Courting Collapse
By Mitch Berg
A bit of trivia, here.
In 2003, when the Legislature passed “Shall Issue” reform, the law required the state to honor carry permits in all state and municipal government buildings.
But there was one big exception.
The Minnesota Judicial Branch chimed in and said, in effect, that the Legislature couldn’t tell the Judicial Branch how to run its facilities. It was part of the separation of powers in state, as well as federal, government.
And so being caught with a permitted firearm in a building with a courtroom or Judicial Branch facility, no matter how deviously concealed, can still get you rung up for a felony in Minnesota.
Because Judicial Branch.
One of the predicates for the state’s current constitutional crisis is the contested election in House District 54A between Republican Aaron Paul and DFL incumbent Brad Tabke. Tabke won the initial round of voting by a 14 vote margin – but 20 ballots were “inadvertently” destroyed, and 30 more were duplicates, and you know f****ng well who those “mistakes” benefitted.
Now, Tabke was one of the DFL legislators “sworn in” at the covert “ceremony” at the History Center over the weekend. Which is getting a bit ahead of Judge Perzel.
And Aaron Paul knows it:
This is certainly a challenge to the authority of the Judicial Branch.
Here’s hoping Judge Perzell knows it as well as the rest of us do.
January 14th, 2025 at 9:48 am
I’d also add that having a senior status judge do the secret swearing in ceremony is an actual violation of the separation of powers. The judge is neither the Secretary of State nor the oldest present representative, which is what the statute clearing states.
The MN Supreme Court has a long standing and often cited precedent they use to throw out challenges to how any current legislative majority conducts its business. The MN Legislature can set its own rules, and it’s a violation of the separation of powers for the Court to get involved. Other than the Court acknowledging that 67>66, and therefore the GOP IS in the majority, I’ll be interested to see if the DFL hacks that solely populate our Court can contain themselves, or if they throw out a bipartisan precedent and effectively add napalm to the brewing constitutional crisis.
January 14th, 2025 at 9:55 am
I noticed in one of Blois Olson’s tweets about the DFL’s secret ceremony he said that Johnson could’ve technically been sworn in too. Which is interesting if actually true, because it adds credence to the GOP claim that the Special Election is premature.
I really would’ve loved it if he’d actually been sworn in, because that would’ve been fantastic grounds to invalidate the Special Election and further push out the pending tie.
January 14th, 2025 at 1:08 pm
Well, the probably corrupted Scott County judge that was deciding the Tabke-Paul case, declared Tabke the winner, claiming that after speaking to the 20 voters whose ballots were tossed, it would have mathematically impossible for Paul to win. Funny! Mathematical probability didn’t matter when Al Franken stole the election from Norm Coleman.