Unreported: Montana Governor’s ‘Senior Counsel’ Not Licensed to Practice Law in State! (Democrat, of Course)
September 3, 2008 | Filed Under Democrats/Leftists, Elections, Government, Corruption, Judges, Media Bias, News, Publius Contributor, Society/Culture, The Law, Warner Todd Huston | No Comments
-By Warner Todd Huston
There is an ethics squabble going on in Montana perpetrated by the senior counsel to the Democrat Governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer. It has been revealed that the Governor’s “senior counsel,” a man named Eric Stern, has been caught trying to “back-door” the judge in a case in which he is involved on behalf of Governor Schweitzer. The ethics violation is bad enough, but it has also been discovered that, even though he is claimed to be an attorney and the Governor’s senior counsel, Eric Stern, is not licensed to practice law in the state of Montana. This seems to say that Eric Stern is practicing law without a license, doesn’t it? Strangely, the media have not bothered to report this most important fact.
According to reports, Eric Stern “a senior official in the governor’s administration” improperly contacted the commissioner of political practices “outside of official proceedings in an ongoing ethics case.” In effect, Stern is accused of trying to “back-door” the judge by discussing the case outside of official proceedings, an extremely blatant ethics violation.
Commissioner Dennis Unsworth, who acts like a judge in the proceedings, said he was contacted by Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s senior counsel, Eric Stern.
The conversations are not allowed outside official proceedings, according to a lawyer for the state Republican Party, who is asking for a hearing to determine what was said.
Like I said, the violation of ethical conduct by Governor Schweitzer’s senior counsel is bad enough, but some bloggers have discovered something that is even more disturbing about Stern: he isn’t licensed to practice law in the state of Montana.
Important FEC Ruling for Blogger Freedom…
August 15, 2008 | Filed Under Blogging, Inernet, Media Bias, News, Publius Contributor, The Heritage Foundation, The Law | No Comments
-By Warner Todd Huston
Apparently the FEC just made a good ruling for our side. The Heritage Foundation has the report…
Bloggers and web site operators may support, oppose, link to, and work cooperatively with federal political candidates. This freedom was reaffirmed when the newly re-constituted Federal Election Commission released its first two enforcement cases August 12.
The Commission’s refusal to regulate blogging and internet sites is not new, but it is notable is that the pro-blogger decision was made within a week or two of the new Commission taking office. Of the scores of items on its docket, the new Commission chose to address this one first: quite likely because they wanted to send a signal to that bloggers are free to engage in politics
Specifically, the Commission said that Gordon Fischer, a former state political party chairman, did not violate election law when he maintained a web site and blog (Iowa True Blue) promoting Barack Obama and criticizing Hillary Clinton. (Our friends at CCP note that the complaint was filed by a Clinton supporter: observing that all too many FEC complaints are filed for political harassment
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Welcome to My Blog, Please See My Lawyer to Post Here
July 17, 2008 | Filed Under Constitution, Democrats/Leftists, Media Bias, News, Publius Contributor, Society/Culture, The Law, Warner Todd Huston | 1 Comment
-By Warner Todd Huston
What is the ages old misconstruction of Shakespeare? “First kill all the lawyers.” Well, one might excuse bloggers if they might wish to add the officers of the courts to that death sentence, at least if the experience of the bloggers at New York’s “Room 8″ blog are concerned.
For Ben Smith and his fellow “Room 8″ bloggers, the world got a bit topsy-turvey not long ago when he was served with a grand jury subpoena by state prosecutors demanding that the identities of anonymous posters on his website be revealed.
Worse, the court wouldn’t inform Mr. Smith exactly why they wanted the identities of several posters and what they would do with the information once they got it.
Smith’s subpoena got retracted and the identities weren’t needed after some legal wrangling, but incidents like this are beginning to occur more and more. Bloggers are running up against the law with increasing frequency in the US and the world. Of course, for much of the world’s bloggers, their blogging is landing them in jail to be tortured by oppressive regimes like China and the like, but bloggers are also finding their work under question in the free world, too.
It’s still the wild west as far as the law is concerned with blogging. Blogs haven’t been around long enough for the law to have settled on what to do with them, what rights bloggers have or don’t have, and what they can or cannot do. The status blogs have in the eyes of the law is still incredibly amorphous. Are bloggers journalists? Should they get the same protections as newspapers? Are they entirely private communications? Should they be held to exactly the same libel laws as other media? And, where do anonymous bloggers stand? Should they be forced to reveal their identities? How about commenters on blogs? Should they be forced to publicly declare their identities? Is their privacy somehow perfectly secure?
Did Baptists Influence Thomas Jefferson?
July 11, 2008 | Filed Under Congress, Constitution, Don Boys, Education, Founders, News, Patriotism, President, Publius Contributor, Security/Safety, Society/Culture, The Law | No Comments
-By Don Boys, Ph.D.
Baptist people have been the most principled people since the time of Christ. I do not believe that the designation of “Baptist” is nearly as important as the doctrine, but I want people to know where I stand. I am a Baptist, and am proud of my heritage that has made an incredible impact on this world—even Jefferson and the U.S. Constitution!
Baptists have stood for the free exercise of a person’s will and against oppression (religious or political) down through the ages.
The English historian, Skeats wrote, “It is the singular and distinguished honor of the Baptists to have repudiated from their earliest history all coercive power over the consciences and actions of men with reference to religion. They were the proto-evangelists of the voluntary principle.”
While that is true, it is also true that there have always been people, since the time of Christ, who held Baptist principles. In fact, a Methodist historian, John Clark Ridpath, who died in 1900 wrote, “I should not readily admit that there was a Baptist Church as far back as 100 A.D., although without doubt there were Baptist Churches then, as all Christians were then Baptists.” (Emphasis added.)
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Reuters: Accuses US of Being Against the Rule of Law
July 6, 2008 | Filed Under Constitution, Democrats/Leftists, Foreign Policy, Media Bias, News, President, Publius Contributor, Security/Safety, Society/Culture, The Law, Warner Todd Huston | No Comments
-By Warner Todd Huston
It looks like Reuters is trying to say that the United States stands against the rule of law with their latest piece on a recent ruling from the so-called World Court — the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The ICJ wants the U.S. to vacate the death penalty sentences of several Mexican nationals that sit on death row in prisons in several states and Reuters is shaking its finger at the nasty Americans that deny the jurisdiction of the self-styled World Court.
Mexico has been agitating with the World Court to force the United States to vacate (or at least revisit) the convictions of 51 Mexican nationals now on death row because they claim that these murderers were not alerted to their right to seek consular assistance before they went into the American court systems.
Naturally, the ICJ happily complied with Mexico’s request and demanded that the U.S. comply with the World Court decision. Bush made an unfortunate decision in 2005 to ask the various states to comply with the ICJ, but the issue has since been settled by the Supreme Court of the United States. Fortunately, just this month the SCOTUS said that our courts are not bound by the ICJ rulings.
Of course, Reuters seems to imagine that the U.S. now stands against the rule of law because we have told the ICJ to take a hike. The Reuters report is filled with the stern scolding of a U.S. that “violated” international law and how the U.S. is “in breach of its international obligations.”
Gov’t To tell You What Kids to Invite to Birthday Parties
June 30, 2008 | Filed Under Democrats/Leftists, Media Bias, News, Publius Contributor, Society/Culture, The Law, Warner Todd Huston | No Comments
-By Warner Todd Huston
OK, now go read that headline again. There is no trick to it. I am saying that government is aggregating unto itself the power to tell you, a parent of an 8-year-old child, which of his school classmates he is allowed to invite to his birthday party. And government has decided that if your child doesn’t invite every kid in his class, then he isn’t allowed to invite any of them.
It’s about discrimination, don’t you know?
You see, our wilting flowers, our fragile, unable, emotionally unstable children will grow up to become serial killers if they don’t get invited to YOUR child’s birthday party. The government cares, see, and has so decreed. YOU will just have to invite everyone or you will be barred from having that party.
Fortunately this stupidity hasn’t yet happened in the United States but it did just occur in Europe. Sweden to be exact. The AP is reporting the Nanny State in Sweden has forcibly taken away the birthday invitations to an 8-year-old boy’s birthday party and told his father that he isn’t allowed to pass them out to only some of the other kids. If it isn’t all of them, then NONE should be invited.
The boy handed out invitations to classmates at his school in Lund, southern Sweden, but did not invite two boys because they were not his friends… The school, 360 miles south of Stockholm, confiscated all the invitations, saying it objected because it had a duty to ensure against discrimination.
The Father of the boy told authorities that one of the two boys had bullied his child and the other had not invited his boy to a past party.
Now, the anti-American left in this country would have you believe that Europe is the closest thing to nirvana, they say we should be emulating what they do there. We’ve even had self-hating Supreme Court Justices imagining that we should jettison the Constitution and take up foreign precedent as our own.
Big Brother and his nanny state rules all, even your 8-year-old’s birthday party.
Don’t laugh this off as something that could not happen here. Total domination of government over our lives is the ultimate end of modern liberalism. From the most important decisions to the least, most personal decisions, government must take all power unto itself to fulfill the liberal mantras of “fairness,” and “non-discrimination.”
It is already happening in Europe. It will come here if the Democratic Party and their malcontent, meddlesome constituency have anything to say about it. It’s just the kind of “change” just the kind of “new tone” they want. In fact, even if that isn’t their ultimate plan, it IS the ultimate desti