Maureen Martin is The Heartland Institute's senior fellow for legal affairs. Formerly a newspaper reporter, she became an attorney and has practiced law for nearly 30 years, generally concentrating in litigation and environmental law. She was an adjunct professor of environmental law at Loyola University Chicago for more than 10 years. Her op-eds have been published in the Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, the Washington Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Chicago Tribune, among others. Her favorite lawyer joke: “What’s the difference between a carp and a lawyer?” Answer: “One’s a scum-sucking bottom feeder; the other’s just a fish.”

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Maureen Martin

EPA ‘Crucifixions’ Nothing New

EPA Regional Director Al Armendariz

The blogosphere is all atwitter this week after the disclosure of  the “crucifixion” video, in which the director of U.S. EPA Region 6 in Texas urged his staff to “crucify” oil and gas companies in enforcement actions.

In the video, disclosed by U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), Regional Director Al Armendariz said:

It was kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they’d crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years. And so you make examples out of people who are in this case not compliant with the law. Find people who are not compliant with the law, and you hit them as hard as you can and you make examples out of them, and there is a deterrent effect there.

Sen. Inhofe calls this a “’rare glimpse’ into the Obama administration’s mindset” and is launching an investigation. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said: “I have spoken to Dr. Armendariz, I have made clear to him that I am glad he apologized because his comments were disappointing, they are not representative of the agency, they don’t reflect any policy that we have, and they don’t reflect our actions over the past two years.”

Don’t make me laugh.

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Polling Place Chaos: Part 2 – Milwaukee

A Wisconsin Tea Party group recently announced that it had found errors on more than a third of the same-day voter registration forms completed in Milwaukee County in the April 2011 election.

I am so not surprised.

On presidential election day in November 2004, I was a Republican poll watcher in Milwaukee. My experience was a complete and utter nightmare, largely due to same-day voter registration.

As previously related in Polling Place Chaos: Part 1 — Chicago, I am not an election law rookie. I’m a Chicago native, home of “vote early and often,” dead people voting, and other outright voter fraud. In Illinois, I was a Republican precinct election judge, until it looked like I might get arrested or disbarred from practicing law, as I relate in Part 1.

But my experience in Milwaukee was much worse.

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Polling Place Chaos: Part 1 — Chicago

I’m a Chicago native who moved to Wisconsin fulltime in 2002, where I had vacationed for many years.

I love Wisconsin, but here I’m known as a FIB. The “I” stands for Illinois. You can figure out the rest. Generally speaking, the title is often well-deserved, though hopefully not by me.

In Chicago, I was a Republican election judge, until it looked like I might get arrested – or at least be stripped of my license to practice law.

So when I was asked to be a poll watcher in Milwaukee in 2004, I volunteered. Compared to Chicago, I figured Milwaukee would be a cakewalk.

Boy, was I wrong.

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President Obama: Legally Unfettered?

I’ve written before that President Obama seems shockingly ignorant of legal principles, including but not limited to constitutional law, surprisingly for a law school instructor who taught that specialty for over a decade.

But according to Victor Davis Hanson, writing this week on National Review Online, it’s not so much that Obama is ignorant about the law but that Obama believes the law is irrelevant. [click to continue…]

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‘A Merry Band of Libertarian Litigators’

That’s what columnist George F. Will calls Heartland’s friends at the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary. Its mission:

Simply put, we challenge the government when it stands in the way of people trying to earn an honest living, when it unconstitutionally takes away individuals’ property, when bureaucrats instead of parents dictate the education of children, and when government stifles speech. We seek a rule of law under which individuals can control their destinies as free and responsible members of society.

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Don’t Mess with Ripon, Birthplace of the Republican Party

If Dave Gray of Ripon, Wisconsin, is right – and I believe he is – there’s a relatively simple way to stop the movement to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in its tracks. And perhaps even a way to send recall activists to jail.

To borrow a quote from the A-Team, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

As I wrote previously, here and here, Wisconsin recall laws are so flawed that voter fraud on a massive scale is possible – even likely – when it comes to signatures on Walker recall petitions.

That’s because recall supporters are publicly urging Wisconsinites to sign these petitions more than once, even though only one signature is supposed to count under state law. A Milwaukee man evidently took this advice to heart and signed 80 times.

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We Love It when the Left Talks Dirty to Us

Not long after my blog post ‘Vote’ Early and Often for the Walker Recall Election went up last week, this hate-tweet came in:

 Corporate front group/rightwing slime @HeartlandInst have questions about us, but choose not to pick up phone & ask. #hacks #cowards

“Rightwing slime?” Wow, that’s a new one in the ad hominem attack language the Left uses against Heartland. We take it as a compliment because we obviously hit a nerve. And it also reflects that at least some Lefties have guilty consciences about taking advantage of defects in Wisconsin recall election law in an amoral and reprehensible way.

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‘Vote’ Early and Often for the Walker Recall Election

The stage is set for vote fraud on a massive scale in Wisconsin in connection with petitions calling for the 2012 recall election of Republican Gov. Scott Walker due to two truly shocking loopholes in Wisconsin election law.

Petitions are now being circulated to recall Walker. Groups circulating them have 60 days to gather 540,208 signatures from “qualified electors.”

But the so-called Wisconsin election “watchdog” agency, the Government Accountability Board (GAB), has no legal obligation to verify there are no duplicate signatures on the petitions nor is the GAB obliged to check whether all persons signing the petitions are “qualified electors.”

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Bah Humbug

The news just broke on the Obama administration’s decision to “delay” and “revisit” its new tax on the sale of Christmas trees.

I’m seriously bummed because the tax, announced Tuesday, was such a gift. It was the perfect symbol of governmental incompetence.

First, the 15-cent tax on Christmas trees is just the latest example of crony capitalism aimed at aiding one industry segment – fresh trees – against another – artificial trees.

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Women Crying ‘Sexual Harassment’ Should ‘Man Up’

The liberal media is all aflame as it torches Republican presidential contender Herman Cain over allegations he engaged in sexual harassment while he headed the National Restaurant Association (NRA).

Cain evidently made some sort of comment – not a sexual one, just saying an NRA employee was a short as Cain’s wife – which the NRA employee found “offensive.” She and another NRA employee sued, or threatened to sue the NRA for sexual harassment, and the NRA settled, apparently because it was cheaper to throw a few bucks at the plaintiffs rather than pay hefty legal fees to defend itself. The settlement was confidential so few details are available.

Meanwhile, though, the media conflagration isn’t doing either women or men any favors. Oversensitivity in the workplace to the sexual harassment hype has potentially dire consequences for women who want to compete for professional advancement on equal footing with men – and for the men frivolously accused of sexual harassment as well.

Let me tell you what I personally saw at the equal rights revolution in the workplace. [click to continue…]

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