According to The Inky, state Rep. Sam Rohrer's bid for the GOP gubernatorial bid is being ignored by state party bosses. LVPoliblog's Joe Hilliard wonders why no local leaders came to see him Tuesday night in northern Lehigh County.Maybe because he's nutz.
I learned that two years ago, when I found a letter, penned by Rohrer, plastered all over courthouse bulletin boards. This epistle contained very strange, and bad, legal advice. It advises us we need no driver's license. Not the best advice to someone whose license has just been suspended.
Rohrer's missive, addressed to Judge Streitel in Chester County, concerned William Taylor Reil, who is apparently constitutional law scholar like Joe Hilliard. Having found Reil guilty of driving under suspension and with bogus vehicle documents, Judge Streitel is told she goofed. You see, Pennsylvania's Vehicle Code only applies to commercial vehicles. Here's an excerpt.
The crux of the issue is whether [The Vehicle Code] can properly be applied to an individual. Within an individual's right to liberty is the inherent right to travel. If one's movement can be restrained, such restraint is intrinsically a restraint on his liberty. Mr. Reil's use of an automobile is simply an extension of his personal liberty to move about as he wishes.
My research, and that of my staff, confirms that [The Vehicle Code] can only be properly applied to commercial vehicles and commercial use of the roads. An individual who wishes to utilize an automobile or other means of conveyance in order to exercise his right to travel cannot lawfully be required to obtain a license to drive or to register his automobile in order to operate it freely on our roads.
The source of this goofy, and very dangerous, advice? The Posse Comitatus, which believes no legitimate form of government exists above the county level? The sovereign citizen movement, which argues citizens are only subject to common or constitutional law? Both groups use precisely that argument. And they're both nuts.
These extremist groups want to restore a minimalist government that never existed, and their chief tool is "paper terrorism" - they assault judges and other government officials with bogus liens and financing statements. They do things like plastering the letter I saw all over courthouses. Most of them only recognize the first ten amendments to the Constitution, which they consider God-given. I think they must have them mixed up with the ten commandments. But since they only recognize the top ten, women and minorities lose out on voting or holding office. Not surprisingly, many are white supremacists and anti-Semitic.
A one-man fringe group, Berks County-based state representative Sam Rohrer, (incidentally a Bob Jones University grad), boldly strikes a blow for Posse Comitatus and the sovereign citizen movement is responsible for that bad legal advice. He's been a state rep since 1993 and is actually a member of the appropriations committee. The letter is on his official letterhead and even contains the improbable claim that an unnamed member of his staff, a Pa. licensed attorney, reached the same conclusion.
Now it's a bit odd for a state rep to be making the same arguments we might hear from wingnuts like the Christian Patriots, whose leaders are neo-Nazis.
And that may be why GOP leaders are hesitating before flocking to Rohrer's banner.
