South Dakota’s J.A.I.L.ers are back at doing what they do best. Misrepresenting what the proposed amendment says.
In a recent update to their website, they say, “Basically what Amendment E will do is create a ‘citizen’s oversight committee’ with the sole purpose of hearing complaints against judges alleging judicial misconduct.”
Let’s quickly examine the phrase in quotes. Generally, quotation marks are placed around — you guessed it — statements taken from the source material. Yet the phrase “citizen’s oversight committee” appears nowhere in J.A.I.L. Saying J.A.I.L. creates a citizen’s oversight committee certainly seems to be a misstatement of the provisions of the amendment, a violation of state law, ironically the very statute they accused the Legislature of violating.
Having come up with a new catch phrase to evidently distance themselves from what the amendment actually says (“special grand jury”), they then trot out their oldest and most repeated lie. They claim the “oversight committee” has the “sole purpose of hearing complaints against judges alleging judicial misconduct.” Given the fact J.A.I.L.’s founder, South Dakota J.A.I.L.er-in Chief and spokesperson have repeatedly said this the amendment applies to far more than the judiciary, this falsehood is getting awfully threadbare.
The J.A.I.L.ers also conveniently omit the fact that the term judicial misconduct is extremely broad. Their own campaign brochure says it includes acts that might result in “weakening” a litigant’s case. Since the rules of evidence that govern judicial proceedings specifically allow the exclusion of evidence and witnesses under certain situations, simply applying established law can constitute judicial misconduct under J.A.I.L.
Finally, another addition to the web page says the strategy of J.A.I.L. opponents is to lie about the amendment. It then suggests reading J.A.I.L.’s campaign flyer to find the truth. Too bad that brochure is full of lies, as demonstrated here, here and here.
Ours is an age in which partial truths are tirelessly transformed into total falsehoods and then acclaimed into revolutionary revelations.
Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin
