Free the OK3 Rally on Tuesday! (Updated – The Madness Continues)
(Updates at the Bottom)
ORIGINAL POST, 11/16/08: I’m back from Oklahomans for Initiative Rights conference in Oklahoma City, and I’ll be blogging and posting pictures about that later. Meanwhile, the OK3 are getting ready for their preliminary hearing on Tuesday, from 9am-4pm.
A bunch of supporters of the OK3 will be holding a demonstration/protest in Oklahoma City outside the County Courthouse (on Tuesday morning, from 8:30-9:00am. An organizational meeting for this demonstration will be at the Wynnegate on Meridian at 8pm on Monday night, in a meeting room right off the lobby.
Hopefully, we’ll be able to report after the hearing on Tuesday that OK Attorney Drew Edmondson has done the right thing, and dismissed this case.
UPDATED 11/17/08 from Citizens in Charge National Term Limits and Initiative Rights Leader Available Prior to Oklahoma-3 Preliminary hearing
(Oklahoma City) … Paul Jacob, president of Citizens in Charge, a pro-initiative advocacy group and the former president of U.S. Term Limits, the nation’s largest term limits group, will be available to the media outside the Oklahoma County Courthouse from 8:30 am to 8:45 am tomorrow, Tuesday, November 18, to discuss his prosecution by Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson on conspiracy charges relating to the 2005 Taxpayer Bill of Rights petition.
Jacob has proclaimed his innocence and called the prosecution a politically-motivated attack on him as well as on the voter initiative process.
‘This indictment is not about the law, but about politics—ugly, anti-democratic politics,’ said Paul Jacob. ‘Edmondson’s prosecution is a politically-motivated attempt to threaten and intimidate me, and any other citizen wishing to petition their government.’
The charges stem from the alleged use of non-residents to circulate the petition. Oklahoma’s residency law is being challenged as unconstitutional in a case now awaiting the decision of a three-judge panel in the federal Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. Earlier this year, two other federal circuits, the Sixth and Ninth have struck down similar residency laws in Ohio and Arizona, respectively.
The preliminary hearing will take place at the Oklahoma County Courthouse, beginning at 9:00 am. Jacob will be available prior to that at the courthouse entrance on Park and Hudson in downtown Oklahoma City.
UPDATED 11/19/08: Incredibly Attorney General Drew Edmondson is determined to pursue his case against the Oklahoma 3, in the face of common sense. I spoke to Paul Jacob by e-mail after the premliminary hearing yesterday, and he seemed incredulous that A.G. Edmondson was using Jacob’s political activism (which, among other things, involves publicly speaking out against and challenging the constitionality of residency requirements) as “evidence” that he has broken the law.
Jacob has maintained over and over that he and the others, in good faith, followed the Oklahoma laws regarding residency requirements as they understood them – regardless of any opinions they may have had about the laws. In other words, as far as they know, they did not break the law. They may disagree with the law, but respected it and followed it anyway.
Yet Drew Edmonson continues his assault on free speech, and his effort to intimidate ordinary citizens who want to exercise their legal rights in Oklahoma to petition their government, for fear of being hauled into court for hearings that could last for years, as well as up to ten years in prison, for violations on a technicality. In this case, the “technicality,” is that petition gatherers, according to the attorney general’s office must be “permanent” residents of the State of Oklahoma in order to collect signatures for a petition. This “permanent” residency requirement is not applied to voting, to lobbying, or running for office – but only to petitioners.
The preliminary hearing is ongoing, and the date for the next court appearance has not yet been set. We’ll keep you posted.
Also see:
"There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you." 
[...] Remember Attorney General Drew Edmondson? He’s the one who’s playing out some sort of bizarre personal vendetta against three Oklahoma residents for petitioning the state, for not declaring [...]
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