Government vs. Freedom

January 26, 2008

Government seems to be trampling citizen rights on all fronts these days. This has been going on for years, but our big government seems to be ramping their efforts up as of late.

Take the Oklahoma 3 travesty for example. This coming Monday, Paul Jacob, Susan Elizabeth Johnson and Richard Merrill Carpenter will be on Oklahoma City for arraignment. The charge? Defrauding the state. How? For actually having the balls to petition the government!

What initiative were they working on? A tax and spend control initiative, which of course, is the government’s worst nightmare. So in response, liberal Attorney General Drew Edmondson is using his office in an attempt to flex his legal muscles and scare citizens enough to keep them from petitioning the government.

Fortunately, Paul Jacob is a true American who is willing to take a stand.

OKLAHOMA CITY — Citizens-rights activist Paul Jacob says he plans to spend the next year highlighting legal threats to the citizens’ initiative movement around the country.

After that, he admits, he could wind up in jail for the next 10 years, courtesy of Attorney General Drew Edmondson, for participating in that same initiative process in Oklahoma two years ago.

Jacob was re-indicted last month, this time directly by AG Edmondson, on charges that he and others broke state residency laws by collecting signatures for a ballot initiative as out-of-staters, he told LNL today. He was originally indicted last November by a multi-county grand jury but that indictment was dismissed a few weeks later on a legal technicality.

Edmondson’s charges means that Jacob, also a top adviser at citizens-rights group the Sam Adams Alliance, now faces 10 years in prison and a $25,000 fine if convicted. That Edmondson re-filed the indictment himself shows “this is being handled at the very top [of the AG's office], Jacob said. “It seems to be very political and as well as personal.”

Quick disclaimer: Not only do I know Paul Jacob personally, I also work with him through the Sam Adams Alliance.

Moving along…

Did you hear about the government’s attack on free speech via Jim Roos?

ST. LOUIS—In a double blow to free speech and property rights, the city of St. Louis is not only threatening to take an entire neighborhood for private development—it wants to censor a powerful and highly visible mural protesting the city’s eminent domain abuse and building support for reform.

Fed up with seeing the affordable housing he owns and manages through Neighborhood Enterprises, Inc., and the non-profit Sanctuary in the Ordinary face condemnation for private development, Jim fought back. He helped found the Missouri Eminent Domain Abuse Coalition and has been an advocate for reform of Missouri’s eminent domain laws.

And he had a large mural painted on his building at 1806-08 S. 13th Street, in the Bohemian Hill neighborhood, target of a redevelopment ordinance authorizing eminent domain to make way for private development. Earlier this year, the city’s Land Clearing for Redevelopment Authority started the process of acquiring property in the neighborhood.

After the mural appeared in March, St. Louis bureaucrats told Jim he must apply for a permit. Then they denied his application. St. Louis insists the mural must be taken down as a violation of local “sign codes.”