May 9th, 2008 by David
Oklahoma State Attorney General Drew Edmondson’s campaign to stop a bill (SB 1987) to term-limit state officials, including himself, has succeeded. The bill is currently in a conference committee but Democrats have signaled that they will kill it. The law would have limited the AG and other statewide officials to 12 years in office, the governor to eight years. State lawmakers are already term-limited.
There was some squabbling over whether the proposed law would have retroactively counted terms already served before enactment of the law. We don’t think the retroactivity would have been such a horror. But most state legislative term limits laws passed in the 1990s were not retroactive in character.
The sponsors of the current proposal had been willing to clarify the bill’s wording to preclude any such interpretation, even accepting revised language provided by the attorney general’s office itself. But it was all for nothing, and Edmondson apparently was able to convince Democrats who had previously supported the bill to change their minds and vote No. So Oklahoma voters are not going to see this measure at the ballot box and have their own say on the matter.
Not yet, anyway.
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May 6th, 2008 by David
FreePaulJacob.com has already tackled the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center (BISC) and its dumb attacks on Paul Jacob in several previous blog entries (for example, here and here and here). Off-point, silly sallies seem to be all the BISC boys can muster, but for the record, here’s a rundown of charges in BISC’s kit bag as […]
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April 22nd, 2008 by David
Yes, it’s true. Drew Edmondson, the four-time incumbent attorney general of Oklahoma, notorious for abusing the power of his office to prosecute honest supporters of Oklahomans’ citizen initiative rights, has publicly stated his opposition to a bill that would limit his tenure as well as that of other state officials. Via Legal Newsline:
Oklahoma Attorney General […]
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April 21st, 2008 by Kathleen
Paul was interviewed this morning on “Nevada Newsmakers” in Reno, speaking about direct democracy and government accountability. You can view the interview online.
Accuracy in Media interviewed Paul last week about the Oklahoma indictment against the Oklahoma 3. You can listen to the interview, entitled “Oklahoma Slams Taxpayer Led Petition Drive,” on AIM’s web site, or […]
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April 20th, 2008 by Kathleen
So far, we’ve been impressed by a new blog called the Blockbuster Democracy blog. In a round-up last Thursday, blogger Joe Mathews looked skeptically at an article published by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which was very critical of National Voter Outreach, a petitioning company—and the one that Oklahoma 3 defendant Susan Johnson is president of.
Having […]
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April 14th, 2008 by Kathleen
The killing of a bill to create a task force to study the initiative process in Oklahoma resulted in a nice editorial last week in The Oklahoman:
The floor substitute to a bill by Rep. Randy Terrill, R-Moore, and sponsored in the Senate by Randy Brogdon, R-Owasso, would have established a task force to study a […]
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April 14th, 2008 by David
Our friends at Sam Adams Alliance are sponsoring a training day for bloggers in Colorado, coming up April 19.
Samsphere Denver is a one-day training event geared toward bloggers. Maybe you’ve never written a word, but have a lot to say. Maybe you started a blog but couldn’t find your rhythm or the success you hoped […]
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April 9th, 2008 by Kathleen
Ralph Nader’s suit challenging certain Arizona ballot restrictions will have its day in court next week. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th circuit will hear the case—Nader v Brewer, 06-16251—at 9 am, April 15, 2008, in San Francisco.
Nader is challenging the Arizona law that makes it illegal for non-residents to circulate petitions for […]
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April 8th, 2008 by Kathleen
In a new post at OutsideLansing.com, Chetly Zarko discusses the reasons why Ward Connerly’s Oklahoma Civil Rights Initiative failed to make it to Oklahoma’s November ballot. He blames the same forces that are trying to put Paul Jacob and the other members of the Oklahoma 3 in prison.
Zarko writes:
Don’t go into a gun fight with […]
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April 7th, 2008 by David
Paul Jacob’s latest column for Townhall, “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves,” discusses how sundry anti-democrats and “blockers” struggle to derail the exercise of citizen initiative rights.
Paul has elsewhere related (at FreePaulJacob.com, for example), how the 2005 TABOR petition drive in Oklahoma was besieged by blockers. These blockers—who regard it as their duty to harass people who […]
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April 4th, 2008 by David
It is not that hard to detect the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center’s Janus face when it comes to the right of citizen initiative. They’ve got a glaring track record.
“Good” BISC is all in favor of the initiative process when leftish political causes are at stake. But when a conservative or libertarian cause is the subject […]
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April 4th, 2008 by Kathleen
Paul has been doing a bit of media this week in Virginia, including a speech at the University of Virginia, sponsored by Students for Individual Liberty, and Rob Schilling’s afternoon radio program on WINA-AM in Charlottesville. Blogger Rick Sincere was there to get the interview on video. You can view the videos by clicking on […]
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April 2nd, 2008 by David
Last year, the far left, union-funded Ballot Initiative Strategy Center responded to Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson’s outrageous prosecution of Paul Jacob, Susan Johnson and Rick Carpenter (the Oklahoma Three) with an atta-boy letter urging Edmondson to find some way to also strike at the donors to the Taxpayer Bill of Rights effort. BISC would […]
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April 2nd, 2008 by Kathleen
That’s what the Oklahomans for Initiative Rights ask in a press release they issued today, about Attorney General Drew Edmonson’s part in killing a bill that would have set up a task force to study Oklahoma’s initiative process and make recommendations for improvements.
In the press release, the group criticized members of the Senate Rules committee […]
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March 27th, 2008 by David
The anti-common-sense web site stopthefraud.com pretends that all initiative efforts which the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center happens to ideologically dislike—e.g., the 2005 petition drive in Oklahoma to post a Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights on the ballot—are intrinsically fraudulent. But despite their alleged opposition to “fraud,” the BISCquickers are not above lying to smear ideological opponents. […]
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