DR. NO MARCHING ON MINNEAPOLIS
by Alan Stang
June 19, 2008
NewsWithViews.com
The Texas Republican Convention brags that it is the biggest political convention in the country. How it could be bigger than the national conventions, I don’t know, but that is what it brags, no surprise because it is Texas. Indeed, because Texas does everything bigger, even more of the corruption and criminality we have seen in other state conventions was the rule at the just concluded performance I attended in Houston.
In Nevada, for instance, when Las Vegas Republicans saw that Paul supporters outnumbered them, they shut down the convention to prevent a vote. By now you know that Republican bosses perpetrated similar electoral atrocities around the country. Because Texas is Texas, at the George R. Brown Convention Center they were worse.
Of course, all of these outrages are motivated by the Republican Party’s fear and loathing of Ron Paul. They used to send big shot Republicans like Newtie and Jorge W. Boosh to defeat him for re-election to Congress. They failed, of course, but recently they tried again. Dr. No won renomination to his House seat with 72% of the vote. The Democrats don’t waste time and money opposing him.
It is probably not an exaggeration to say that Republican bosses fear and hate Dr. No more than the American Communist Liars Union fears and hates Jesus Christ. If the only thing you knew about Ron Paul were what the Republican Party and ACLU says about him, you probably would expect to meet a combination of Hitler and Godzilla, not the mild, professorial, ladies’ doctor he actually is.
As the convention approached, reports of the usual violations of party rules flowed in. Certainly the worst was what happened in Nueces County. Vanessa Cahill is a Corpus Christi artist married to a physician. In politics everything starts in small, local groups called precincts. She was a precinct delegate to the county convention. Party rules say that you can be elected such a delegate if you are not present at the precinct caucus, but after the caucus ends, no one can be added.
Mrs. Cahill’s precinct was allowed twenty nine delegates to the county convention. The precinct caucus chose only thirteen, including a wife who was not well and did not attend. Why the caucus did not choose another sixteen to flesh out the twenty nine they were allowed, we don’t know, but they did not. In the parking lot after the caucus, RoeLear Machem, chairman of precinct 65 in Nueces County, told Mrs. Cahill that she would add the missing sixteen names later.
Mrs. Cahill was puzzled. This was her first convention. She is one corpuscle among the “new blood” the Texas Republican Party says it wants. Something seemed to be wrong, so she hit the rule book and found out what it was. What was happening was a violation of party rules and the Texas Election Code. So, she asked county chairman Michael Bertuzzi for a copy of the minutes, which are supposed to be public record. The minutes would show who was elected at precinct.
Bertuzzi refused to hand them over. In an email to Kay Fischer, he said he had asked State Republican chairman Tina Benkiser for instructions. In direct violation of RPT (Republican Party of Texas) Rule 22b, Frau Benkiser, a lawyer, advised county chairmen that convention minutes are not public record and that chairmen are not required to make them available.
Mrs. Cahill asked the 13th Court of Appeals for a writ of mandamus compelling Bertuzzi to release them. Frau Benkiser called this a “frivolous” action and asked the court for damages. Frau Benkiser said the Court of Appeals lacked jurisdiction, but the court ruled for Mrs. Cahill and ordered Bertuzzi to surrender the minutes.
The minutes revealed that the fraud was even worse than Mrs. Cahill had suspected. After the precinct caucus, Bertuzzi and others illegally added 151 delegates to the county convention. They did so because, without those illegal “delegates,” the Ron Paul delegates would have outnumbered them. The illegal Bertuzzi “delegates” reversed the outcome. It gets worse. Thirty six of those illegal “delegates” had not voted in the primary, which disqualified them. Another RPT rule says that if you don’t vote in the primary you cannot be a delegate, so those thirty six were doubly illegal.
At the county convention, the credentials committee chairman, an illegal “delegate” himself, read from the rostrum the names of his fellow illegal “delegates” illegally added after the precinct caucus. Points of order erupted throughout the hall. Robert’s Rules governed the proceedings of course and a point of order stops things until it is resolved. Here you had innumerable legal delegates shouting the three words until they echoed from the walls.
The illegal credentials committee chairman continued reading the illegal names while the legal delegates shouted, as if the room were as still as a tomb and, when he had finished, the illegals were illegally seated. This was as horrific an illegal invasion as the one on the Mexican border. To experience the psychotic magnitude of what I am describing you really need to hear the audio recording of the event. You can do so at www.youtube.com. It was as if the legal delegates were at one convention and the illegals were at another.
Indeed, party rules prescribe what to do in a situation this outrageous. The rules empowered the legal delegates to conduct a “rump” convention, a parallel convention, which they did, outside the hall. They sent the minutes to state headquarters in Austin, which now had two competing county conventions to consider. Of the eighty four delegates Bertuzzi sent to the state convention in Houston, four didn’t vote in the primary; neither did ten of the eighty four alternates. Four of the five committees had illegal chairmen.
That’s about as bad as it got, right, Pilgrim? Wrong! Mrs. Cahill now reports that some, maybe many, of the “delegates” Mr. Bertuzzi included among the 151 names he illegally added after the precinct caucuses, actually voted in the Democrat primary. That’s right, they are Democrats! Mrs. Cahill knows of one who was elected a delegate to the state convention in Houston. There could be many.
Enter Rene Diaz, chairman of the state credentials committee. Mrs. Cahill and the other legal delegates had filed a “contest” against the entire illegal slate. They chose to do that under the rules because a “challenge” of each of the 168 delegates and alternates would have required individual certified mail notification to them all, which would have meant almost $1000 in postage. That is why the rules include the option of a “contest.”
Without authority under the rules to do so, Diaz changed the contest to a challenge and seated the illegal delegates because the contestants had not notified them via certified mail, which, remember, they were not required to do. A minority report contesting the Diaz ruling would require 20% of the delegates. Mrs. Cahill says she had 30% but Frau Benkiser said the minority report had to be presented before the credentials committee adjourned, which Mrs. Cahill calls “a lie.” She was ruled out of order and threatened with arrest. Yes, they threatened to arrest her.
The only place a minority report is mentioned in the RPT rules is at Rule 24: “At any convention other than a precinct convention, a minority report of a committee, shall be presented to the convention, if it has been reduced to writing and signed by not less than twenty percent (20%) of the members of such committee. The committee member who presents the minority report to the convention shall be permitted to move the implementing motion.”
As you can see, Mrs. Cahill is correct. The rule says nothing about when a minority report must be presented, nothing about presenting a minority report before the credentials committee adjourns. Remember that Frau Benkiser is a lawyer, so she cannot plead ignorance of the multiple injustices and illegalities perpetrated in her name
Meanwhile, Debra Medina, Wharton County Republican Chairman, got a temporary restraining order from visiting Judge Tom Sullivan, which told Frau Benkiser to stop perpetrating another serious rule violation. The Texas Election Code is the law. Section 174.094 requires the convention to “organize” – seat the delegates, elect a chairman and other officers – before the convention conducts any business.
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Tim Lambert, Republican National Committeeman for Texas from 1996 through 2004 and President of the Texas Home School Coalition, explains it this way: “The same procedure that is followed in precinct and county/senatorial conventions is required at the state convention by the rules: first seat delegates (which involves making sure individuals are qualified to participate, hearing the credentials committee report, and accepting or amending it). After the delegates are seated, permanent Chair and Secretary are elected, and we move on to our business of adopting platform and electing delegates to the next convention.”
Why is that procedure so important? RPT Rule (27d) requires that challenged delegates are not seated until that challenge is resolved. If you seat them before it is resolved, you could have people who shouldn’t be there, who shouldn’t have a say, voting on convention business, voting for the chairman, for instance. But that is what Frau Benkiser did. In this case, the illegal Nueces County “delegates” voted and did other convention business before their case could be heard.
As we have seen, Frau Benkiser’s main purpose was to prevent a presentation of the facts; those facts were so outrageous they could have persuaded even the staunchest of opponents. Frau Benkiser asked the 1st Court of Appeals to instruct the County Court to lift the restraining order granted by Judge Sullivan. Die Frau argued that the restraining order was actually a Writ of Mandamus that should have been filed in the Court of Appeals and that the County Court therefore lacked jurisdiction. Remember that back in Nueces County she argued that it was the Court of Appeals that lacked jurisdiction. Now, the 1st Court of Appeals ruled that the ruling she wanted was moot because the County Court was scheduled to discuss the matter.
Remember that Frau Benkiser filed the appeal from the Sullivan ruling. Her appeal meant that she wanted the matter to be heard. Then she went into hiding to avoid service. Maybe the folks at CSI could have found her but a professional process server staked out her home and office and could not. Her people complained that Mrs. Medina’s action was invalid because Frau Benkiser had not been served.
Circuit Court Judge Roberta Lloyd heard the case. Before she took her seat, her bailiff warned the sizeable audience about distractions, especially cell phones. Like many people whose jobs require them to say the same thing repeatedly, he has developed some delightful lines. He performed them again and again for newcomers, eliciting some good laughs, so that, by the time judge Roberta appeared, all of us were super sensitized to the danger of distractions.
Believe me, you have never seen a judge like her honor Roberta, who turned out to be the most distracting distraction in the room. Roberta has beautiful hair, long, blonde, wavy, etc. She is quite proud of it; obviously spends considerable time maintaining it. Beside me, the Love Priestess was impressed. Roberta puts on quite a show. It looks something like a television hair commercial.
She swirls into the room and takes her seat. The hair constantly gets in her face. She tosses her head, maybe flounces is the word. The hair swirls. She finds the disobedient strands and installs them behind her ear. What a show! It was as good as TV! Only with intense concentration was I able to follow the arguments.
Gary Polland, attorney for plaintiff Debra Medina and others, explained as follows: “We have a right to choose our remedy under the law, and the Texas Election Code provides an option for either injunctive relief, including a Restraining Order, or a Writ of Mandamus. As the Party continues to claim that electing State Party leadership is not convention business, we chose to seek the course that would allow for testimony and discussion before the court of what constitutes the business of the convention. Filing for a writ of mandamus does not allow that opportunity.”
But it was quite obvious that her honor Roberta had made up her mind on the matter before she showed up. She claimed that she couldn’t figure out whether the election of SREC (State Republican Executive Committee) members, the chairman and vice chairman was “convention business.” If it isn’t, what is? She interrupted attorney Polland’s every third word. Despite his repeated requests for an injunction and a hearing with testimony to determine the facts of the case, the court declared that “the underlying cause . . . is a request for a Writ of Mandamus and this court lacks jurisdiction to hear such a request.” A mandamus orders someone to do something. A TRO orders someone to stop doing something.
Her honor Roberta dissolved the Temporary Restraining Order granted by Judge Sullivan, gave Frau Benkiser everything she wanted, spent enough time on the bench to be judicious, tossed her head, dazzled us, swirled the magnificent mane and flounced out. Good show! A respectful suggestion, your honor. Why not spend a little less time on the hair and a little more on the law. In the interests of justice and to reduce the distractions, which should certainly please your bailiff, why not just issue a restraining order and put it in a snood.
Later, at the convention – in session after session after committee after hearing – Frau Benkiser and her übermenschen again and again denied the defenders of the rules the opportunity to present the evidence for their claims. Denied that evidence, ignorant of the facts, the delegates logically concluded that the defenders of the rules were trying to disrupt the convention. There were many such defenders.
For convention heroine I nominate Debra Medina. Again, she is Wharton County Republican chairman. She is a Registered Nurse and a businesswoman. She is a twenty six year wife and mother. She is delightfully feminine. She also has twice as many cojones as pretty boy world government traitors at the convention like Rick Perry, puppet Texas governor, who has none.
Rick is the Merck front man who tried to force eleven-year-old girls to take Gardasil, a dangerous drug that has killed many women; his “business” tax is the biggest tax increase in the history of the state. It is a mislabeled income tax that could drive small business crazy enough to vote Democrat.
For convention hero I nominate Robert X. Johnson, who used to be party parliamentarian himself. “I wrote most of these rules,” he says, “the good ones.” Needless to say, he too was threatened with arrest for valiantly trying to present the evidence of egregious violations of the rules to the convention. Of course, Frau Benkiser forbade that. Her factotums shut off microphone #1, provided on the floor for delegates to speak, so Robert approached the rostrum shouting, “Debate!”
Debate? At a convention? Robert, what were you thinking? Debate was less popular at the Texas Republican Convention than Hussein Obama. As Robert X. Johnson strode down the aisle shouting, infuriated delegates, utterly in the dark, denied any knowledge of what had happened at Nueces, heckled him with catcalls for trying to “disrupt the proceedings.” It took considerable moral courage to do what he did. Sergeants-at-arms surrounded and were preparing to seize him. Thank God they did not, perhaps dissuaded by his size and authority.
A word should be said about the convention mentality. It appears to be a species of hypocrisy so intense, so total, that it metastasizes into brainwashing. It is a bizarre combination of politics and show business, a procession of dignitaries with perfect hair and choreography, speaking through mechanically pasted Senator McNasty smiles, thundering that the main problem in the country is the Democrats. For instance, on the dais in Houston, Newtie Gingrich favors wall to wall drilling for oil. Elsewhere, he is an Al Gore carbon “footprint” environmentalist. Asking about the discrepancy means you are disloyal.
If you knew nothing more about the Republican leaders than their speeches, you would conclude they are the finest, most sensible people in the country. You would agree with everything. For instance, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said as follows about the threat to the Second Amendment: “My response! Lock and Load!” Isn’t that something you would say? From now on, when you say it, remember that you are quoting the Attorney General of Texas. If you question Senator McNasty’s hostility to the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms – Gun Owners of America gives him a failing grade of F minus – you are disloyal.
I tested my theories one day at lunch, sharing a table with three ordinary delegates. These were not people on the rostrum. They were bedrock Republicans, the people who make the calls, stuff and seal the envelopes, canvass the neighborhoods and ring the bells. They were talking about the illegal alien invasion which of course they strongly opposed. I was wearing media credentials and told them I was puzzled.
“If George Bush were to pick up the phone and say, ‘Stop this at once!’ what would happen?”
“It would stop.”
“Since you would make that call but George Bush does not – if he has the power to stop it but does not – couldn’t we conclude that the illegal alien invasion is what he wants? Couldn’t we conclude that he is running it?”
If I could get close enough to one of the political pros on the rostrum to ask that question, he or she would paste on the smile, and launch an explanation that would leave you more confused than you were before. Instead, these poor folks, probably fine Americans, simply looked at me slightly openmouthed, like uncomprehending fish on the other side of the glass. They didn’t disagree, didn’t argue; they just looked. They said nothing. My questions apparently had disrupted their formatting.
One of the delegates mentioned the war. I reminded them that Jorge W. Boosh said in the 2000 campaign that he opposed “nation building.” He interrupted me. “I don’t think about the past. I only think about the future.” I reminded them that if you don’t know how you got where you are, you won’t be able to decide where you are going. Again they gave me the thousand-year stare. It is weird beyond description.
The convention ended with a presentation of Texas Republican Congressmen on the rostrum, accompanied by the usual choreography, music and television. The only Texas Republican not present was by far the best known of any of them, the biggest fund raiser, the man who has inspired a flood of new people into the Party, the only man who inspired genuine campaign excitement, Dr. Ron No Such Republican Congressman Paul.
Indeed, one of the delegates took the microphone to say that at least 20% of the delegates at the Houston Convention were there because of Ron Paul. Before he could say the hated name, the alert convention chairman cut off his mike. Sieg Heil, Frau Benkiser! Even the mention of his name makes them gray with fear.
So, Frau Benkiser certainly has won – for now. What can we expect? Again, the audio of the outrage in Nueces County is on You Tube. It will gradually seep out. The delegates will learn what Debra Medina, Robert X. Johnson and the other heroes and heroines risked violence and arrest to tell them. Frau Benkiser can’t prevent that. They will be furious. Die Frau wants to stand on the bridge. Okay, when the ship goes down, we won’t let her off.
And Dr. Paul has formally ended his campaign, thereby liberating himself from the onerous McNasty regulations. He can use the remaining $4.7 million for other purposes. One of those purposes is the Campaign for Liberty, which will inform, recruit, organize and influence the electorate. Another Campaign activity is something utterly new, something that will make Frau Benkiser ever more desperate, even grayer with fear.
Dr. No is marching on Minneapolis. On Tuesday, September 2nd, Day Two of the Republican National Convention, he will conduct a rally – in effect a rump convention – at nearby Williams Arena on the campus of the University of Minnesota. Lovers of liberty will trek there from around the country. The capacity of Williams is 11,000, and the expectation is that the Dr. No convention will be bigger than the McNasty version. My guess is that the attendees will exceed the capacity, that fire marshals will keep the excess outside.
The Ron Paulers outside will compass the McNasty version; every day they will go around it once. On nomination day, when Frau Benkiser is voting for McNasty inside, Dr. Paul shall blow a long blast with a ram’s horn trumpet. And it shall come to pass that when the people hear the blast they shall shout with a great shout. Who knows? We live in an age of miracles. The Ron Paul Revolution is a miracle. Anything can happen.
Keep it peaceful. Be very wary of anyone who tries to incite violence. Avoid him. When you meet him in court, you can be as sure as the fact that Rick Perry devolved from a hairy ape that he will turn out to be an agent provocateur who works for the government, which is always looking for an excuse to discredit liberty.
Meanwhile, inside the McNasty extrusion, there are at least fifty Dr. No delegates he has not released. There are delegates pledged to other candidates who are sympathetic to Dr. Paul. We don’t know how many. Massachusetts alternate delegate Michael Nystrom is pledged to Mitt Romney and says that almost half the delegates from his state actually support Ron.
All of them will be exerting influence on the other delegates inside, who are disgusted by McNasty. That influence will show up in the platform and other committees. Nystrom says Paul people are planning strategy around the country. Again, anything could happen and this is an age of miracles.
As you may know, I don’t get paid to do this and never ask for money. It is a labor of love if ever there was one. Remember my daughter, the 98 pound hydrophobic pit bull known locally as Ronpaula? By the way, I was wrong. She has ballooned all the way up to 105. Because of her superior jokes and personal adorableness, other delegates in her congressional district caucus elected her first alternate delegate to Minneapolis. Yes, Ronpaula will be inside, pledged to McNasty, so be very careful when you shout.
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The experts tell me that the air fare, hotel room and food will cost about $2500. Would you be able to pick that up? If so, please make a note on your contribution (which is not tax-deductible) that you are sending her to Minneapolis, so I know what it is for. As soon as we reach $2500, I’ll announce it, and return any money that comes in after that. I thank you in advance. Here’s the address: P.O. Box 580503, Houston, TX 77258.
Put your ear to the ground. Can you hear it? Dr. No is marching on Minneapolis.
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