From FreePaulJacob.com:

Oklahoma’s largest newspaper blasted the Oklahoma Education Association in a Sunday editorial that called out the union for the nasty, undemocratic tactics the union used against the 2005 TABOR initiative. That’s the petition drive the Oklahoma 3—Paul, Rick Carpenter, and Susan Johnson—worked on, which riled the state’s political establishment and now provides pretext for Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson’s vindictive prosecution.

Seems the OEA is launching their own initiative to dramatically increase state education funding, and the Oklahoman saw hordes of hypocrisy in the teachers’ union seeking to use the initiative process after having sought to deny use of the process to others. As the Oklahoman put it:

“We find it ironic that the union and its supporters are turning to the initiative petition process to get what they want.” Read more…

Related: Americans for Prosperity: “Improving Oklahoma Education Doesn’t Mean Throwing Good Money After Bad”

Okiepolitics: Oklahoma legislators have no cents, students poor scores

As she dodges and ducks the press in Oklahoma City, the wheels are coming off the thinly veiled attempt by Judge Vicki Robertson to punish Judge Bill Graves for opposing the Oklahoma Bar Association’s effort to implement the American Bar Association’s new code of judicial conduct. Graves has taken a public stance against the aspect of the ABA regarding gays.

Virtually all courthouse observers believe Robertson is punishing Graves, but she is avoiding the press and sticking to her fairy tale. The question is, why?

One observer says Robertson has something to hide. “Nobody believes her story: not the press, not the other judges and not the lawyers that practice before her. It’s the worst lie since ‘I did not have sex with that woman.”

“These policies are not based on laws enacted by Congress or the State Legislature, but on proposals of the liberal, pro-homosexual American Bar Association.”- Oklahoma City District Judge Bill Graves

Some well placed sources believe that Robertson may have been responding to pressure from an unnamed Oklahoma State Supreme Court Justice to move Graves. Another believes that it’s simple bigotry, and that Robertson has a personal ax to grind with Graves. Still another thinks the removal of Graves may be linked to the upcoming ‘Oklahoma 3′ trials. While everybody we’ve spoken to doubts the veracity of Robertson’s public line, nobody believes she has made her decision on the only other reasonable explanation: that she’s an incompetent manager.

So we’re left to ponder the reason Robertson has thrown the courthouse into chaos. While dodging the press in Oklahoma is easy to do, it makes for bad public policy. Unfortunately, people like Judge Robertson have seen folks like Mike Turpen, Brad Henry and Harry Coates successfully avoid public accountability by relying on the incompetent press corps to drop the ball, and that encourages others to do the same.

Regardless, Judge Robertson has some explaining to do.

Related:

The Bill Kumpe Blog: Judge Graves Concerned About Homosexual Agenda In Changes to Code of Judicial Conduct

Last Fall, OKPNS reported on the harassment techniques being used in Oklahoma to intimidate citizens from signing petitions. The Oklahoma Civil Rights Initiative, the signatures for which were being collected in this video, is still in limbo, with the right of Oklahomans to vote on the issue being debated.

OKPNS has covered extensively the attempts by Oklahoma’s attorney General Drew Edmondson to block the citizen initiative process, in the case of the “Oklahoma 3,” in which Paul Jacob and two others are facing possible prison sentences of up to ten years on technicalities of Oklahoma residency requirements.

This problem, of trying to intimidate citizens who want to petition their state government is not isolated to Oklahoma. In this video, a township in the Detroit, MI area are facing the problem of state employees trying to physically block township citizens from signing a petition to recall a politician.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOBivWps5Hk&hl=en]

More on this here.

OKPNS had the privilege of interviewing Paul Jacob today after his scheduling-hearing in Oklahoma City. Paul Jacob, along with Susan Johnson, and Rick Carpenter, now called the “Oklahoma 3” have been indicted on felony charges of violating Oklahoma’s statute requiring petition circulators to be residents of Oklahoma. Jacob and the others are denying the charges.

The preliminary hearing will be July 23, 2008, at the Oklahoma County Courthouse, and Jacob is encouraging anyone who lives within driving distance to be there to defend the Oklahoma 3, and support the voter initiative process.

Paul Jacob talks about his Save the Initiative Blog Tour, and what supporters within Oklahoma and nationwide can do to not only save the Oklahoma 3, but also the ballot initiative process. He says he doesn’t feel the media has done an adequate job of covering this topic, and that it is up to the bloggers to get the word out:

Also see:

• Ballotpedia.org
• CitizensInCharge.org
• FreePaulJacob.com

The scheduling-hearing for Paul Jacob of the “Oklahoma 3″ will be held today, at the Oklahoma County Courthouse at 1:30pm.

The background of this case is detailed on the Free Paul Jacob website:

National term limits leader and initiative rights advocate Paul Jacob and two others were indicted in Oklahoma October 2, 2007, on felony charges of violating the state’s statute requiring petition circulators to be residents of Oklahoma.

“This indictment is not about the law, but about politics—ugly, anti-democratic politics,” said Paul Jacob, president of the pro-initiative group Citizens in Charge and a senior fellow at the Sam Adams Alliance, a grassroots political organization. “Their prosecution is a 100-percent politically-motivated attempt to threaten and intimidate me, and any other citizen wishing to petition their government.”

Jacob and his co-defendents — Susan Johnson, president of National Voter Outreach, a petition management firm, and Rick Carpenter, the proponent of the controversial 2005 initiative that would have set a cap on state government spending that could only be lifted by a vote of the people — pled not guilty….(more)

At his arraignment in January, Jacob said that he has “never heard of a prosecutor, other than maybe Nifong, to play it as political as Drew Edmondson,” is in his current case - which is a dispute over whether or not he, Johnson and Carpenter fulfilled Oklahoma’s residency requirements prior to collecting signatures for a ballot initiative which did not become law. Last October, Jacob released a statement:

What Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson is trying to do to me is wrong. In America, we cherish the right to engage in politics, to speak our minds, to promote our candidate, to work to pass a voter initiative, without fear of reprisal. That is why today is such a sad day, not only for me, but for all of us who love the initiative process and the right of citizens to control their government….

Stay tuned here for updates on this case.