Posted on 06/19/2011 7:01:27 PM PDT by RED SOUTH
Fresh cow manure.
If Romney is the candidate, and I expect the Democrats will select him in the Republican primaries as they did McCain, then i would love to see Palin as Independent. Win or lose I would hope mightily that she would draw more votes than Romney. That would NOT kick some sense into the Republican party. That is an impossible project, but it might initiate the replacement of the Republican Party and the migration of the Republican Left and Stupid into the Democrat Party where they belong.
The Democrats will vote for Romney in the primaries. The Democrats will make up a large part of the vote in the Republican primaries. The “Republican” turnout will probably set records by large margins for numbers. The Democrat primaries will have meager turnout because so many Democrats will be reregistered as Republicans for the primaries.
It would be worse because a “Republican” President Romney could get much of the communist Obama stuff that he favors passed by the Republican Congress that the kenyan can’t get through. Then in 2012 the country will be just as tired of him as it is now of the kenyan that he will lose to the Democrats i.e. Romney will serve as a place holder for the Democrats, maybe even the kenyan again and will get their stuff passed and ready for them to really get serious with the wrecking ball.
Remember when Gore was the nightmare scenario? We voted for Dubya. I love him, I voted for him proudly, and thank God he was at the helm on 911. But Dubya was a statist Republican, and liberalism advanced. Guess who was waiting next in line? Obama. Gore, Hillary, Clinton, Carter ... the worst nightmares pale in comparison.
So far.
Vote for a statist Republican "Elmer Fudd" Romney out of sheer fear of Obama, and it seems a pretty sure bet that the next Dem out of the chute would make Obama look tolerable.
Obama, Clinton, Hillary, Frank, Pelosi, etc., are symptoms. The cause is liberalism. We must vote down liberals and liberalism, which is especially tough because of a long-established vote-ginning ethic on the left. Ask for photo ID's to vote? The left goes up in arms. The real threat to this nation is liberalism; a minority of liberals have seized power over a majority of Americans who favor limited government.
Here in California, the ultimate nightmare Liberal, after Gray Davis, was racist ultra-liberal Cruz Bustamonte. He had to be defeated -- so Schwarzenegger took his place. Guess who Arnold ushered in? Jerry "Governor Moonbeam" Brown, who wouldn't have stood a chance in hell only 10 years ago.
Voting for Elmer Fudd just keeps the cartoon going. The "Joker" Obama, after E.F. Romney (or whatever other statist Republican it could be), could be followed by someone who suddenly makes him look more like that TV character black kid with the big glasses. As it is, Clinton, who was as vile a creep as ever gained the White House, seems in retrospect almost Opie-like next to Obama.
Try to imagine someone worse than Obama, because that's what very likely would happen 4 or 8 years after Romney or some other statist got the White House.
Electing Romney now would likely get us a Democrat Congress in 2014 and the kenyan redux in 2016.
Just got off the phone with an Alaskan Attorney. I’ve been wondering about your AS 39.52.310(h) theory and having a real problem with it. Yes, as a Palin fan, I wouldn’t like it under any circumstances. But I mean as an attorney. There’s a basic problem with your proposal. It works, as they say, too well. Unless you can direct me to it, what language limits the duration of this liability of the Alaskan Executive? There is none in the immediate passage you cite, and a discovery rule written the way you’re interpreting it would produce what is called an “indefinite liability.” That is, 30 years from now, some new bit of data could emerge that would make out a prima fascia case for yet another ethics violation, and she’d be on the hook once again.
That condition of indefinite liability based on a discovery rule is a condition the law abhors. There is really only one area of civil law where it is permitted as the default behavior, and that is product liability, such that industries who do not want to face 50 or more years of liability will work to explicitly limit the range of a discovery-based statute of limitations.
However, if that were a true reading of the law in a political case, and the Palin’s knew it to be so, there would be no motivation to wait for better times. They would never come. If her political future was totally dependent on avoiding further gubernatorial ethics charges, her career would be effectively over now. She could be reined in by nonsense charges for the rest of her life. A court with jurisdiction over such cases would bend over backwards to avoid that outcome by finding a reasonable basis for limiting said liability.
And, according to my new attorney friend in Alaska, who deals with cases directly relevant to the question at hand, there is indeed a de facto jurisdictional limitation, such that the discovery rule would be tied to the term of office. If a new charge were raised, say, three years from now, the argument would be made that jurisdiction for discovery of new violation ended on expiration of the Governor’s term, with the result that the discovery rule and the two year interval after her resignation would be treated as coextensive. Bottom line, July 26, 2011, remains a date of interest, although the attorney did mention there is no known case where such charges were ever brought after a term expired.
I know the way I have structured this is incomplete and less than authoritative, and I do apologize for that, but I do work for a living and right now am focused on other projects. Later, however, I intend to supplement this discussion with more detail. Furthermore, because this is relatively new law in a relatively young state, there is no direct Alaskan precedent precisely on point. So, as part of my supplement, I will do what a judge would do if presented with this case: Look to other states with similar laws and see how those statutes of limitations may have played out under similar circumstances.
Anyway, I thought you’d like to know. And yes, although I have every reason to trust the input of my Alaskan attorney friend, I know I need to work up the supplement with full authorities, so it will be possible to discuss this without reference to anonymous sources. For now, you’ll have to trust me, but if you don’t, no hard feelings. I understand.
The two most pertinant sections are...
(b) A person may file a complaint with the attorney general regarding the conduct of a current or former public officer. A complaint must be in writing, be signed under oath, and contain a clear statement of the details of the alleged violation. (Current or former - with no time window mentioned at all regarding a "former" public officer)
(h) A violation of this chapter may be investigated within two years after discovery of the alleged violation. (Again - no mention at all of a time limitation within which the discovery must occur).
If you want to cite any Alaska law that does put any time limits on the discovery aspect then go ahead...I'd like to see it.
Absent that, I think I'll trust the law as cited above as being accurate.
_______________________________________________________
Two questions...
1) If there has been no precedent to test the law then how can there be a de facto application of it in place?
I2) If there were in place a precedent for a de facto application of the law would that automatically prevent any person with standing from requesting that the law be applied de jure?
Question 1: I never said there was an affirmative application of a De Facto standard, only an understanding of the operating environment and the history that suggests one would be found if probed. This is really just saying that to this point no one has put an ethics charge under any version of the law to a former executive officer beyond their term of service. It is a long history of inaction based on a high probability of a lack of jurisdiction.
However, there is a reasonable inference that a standard does exist, because the code contains a carve out to extend jurisdiction to the post-term period as a mechanism for a former officer to have standing for an advisory opinion. Arguably, no such carve out would be necessary if said long period of inaction had no palpability whatsoever.
Question 2: As inferred above, I’m not sure there’s a meaningful conflict between the De Facto and the De Jure standards. The problem is one of statutory construction. One of the things I need for my supplement is to clarify this very issue, by scouring the broader code for applicability standards that support the current operational understanding. Assuming no general rule of applicability is explicitly stated elsewhere, it is conceivable a case might be brought, but A) the court would be most unlikely to overturn that long history of inaction by wading into a messy, one of a kind case with no roots but politics, and B) to avoid such a quagmire, the court would likely look to persuasive authority available in other jurisdictions with similar scenarios and choose the least controversial path, denial of standing for lack of jurisdiction.
So, as you can see, I have my work cut out for me, and as I said before I do not ask you to accept this as authoritative. But I do have a good sense of how the courtroom works, and indefinite liability of this kind, as an attempt to get virtually eternal standing for blatantly political purposes, would find many a judge willing to knock it down as offensive to justice, and would do so by whatever means necessary, up to and including treating the negative De Facto as the positive De Jure.
But ultimately, true enough, we live in times where common sense and good judgment are in short supply, and it would have to be tested to be certain. But if I were Palin and believed it would be tested against me, as a matter of strategy, I would optimize my chances of success by minimizing my exposure until the conditions of my theory were true, namely, wait till after July 26, 2011.
Then it is up to us to verbally terrorize the GOP establishment and tell then “ HELL NO “!
A vote for Perry, is a vote for amnesty. He’s a fraud!
Many on here that are on the Palin or nothing ping lists said if she did not announce by tomorrow’s debate she was not running.Some say Sept. Some say Aug 2012. All of you playing like insider campaign managers in the know make Palin look bad.
You are at least admitting she is not running and if she does it will be rogue. This is at least reality.
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