Judge Rules Alaska GOPer Is Likely Barred From Office For Being An Oath Keeper

[john_adams]

Meanwhile, Gaetz skates.

[txlawyer]

@irasdad

I’m guessing this constitutional disqualification was put in place by rightwing McCarthyites when Alaska became a state – at the height of the Cold War – to bar Communists and other “leftist undesirables”.

Of course it was. There’s still a statute on the federal books making it a 20-year felony to advocate for the violent overthrow of the government. It’s so embarrassingly unconstitutional that nobody has been charged with it since the 1950s. If you want to argue in favor of the violent overthrow of the Electoral College and forcible proportional representation in the Senate, go for it.

[becca656]

Don’t limited it to just the Proud Boys - all of these insurrectionist organizations should be so designated. Oath Keepers, for sure.

It’s kind of like the story in the Bible - one cannot serve G-d and Mammon (the deadly sins). Which Oath are you keeping, if you are an elected official? There should only be one: the one taken at installation. All others must be abandoned.

[becca656]

@txlawyer

We all get to have opinions on stuff.

But we don’t get to force our opinions through violence on anyone else. The invasion of the Capitol is just a bridge too far. If one is accused, tried and convicted on participation, then office holding should not be possible.

[txlawyer]

@becca656

But we don’t get to force our opinions through violence on anyone else.

You do the violent revolution, you do the time. You advocate for revolution, you’re almost always in the clear.

I hereby call for the violent overthrow of the Electoral College. Seriously. That institution should be taken down by revolutionary action and cast into the dustbin of history, regardless of its status in Article II.

I’m not going to prison for that statement.

ETA: Note also that the First Amendment protects the right of free association. This dude didn’t even advocate for anything, he just had a long-ago, paper-thin association with a group that eventually attempted the violent insurrection thing.

[becca656]

@txlawyer

I hereby call for the violent overthrow of the Electoral College. Seriously. That institution should be taken down by revolutionary action and cast into the dustbin of history, regardless of its status in Article II.

I’m not going to prison for that statement.

No, because you’re not storming the institution with several thousand of your closest friends and hurting officers and bystanders and threatening the lives of elected officials.

There’s a big difference, as you’re pointing out, between saying something and acting on it in a violent fashion.

[txlawyer]

He didn’t act on it. He wasn’t involved in J6.

ETA: Or at least, he hasn’t been proven to have been involved in J6. The great majority of the MAGA morons who were in D.C. that day have no plausible evidence of participating in anything that isn’t First Amendment protected activity.

[dave_adams]

That’s true, but the right to hold public office already has restrictions. Age, for example. Criminal record for another.

[tiowally]

“I get no respect, no respect I tell ya.”
— Rodney Dangerfield

It’s getting harder and harder to be a seditionist bastard these days. Sad.

[txlawyer]

The First Amendment does not protect age or criminal record. He’s not getting dinged for being 15 years old.

[hummus_neanderthalensis]

@txlawyer

Note also that the First Amendment protects the right of free association. This dude didn’t even advocate for anything, he just had a long-ago, paper-thin association with a group that eventually attempted the violent insurrection thing.

This is the part that really bothers me and makes me very nervous about the potential fallout from this effort. If he was providing material aid or directly participated in the insurrection, that’s one thing, and banning him from holding office seems justifiable. But simply having a “lifetime membership” in some organization, one subgroup of which participated in an insurrection, is awfully slippery grounds for banning someone from office.

[tiowally]

New Zealand declared the Proud Boys a terrorist organization in June.

[eldonlazar]

Oath Keepers, sure, but I would have though his simply being a Republican would have been enough.

[txlawyer]

It’s definitely a slippery slope. Somebody shown on video at a BLM march in 2020 is going to get DQ’d from running for office if we keep this up.

[dryheat]

@txlawyer

Did the candidate not remember to raise a First Amendment defense?

He probably skipped over it and went straight to the Second Amendment.

It’s like muscle memory – he couldn’t help himself.

[citytrucker]

Next up: Boebert, Green, Johnson, Hawley…

[hardyweinberg]

It’s good to make clear that oathkeepers are traitors and they’re also too stupid to understand the oaths they claim to be keeping.

[jtx]

Well I do not pretend to know or fully understand the law but there is this.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2385

Now if there is a law preventing someone in such case from holding a Federal political office. I haven’t a clue.

[ralph_vonholst]

Anyone mentioned anything about a “half-baked Alaska?”

[txlawyer]

That is precisely the statute I was referring to earlier, which is so laughably unconstitutional that nobody has attempted to enforce it since the 1950s.