I’m not claiming to be prescient or anything like that but I want to point you to the concluding paragraph of one of my posts three weeks ago:
Can you see the handwriting on the wall? If and when Amendment E is defeated, Stegmeier and crew will point to this biased [Zogby] push poll and claim it shows there was election fraud or some such rot. If adverse to J.A.I.L., the J.A.I.L.ers won’t say the election reflects the expression of “we the people,” the phrase they always bandy about. Instead, the election will be another of those government/New World Order conspiracies Stegmeier and his friends see everywhere.
My error was thinking the Zogby poll was the main route of attack. As PP pointed out yesterday, Amendment E spokesman Jake Hanes told the Rapid City Journal that the things J.A.I.L.ers have “some things brewing,” which “could include having the election results thrown out and holding a special election on the measure later” because they disagree with the ballot explanation.
Today’s Journal has South Dakota J.A.I.L.er-in-chief Bill Stegmeier confirming that Amendment E proponents plan to challenge the election results. In a story on the lawsuit against the No on E committee, the Journal reports: “Stegmeier said if [Judge Max] Gors rules against the injunction and if voters reject Amendment E, he will challenge the election results in another lawsuit.”
Certainly there’s irony in Stegmeier and crew continually resorting to the courts they hate so much. The fact is, though, that the court system and state Constitution are designed for people to ask the courts to protect and vindicate their rights. These lawsuits certainly appear frivolous and I would speculate are being brought simply as post hoc “proof” of the need for J.A.I.L. Still, I can’t help but think that actions like these certainly don’t endear Stegmeier and his like to the voters and creates a serious credibility problem for any future ballot efforts by fringe groups like them.
But there’s ultimately something sad about this. These advocates of “citizen control” are saying they don’t trust “we the people” before the people have had the opportunity to speak.
UPDATE: Pointing to these cases as proof of the need for J.A.I.L. began within hours after the hearing in front of Judge Gors, with Bonnie “Shriek” Russell asking, “Need a better example of judges protecting their own?”
To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life.
Alan Coren, The Sanity Inspector
