Free Paul Jacob

The folks at Free Paul Jacob and some Oklahoma reporters are suspicious about the reasons for the removal of a conservative judge Bill Graves from the so-called "Oklahoma 3" case, the ongoing criminal proescution of Term Limits advocate Paul Jacob and two other people involved in collecting signatures on ballot initiatives in that state. The Free Paul Jacob blog thinks this may have something to do with Paul Jacob. But it's not clear that's the case. Graves had some 2,400 of his criminal cases reassigned. News reports suggest that there may be political reasons for the overall reassignments--specifically Graves' denouncing of new rules on judges as part of a "homosexual agenda." Interesting times in the Oklahoma courts.

The leader of the term limits movement and two other organizers of a petition drive in Oklahoma are under state indictment there on charges they broke laws related to out of state signature gathering. The indictment lookis like an over-the-top attempt by state attorney general Drew Edmondson to criminalize signature gathering in a state that is already the most difficult state to qualify an initiative in. Oklahoma has the shortest time period for gathering signatures -- 90 days -- which in and of itself puts the lie to claims by officials there that they want to make signature gathering a grass roots process. With such a short time period, paid petition circulators are the only way to qualify a measure; no grass roots operation can gather enough signatures that fast. (This is a point that Bob Stern makes in his excellent new report on the initiaitve process in California; he argues that time period be extended in the Golden State, from 150 days to a year, to permit grass roots groups to gather signatures).