Andrew Schlafly (lawyer, Conservapedia founder, homeschool US history teacher) is SCHOOLED in court

[alp227]

Via Ed Brayton's blog is this video of Andrew Schlafly testifying in the New Jersey Supreme Court filing a petition to recall US Senator Robert Menendez (Democrat of New Jersey). Schlafly argues that the US Constitution provides a right to recall "based on a single out of context quotation by a legal scholar and the judges caught him at it and hammered him for it" according to Brayton, who also says "It's amusing to watch him try to dodge the issue." This video is about an hour long, and it's not available on YouTube (where it'd have to be posted in 10-minute segments) so that's why I couldn't post this into Political Videos.

Schlafly teaches a homeschool US history course, but in this court case where he's supposed to be prepared with knowledge he ends up choking on his own idiotology. All he could do is repeatedly say "George Washington supported a recall in a letter" over and over again.

New Jersey's constitution does provide for recalls, in Article I, Section 2b:

The people reserve unto themselves the power to recall, after at least one year of service, any elected official in this State or representing this State in the United States Congress. The Legislature shall enact laws to provide for such recall elections. Any such laws shall include a provision that a recall election shall be held upon petition of at least 25% of the registered voters in the electoral district of the official sought to be recalled. If legislation to implement this constitutional amendment is not enacted within one year of the adoption of the amendment, the Secretary of State shall, by regulation, implement the constitutional amendment, except that regulations adopted by the Secretary of State shall be superseded by any subsequent legislation consistent with this constitutional amendment governing recall elections. The sufficiency of any statement of reasons or grounds procedurally required shall be a political rather than a judicial question.

According to Reuters (which covered this on Tuesday), "he initiative to recall Menendez stemmed from his support for health and immigration reform and for cap-and-trade legislation to curb industrial emissions of greenhouse gases."

Schlafly graduated from Harvard Law School in the same class with Barack Obama, who was then editor of Harvard Law Review. Concerned about liberal bias on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, Schlafly founded the conservative-leaning Conservapedia in 2006. Conservapedia promotes creationist, anti-gay, anti-atheist, anti-Democratic Party, and hyper-patriotic views on its articles. To get an idea of Conservapedian intellect, AD/CE notation implies liberal bias. Read more at the site Rationalwiki.

[The Magistrate]

1. Thi Is Rum Fun, Sir: Thank You

[charlie]

2. Mr Conservapedia

Watch him get peevish as some of his minions dare to disagree with his loopy proposition: Christians invented humor (what came before the Christ was mere "vulgarity").

http://www.conservapedia.com/Talk:Essay:Greatest_Mysteries_of_World_History#Humor

[Loudmxr]

3. I have not made it through yet but some thoughts

On the Washington letter: "but it's sincere"

This got me singing "Sincerity"

"Sincerity is all I ask of you

In my time of need..."

I thought it was an old Elton John song ... but NO! It was one of the only songs I wrote a string arrangement for back when I was very young. 19 or 20 years old. Gilbert Gram was the artist and eventually they took it and rearranged it for a full on string orchestra.(the first was just me multi tracking my violin with Bill Lazerus engineering of Sweet Baby James fame) It really was quite marvelous and I get a little teary at some of the lines I wrote.

At 29:00 the judges ask him to start arguing the point he brought the case. BWAHAHA!!!!!!

This is soooo funny.

[Loudmxr]

4. At the end of the day the guy has a valid argument.

That is to say an argument that is worth stating and discussing. Sort of like "I think having 800 foreign bases are necessary for US security." "I think we can get by with a lot less." Two valid arguments.

But it took him half an hour to do it. What the hell was all the other stuff?

Watch this:

The US constitution makes no provision for recall. A buncha people discussed it a long time ago and no action was taken. New Jersey's constitution did take action. I wanna take action on the Federal electeds elected by New Jerseyans. Tenth amendment.

Five sentences. Valid argument.

Yet his political agenda gets in the way.