting Case, filed on December 22, 1994.The issues at bar are the violent death of an individual and alleged authoritarian suppression of free thought and expression under color of regulation.

White House Paranoia Case

The second case, Thomas v. Clinton, USDC CA 95-1018, The White House Paranoia Case, seeks to address recent Secret Service moves to restrict public expression in, and access to Lafayette Park, the symbol of our Free and Democratic Nation