Everyone should stand up for local control

Photo credit: Anna Samoylova on Unsplash

Tuesday will mark a troubling anniversary for Wyoming parents. It was on August 2, 2021, that the Vice Chair of LCSD1, Marguerite Herman, shut down a board meeting leaving the voices of concerned citizens unheard. Rather than ask security to usher out the solitary unruly speaker, she asked security to usher out the peaceful public.

Bewildered parents were left to wonder why the democratic process was halted based on the misbehavior of one individual. Suspicions that the abrupt adjournment was a pretense to throttle the voice of parents, were further stirred when the Biden White House secretly solicited a letter from the National School Board Association (NSBA) and pre-approved its language. The now-infamous letter called parental objections “the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism.”

Rather than publicly condemning the letter, Wyoming School Board Association Executive Director, Brian Farmer, distanced his organization from the letter and claimed to have privately expressed his objections to the NSBA. Meanwhile, he doubled down by asserting, without evidence, “We have seen instances of some of these things in Wyoming.” 

The letter has since been scrubbed from the NSBA website, and its board has apologized for the actions of its executives. But it has never asked the Department of Justice to disregard the letter and to rescind the DOJ memo that was released as a preplanned response to the letter. To this day, concerned parents remain in the crosshairs of the DOJ.

What are these parents concerned about? They are concerned about Critical Theory’s influence on Wyoming educators. They are concerned about how mask mandates threaten both the mental and physical health of their children. They are concerned about pornographic literature circulated in school libraries. They are concerned about radical gender ideologies that compromise the safety of sex-segregated spaces, and the fairness of women’s sports.

More than anything, parents are concerned that their parental authority to direct the education of their minor children is being disrespected, discounted, and denied. But parents have an ally in the State Superintendent of Public Schools. In early July, he penned a nine-page memo to the legislators of Wyoming that outlines a way forward for the children and parents of Wyoming.

Brian Schroeder

Fundamental to his vision is that schools must “be irrevocably protected by local control.” Schools should reflect the communities in which they operate. They should not be beholden to outside “stakeholders,” whether private billionaires, like Bill Gates, or public agencies, like the USDA. 

Outside “stakeholders” do not operate through properly elected and properly accountable authority structures. Instead, they leverage money and privilege to advance elitist agendas. A good example of the threat to local control is the way the Biden Administration recently leveraged the federal student lunch program to intimidate school districts into adopting its radical agenda.

The Goshen County School District very nearly fell prey to this strong-arm tactic. At its June 14 meeting, board chairman, Zachary Miller, introduced numerous updates to its discrimination policy. The claim that they were required by the USDA resulted in unanimous approval. When concerned parents learned of the dangerous resolution, they worked with well-meaning board members to expose the USDA overreach and rejected it resoundingly at the July 12 meeting.

More recently another “stakeholder,” the Wyoming Education Association, began offering “no-cost training to Wyoming educators.” Such an offering sounds like a great deal to school districts strapped for cash that, nevertheless, require teacher in-service training. But, upon closer inspection, the “Safe & Just Schools Cadre” is designed to indoctrinate teachers with Critical Theory. The raised and clenched fist in its logo makes that clear.

“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” That’s the lesson of the Trojan Horse. It still applies today. Parents across Wyoming should educate themselves on the content of every single teacher in-service that is brought to their school. They should give special scrutiny to those that are offered for free. Just as the USDA reminded us that there is no free school lunch. So, the WEA demonstrates that free indoctrination sessions can be extremely costly.

Brian Schroeder understands this. He is actively looking for ways to resist a thousand behind-the-scenes ways that would strip parents of local control. He needs your help. He needs parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles to run for school boards across the state. Don’t think that you need to be a parent to run. Bill Gates is not a parent to any Wyoming children, but he has an outsized, outsider voice in Wyoming education.

Beginning August 8, you can file to run in your local school board election. Now is the time to identify well-informed citizens who will stand for local control—even when it means declining free money. Encourage them to run. Run yourself. Don’t think someone else will do it. Local control is up to everyone.

It’s time for Laramie County voters to get justice in the Manlove case

Leigh Anne Manlove, Laramie County DA

The people of Laramie County should be incensed by the utter contempt that the Wyoming State Bar has shown them. In November 2018, citizens voted by a 67 percent majority to make Leigh Anne Manlove their district attorney. It was a mandate to clean house. Since that day Wyoming’s deep state has used every underhanded tactic in the book to deny them her services.

Months before she took office, the effectual sabotage of her work was already underway. In Washington, the Sussman trial is exposing how the deep state obstructed and sabotaged President Donald Trump’s transition team after the 2016 election. Washington has nothing on Wyoming. 

Recent court filings document how outgoing district attorney, Jeremiah Sandburg, denied AG-Elect Manlove customary access to case files needed to prepare for a smooth transition. It also alleges that on January 7, 2019, Sandburg handed her the keys to an DA Office that was in utter disarray—with five unfilled attorney positions and unfiled paperwork littering the office.

Jeremiah Sandburg

One might think that such unprofessional conduct would merit attention from the Wyoming Bar. It got none. Instead, it unleased more than two years of sustained lawfare against the woman who spent her first year in office cleaning up the backlog and fully staffing her office.

Since the fall of 2020, Manlove has essentially worked two full-time jobs. In addition to her duties as elected district attorney, she has been forced to spend countless off-duty hours, and thousands of dollars out of her own pocket, responding to a barrage of legal filings, paperwork requirements, and spurious charges from Wyoming’s own deep state.

Supreme Court Justice, Robert Jackson (1892-1954) wrote: “While the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst.” He has the power to “strike at citizens, not with mere individual strength, but with all the force of government itself.”

Such is certainly the case here. First, actors in the Wyoming Bar obviously colluded with multiple district judges to elicit a letter of complaint. The day after the letter was sent, they filed a dozen documents with the Wyoming Supreme Court (WSC) calling for the immediate suspension of Manlove’s license.

After the Court decisively rejected this petition, they immediately commenced secretive in-house proceedings that gobbled up Manlove’s time, money, and energy for two more years—retrying virtually the same charges in their own kangaroo court. In the justice system, that would be double jeopardy. But this is not the justice system.

Little America, Cheyenne

Manlove finally got a public hearing in February of this year—and was promptly billed $91,000 dollars for the privilege. Maoist China was infamous for executing political opponents and then sending their grieving families a bill for the bullet. Making Manlove pay for the meals and lodging of her persecutors gives away the game. The process is the punishment.  

You wouldn’t know much of this from the headlines. In the Tribune Eagle, practically every press release from the Wyoming Bar has been reported as established fact, while meticulous court filings from the Manlove side are given such slight reporting that readers have never heard her defense. The Cowboy State Daily is no better.

I have never met or spoken with Manlove. I do not reside in her jurisdiction. I have no skin in the game. It is purely by reading the documents filed before Wyoming’s Supreme Court that my sense of justice is offended. It is an injustice against a woman and her solitary attorney. And it is an injustice against the people of Laramie County who elected her to do the job. 

Residents of Laramie County who want to see for themselves how their vote is treated with contempt, need only go onto the Wyoming Supreme Court website and look up docket number D-20-0009. It speaks for itself. They will read, for instance, how Manlove is charged with wrongdoing for actions she took in consultation with the Natrona County DA. While he took the very same actions and even co-signed a letter with her explaining them, she is prosecuted, but he is not (May 9, Response, pp. 15-16). 

Now the good justices of the Wyoming Supreme Court are being asked—for a second time—to act as tools of the Bar. Wyoming can hope that they are not bamboozled by clout and bluster, but see the facts for what they are. While the Bar has damaged its own credibility by allowing the unhinged Manlove prosecution, the Wyoming Supreme Court can still preserve its own dignity.

One might even venture to hope that the Court will rule in such a way that it discourages future lawfare intended to thwart the will of voters. Justice requires no less.

The Ministry of Truth

In a recent speech at Stanford, former president Barak Obama advocated for a radical reimagining of the First Amendment in response to recent advances in technology. It was an interesting mix of sharp insight and partisan misinformation. But there is one statement that cuts to the heart of his argument and merits careful thought.

Obama said, “it’s not necessary for people to believe this information in order to weaken democratic institutions. You just have to flood a country’s public square with enough raw sewage. You just have to raise enough questions, spread enough dirt, plant enough conspiracy theorizing that citizens no longer know what to believe. Once they lose trust in their leaders, in mainstream media, in political institutions, in each other, in the possibility of truth, the game’s won.”

Three points jump out of this passage. First, it ignores that our democratic institutions, themselves, have destroyed their own credibility through egregious misconduct. Second, it assumes that citizens can be rendered totally unable to know the truth. Third, it implies that unquestioning trust in political leaders, mainstream media and political institutions will bring infallible truth.

While there are countless examples of institutional misconduct that have weakened democratic institutions, let’s name only one. The Department of Justice allowed the Russian collusion theory to fester for years while possessing reams of evidence that it was a hoax cooked up by the failing Clinton Campaign. The DOJ is not discredited by “raw sewage,” but by its own criminal misconduct. 

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Until the American public sees that the miscreants behind this massive fraud are held to account, that public would be foolhardy to trust the DOJ as an objective and truth-seeking institution. The same can be said of every news outlet that eagerly allowed itself to be the stooge of fraudulent sources.

Christopher Wray

That brings us to the second claim. Obama is right to observe that many citizens no longer know whom to believe. Outrageous falsehoods peddled by legacy media and three-letter agencies have disorientated millions who once afforded them great trust. But, he is wrong to say that they cannot know what to believe.

The world has always been filled with truth and lies in equal measure. But blessed by rational thought that sorts one from the other, Western civilization has not succumbed to nihilistic claims that truth is impossible to know. That is the entire point of classical education. From Plato, Socrates and Aristotle to Bacon, Newton and Einstein, philosophy, science and religion equip all men, women and children to ferret out the truth for themselves.

On Easter morning two millennia ago, there was not only one narrative, but two. The women who arrived at Jesus’ tomb reported that Jesus had risen from the dead. But, the soldiers guarding the tomb spread a different narrative. The chief priests and elders convinced them to “Tell people, ‘His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we were asleep” (Matt. 28:13 ESV). One of these stories was true. The other was a lie. 

From then until now, each person must weigh the evidence and decide for himself. On one side, we have the eye-witness testimony of Peter, all twelve apostles, five hundred well-known individuals, James, and St. Paul (1 Corinthians 15:5-8). These people were public figures, available for decades of cross-examination and careful observation. By contrast, nobody even remembers the names of the soldiers who told their competing story. And, unlike their counterparts, they were never pressured to change their story by torture and death.

Nina Jankowicz

Will Alejandro Majorkas’ “Disinformation Governance Board,” weigh in on this debate? Will Nina Jankowicz, who obscenely mocks Christmas, tell us whether to believe the soldiers or the apostles? Without a doubt, there are some reading this column who want just that. Certainly, totalitarian regimes from the ancient Romans to the Chinese Communists have done it for millennia.

Every civilization throughout history has seen its most powerful institutions—not the least—wage war on the truth. From the chief priests and elders, to the Bolsheviks and Maoists, regimes propped up by lies demand to be regarded as the sole source of truth. By contrast, small minorities armed with the truth always prevail, sooner or later. Sooner is better.

Obama’s call for “trust in their leaders, in mainstream media, in political institutions,” is the siren song of those who control these institutions. In reality, no human being or human institution is worthy of unquestioning trust. Any leader who claims to be the final arbiter of truth discredits himself. Any news source that claims infallibility has proved itself fallible. Any institution that demands to be trusted without transparency has disqualified itself from any trust whatsoever.

Technology has not rendered the First Amendment more dangerous, but more necessary than ever.

Honoring the Constitution means honoring the innocent.

Photo Mike Haupt on Unsplash

We are now a year away from a series of illegal and deadly events that happened on January 6, 2021. Ashli Babbitt, Roseanne Boyland, Kevin Greeson, and Benjamin Phillips all died on a single afternoon. Yet, we are still light-years away from a full accounting of the deaths of four American citizens.

Millions of Americans hoped that a non-partisan investigation would identify both the criminal actors in the crowd while also giving attention to credible accusations of police brutality. Sadly, those reasonable hopes have gone unaddressed.

Instead, irresponsible journalists and politicians—including our own Representative, Liz Cheney—hastily attributed motives and crimes to individuals that they could not possibly know. Only shameless posturing would presume to ascribe motive and intent to millions of individual citizens that you have neither interviewed nor even met. It has now been revealed that Cheney hysterically declared her final judgement while the events were still unfolding and has not budged from this prejudice.

Re. Liz Cheney

Undoubtedly some went to protest, but which ones? Some went to be part of history. Some went out of curiosity. Some went to cause trouble. Some died on the wrong side of a police line. But death renders them incapable of telling you why they were there. 

Clearly, there were some who criminally breached police lines by force. Others crossed the same line, hours later, without even knowing that it had once been a police line. Some entered the Capitol through a broken window. Others were ushered into the rotunda by smiling police officers. Some found themselves trapped by the crowd in places they did not want to be. Others took an active part in agitating that same crowd.

Justice requires knowing the difference and judging accordingly. Anything less means to lose the stories and lives of four innocent Americans in partisan cacophony. This is disgraceful.

The cornerstone of American justice is that all people are innocent until proven guilty. Reputable media establishments used to be so diligent in the application of this principle that even the most serious crimes, with the most overwhelming evidence, would be called, “alleged.” Until a defendant has had the opportunity to defend himself in open court, he is truly innocent.

The presumption of innocence is no mere formality. It fundamentally keeps a constitutional republic from becoming a banana republic. Those who act otherwise destroy both our Constitution and their fellow citizens. 

While this is true of all people, it is especially true when judging the dead. The living can testify and call witnesses in their own defense; the dead are not so privileged. Unfounded accusations leveled at these four Americans leave them libeled with no way to defend themselves. 

To defend their names is not to defend every action that happened that day, nor is it to defend any politician associated with them. Rather, to defend these Americans is to defend the Constitution itself. No one can wrap herself in the Constitution who refuses to do so.

Ashli Babbitt (left), Michael Byrd (right)

While the shooting death of Ashli Babbitt was the news that stopped most Americans in their tracks, she was not the first to die. Before that thunderclap, three others were already dead. Statistically speaking, these deaths should have set off alarm klaxons even if Lt. Michael Byrd had never fired his service pistol at the unarmed woman.

Nevertheless, the untimely deaths of three Americans barely made a blip on the national radar. Their cries were drowned out by shrill and inaccurate reporting about deaths that happened days, weeks and months later.

Most troubling was the death of Rosanne Boyland, 34, and the ever-shifting stories explaining it. Before leaving for Washington, D.C., she assured her sister, “I’m going to stand on the sidelines. I’m just going to show my support.” How she died in the Capitol Tunnel despite these intentions should be the subject of serious investigation. 

Instead, the New York Times published a false report on January 29 that “Capitol rioters trampled [her].” Two months later, the D. C. Medical Examiner claimed she died by “acute amphetamine intoxication.” Her body was cremated shortly thereafter, rendering an independent autopsy impossible.

In November, attorney Joseph McBride finally won his court battle to see hours of video footage that was hidden from the public. This footage tells an altogether different story. It shows merciless police brutality against unarmed people who were desperately trying to retreat from their assailants. 

Philip Anderson (left), Rosanne Boyland (right)

The video evidence is supported by two eyewitnesses who have come forward to tell their stories. Philip Anderson, a black Trump supporter, was holding Boyland’s hand as she died. His testimony contradicts both the NYT and the Medical Examiner. Victoria White was there as well. Her public testimony is utterly harrowing. But Cheney’s J-6 Committee has not asked to hear them.

The J-6 Committee has turned the first anniversary of J-6 into a partisan circus. That does not honor the four citizens who died there. Neither does it uphold the Constitutional principles that they are being denied in death. 

Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, January 7, 2022.

Encourage Wyoming’s “Lesser Magistrates” to stand firm.

Photo by John Bakator on Unsplash

The genius of the United States Constitution is its separation of powers. This concept, in turn, derives from a centuries-old line of reasoning sometimes known as “the doctrine of the lesser magistrates,” later developed as “subsidiarity.” It is needed now, more than ever.

After October’s special session failed to pass legislation to protect Wyoming citizens from federal overreach, a November 10 Press Release from the governor announced a “three-pronged approach” to challenge “unconstitutional federal vaccine mandates.” Wyoming joined three separate lawsuits “against the Biden administration for imposing [] vaccine mandate[s]” on federal employees and contractors, on private businesses with more than 100 employees, and on all healthcare workers.

On December 7, 2021 a federal judge issued a nationwide injunction against the federal employee mandate. Combined with numerous injunctions issued in November the “three-pronged approach” has temporarily halted all three mandates and has a good chance of becoming permanent. 

Most recently, Governor Gordon, and four other governors, sent a letter to the Secretary of Defense asserting their rights as Commander in Chief of the state’s National Guard. He wrote, “Under Title 32 duty status, the Wyoming National Guard is under my command and control." Thus, the vaccine mandates on Wyoming Guard members “are an overreach of the federal government’s authority.”

Beyond the immediate subject of vaccine mandates, these actions uphold the broader principle of the separation of powers. This, in turn, is built on the Bible. It is the practical outworking of the Bible’s teaching most concisely articulated in Romans 13:1, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.”

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

These words teach Christians that governments should be respected as divine authorities. But that is not all. They also teach that all government officials—from school board members to presidents—wield authority from God. They are not mere functionaries of the king but have duties and responsibilities in their own right. 

Further, since all authority is from God, all authority is ultimately answerable to God. Kings that use their authority to do objective evil—like murder, theft and homewrecking—act illegitimately and outside their governing authority. 

When higher authorities usurp the power of other God-appointed authorities (i.e. “lesser magistrates,”) they are taking over what God has given to another. And when they do this in open defiance of justice, the “lesser magistrates” have a duty to protect their constituency from the unjust higher authority. 

Wyoming’s July 29th filing of an amicus brief with 23 other states to oppose the unjust and unconstitutional rulings of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey provides another example of this principle at work. 

Protecting Wyoming citizens from unlawful medical mandates and unjust hindrances in the protection of women and children is a welcome development. Both indicate that the governor’s office understands its duty to oppose federal authority when doing so is necessary for the protection of its citizens.

However, a new development, called Corporatism or Fascism, is harming Wyoming citizens in another way. Fascism, thus defined, is not a cartoonish word-weapon used meaninglessly to smear political opponents. It has a precise meaning. It is the collusion of government and business in the implementation of undemocratic policy. It deliberately breaks down the line between government and private enterprise and weaponizes corporations to enhance the power of the state. 

Here’s how it works. Governments threaten to enact rules that will hurt an industry’s bottom line. Then, they induce it to enact a policy that the government is constitutionally forbidden to enact. Businesses comply to receive favorable government treatment and, thus, become an arm of the state disguised as private enterprise. The circle is closed when the state fails to prosecute any laws that the business breaks in the process.

This alarming trend has seen financial institutions collude against the firearms industry as in “Operation Choke Point.” It has seen government collude with social media giants to encourage censorship. And it was used in the infamous “war on coal.”

Now, Wyoming is beginning to push back against such Fascism. After reports that the Biden administration is “pressuring U.S. banks and financial institutions to limit, encumber, or outright refuse financing for traditional energy production companies,” State Treasurer, Curt Meier, signed a letter from 15 energy-producing states. These states promised to yank $600 billion from financial institutions that kowtow to the administration’s pressure.

This is good news for Wyoming’s energy-producing families. Better still, it is a sign that Wyoming’s “lesser magistrates” are seeing the clear and present dangers of federal overreach combined with corporate collusion. It will take firm resolve and cooperation with other states to build walls of defense. But so doing will yield high dividends of peace and freedom.

Let us encourage all of Wyoming’s elected officials in this work. By grounding the constitutional separation of powers in the biblical foundation of Romans 13, we can provide both clarity and moral backbone to Wyoming’s government. Good government is not only judged by its practical results, but by its moral rectitude.

Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle on December 17, 2021; and in the Cowboy State Daily on December 16, 2021.

Elections are not games; they serve the people, not politicians.

Photo by Felix Mittlemeier on Unsplash

The first rule of government in a representative democracy is that those representing the people be democratically elected. That’s what the words mean. So, it was highly disappointing that the Interim Committee on Corporations, Elections & Political Subdivisions recently killed two election bills proposed by Representative Chip Neiman (R-Hulett).

Current Wyoming laws prevent political parties from holding head-to-head primaries to find out which candidate has majority support of that party. When three candidates split the vote with no one getting a majority, Neiman’s bills would put the top two head-to-head and let the voters determine which one has the support of the majority. 

Why the state of Wyoming has any authority to prevent parties from doing this in the first place, is a question for another day. But, until that day, Wyoming legislators can improve the situation by allowing parties to hold runoff elections and amending the state Constitution to allow adequate time for the process.

“Runoff elections-constitutional amendment” LSO 22-0092.3 was a simple bill to insert the needed time into the Wyoming Constitution. A “yes” vote would have put it before the state’s legislature in January. If both senate and house passed it with a two-thirds majority, it would be put on the ballot for Wyoming citizens to decide in November of 2022.

Rep. Chip Neiman

Seven members of the committee voted against even bringing the constitutional amendment before the full legislature. The committee then went on to kill its companion bill, “Runoff elections” LSO-0093.4, which would have responded to the will of the voters by creating a runoff process in Wyoming law.

So, why did a slim majority of the committee deny Wyoming voters from letting their majority be heard? Interested readers can watch the discussion and learn for themselves. The first thing they will learn is that these proposals are entirely doable. 

A lawyer from the Legislative Services Office, the state election director, and the president of the Clerks’ Association testified that the bills were both legal and workable. While the Clerks had opposed an earlier version of the bill, they worked with Representative Neiman to address its concerns and no longer resist it.

A lobbyist and a legislator or two raised objections that a runoff election for statewide office would cost about a million dollars. But if that is too much money to find out the will of the people, why have elections at all? Imagine the cost savings if we skipped elections altogether! But the very point of an election is to determine which candidate has the consent of the governed. Anything less than that is a sham—no matter what the cost. 

Already, the general election is designed to give citizens a head-to-head vote. That’s because everybody knows it would be unfair to allow a dozen candidates on the ballot and give the office to someone who could only get ten percent of the vote. So, why should any party be kept from doing what we already agree is the best practice for general elections?

Why, indeed? This is where the comments got interesting. Representative Sweeney (R-Casper) was most candid. He opined: “the majority party is pushing this… to stack the deck against folks they don’t like, myself being one.” His argument hinged on the assumption that a runoff election would lower his chances of reelection. 

Rep. Pat Sweeney

Whether Sweeney would lose a runoff or not, I don’t know. But I do know that, if he lost, it would be the voice of the people. And if he won, it would be the voice of the people. A civic-minded public servant would be horrified to win an election that did not accurately reflect the voice of the people.

Elections are for the people and not for the politicians. Elections are not a game of thrones to be won by hook or by crook. They should be designed to clarify and amplify the voice of the people. America needs principled public servants who understand this. They should care about a fair vote, not for a favorable vote. Elections are fair when they determine which representative has the support of a clear majority. 

In a perfect world, where the will of the people was perfectly known, we would not need elections at all. Rather, politicians would gladly resign as soon as they knew they had lost the support of the majority. They would nobly defer to anyone who better represented the constituency. But since we don’t live in such a perfect world, civic-minded legislators should work diligently to make elections as responsive to the will of the people as possible. 

For this reason, let us hope that Representative Neiman brings his bill back before the full legislature. Despite the slim majority of the Corporations Committee, the majority of the people should be heard. True representative democracy requires nothing less.

Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle on December 10, 2021.

The Wyoming Bar should be accountable to voters

Photo by Hunters Race on Unsplash

The Wyoming Bar Association seems obsessed with overruling Cheyenne voters. Special Counsel, W. W. Reeves, not only filed highly disputed charges against the elected Laramie County DA, Leigh Anne Manlove, he continues to hinder her from mounting a proper defense. 

Most recently, Jim Angell reported that the Bar’s “Board of Professional Responsibility” (BPR) imposed an October 22 deadline for her to complete the discovery portion of her defense. But that same Bar has stalled and limited her ability to interview the seven judges who sent a letter to the Bar last December.

Stephen Melchior, Manlove’s attorney, explained that the deadline “is prejudicial to (Manlove) and does not provide her the time necessary to complete discovery in this case, and is further prejudicial in limiting her to the taking of 10 depositions, especially since 7 of the depositions are of the judges who waged the initial complaint in this matter, and since it is apparent on its face that both present and former employees of the DA’s office, and others, have information that is relevant to the allegations made in the formal charge.”

Leigh Anne G. Manlove

Reeves retorted that Manlove should have been preparing her defense since she “saw the seven judges’ letter in December of 2020.” This is a revealing claim. There is nothing on the December 21, 2020, letter to indicate that Manlove even got a copy. Why should she be expected to retain counsel and prepare a defense to a letter?

This mystery is partially solved in that, on the very next day, Wyoming Bar Counsel, Mark Gifford, filed a 48-page “Petition for immediate suspension” of Manlove’s license to practice law. You read that right. Seven judges conspired to submit an “unprecedented letter” against her on Monday, and immediately the Wyoming Bar filed an apparently pre-written petition to disbar her. 

While this explains how Manlove learned of the letter, it also raises many questions about how the seven judges and the Wyoming Bar were colluding behind the scenes. Who drafted the letter? Who reviewed, edited, promoted it, and solicited the signatures? Who, at the Wyoming Bar, was communicating with the judges, and what private information was being exchanged? These and many other questions should be answered under oath. 

Barely a month after the Bar’s petition was filed, the Wyoming Supreme Court rejected its bid to suspend Manlove’s license. Let me say that again. The Wyoming Bar has already had the chance to argue its case before the Court. On January 26, 2021, less than a week after Manlove presented her defense, the Court vindicated her. It wasn’t even close.

So, again, why should she spend any resources defending herself after the Supreme Court tossed out the charges? On June 11, 2021, we learned that only days after losing its case before the Supreme Court, the Wyoming Bar assigned Special Counsel Reeves to drag her before the BPR on many of the same charges. And those charges were not made public until months later when Reeves filed the Formal Charge.

That sure sounds like double jeopardy to me. But if the case is to be tried again, Gifford and all seven judges are material witnesses to the facts. When Manlove asked the Bar for permission to depose these witnesses, the Bar denied her request, gave her only restricted access, and did not leave her enough time to act before the October 22 deadline, at any rate.

You might wonder how the Wyoming Bar has the power to restrict witnesses in a case where it is, itself, the plaintiff. Those are the rules of the Wyoming State Bar. They do not have to follow the same rules as state courts. They are a private club that does its work behind closed doors.

Private clubs are entitled to do as they please, but this private club is trying to overturn a public election. On November 6, 2018, 21,083 voters in Laramie County elected Manlove to be their District Attorney. And yet, within months of beginning her tenure, the Bar began working behind the scenes to take her out. Next, it tried to suspend her law license. Now, it is re-trying her case “in-house.” 

Manlove’s thorough response, filed on July 20, shed much-needed light on the Wyoming Bar’s relentless attack on the voters of Laramie County. It is available at LA4DA.com. The Wyoming County and Prosecuting Attorney’s Association and the Wyoming Attorney General have registered their own objections to the Bar’s actions, as well.

The voters of Laramie County elected Manlove by a supermajority (67%), but the Wyoming Bar does not care about the ballot box. After nearly three years of unrestricted lawfare against an elected official, perhaps it’s time they did. The unaccountable power that the Bar has over elected officials is unhealthy. It needs to change. 

Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, November 12, 2021, and the Cowboy State Daily, November 16, 2021.

School boards should listen to concerned parents, not attack them

Photo by Nick Quan on Unsplash

Exactly one month ago, the National School Board Association sent a formal letter to the White House claiming that “America’s public schools and its education leaders are under immediate threat.” It claims to speak for “state associations and 90,000 school board members.”

The letter asked the “U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Secret Service, and its National Threat Assessment Center” to “investigate, intercept, and prevent the current threats and acts of violence against our public school officials through existing statutes, executive authority, interagency and intergovernmental task forces, and other extraordinary measures.” 

In addition, it wanted “the U.S. Postal Inspection Service to intervene against threatening letters and cyberbullying attacks.” This calls not only for tracking personal letters, but also using the secretive “Internet Covert Operations Program” (iCOP) to monitor the social media posts of parents! This is the stuff of dystopian nightmares. 

Six days later, the Department of Justice pounced. It directed “the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working with each United States Attorney, to convene meetings with federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial leaders in each federal judicial district within 30 days of the issuance of this memorandum.” The stunning swiftness of this response is alarming.

America First Legal Foundation, wrote a formal letter asking DOJ Inspector General Horowitz to investigate. It forwarded evidence of behind-the-scenes collusion among the White House, the DOJ, and the NSBA. Already, FOIA requests have unearthed internal NSBA emails that admit to “talks over the last several weeks [prior to September 29] with White House staff.” 

Meanwhile, it was revealed that only two days after NSBA President, Viola M. Garcia and CEO, Chip Slaven sent the letter, the Biden administration awarded Garcia a plum appointment to the National Assessment Governing Board. 

Merrick Garland

By October 22, the NSBA Board of Directors apologized for the letter but the President and CEO did not retract it. They seem to want it both ways. Thus the characterization of some parental dissent as “equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism” still stands, and Attorney General, Merrick Garland, refuses to rescind his threatening memo.

The letter specifically names Wyoming as a state in which “school boards have been confronted by angry mobs and forced to end meetings abruptly.” The letter footnotes an article by Margaret Austin in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle which reports on an August 2, 2021 meeting of the Laramie County School District #1 (LCSD1).

The article, however, tells of one man, acting alone, who objected to the three-minute limitation on comments and refused to stop speaking after his allotted time. Vice Chair, Marguerite Herman, responded by recessing the entire meeting. Thus, she silenced everyone who was patiently waiting to speak. Was it fair to silence dozens of concerned parents rather than simply call security to usher out the rulebreaker? 

Marguerite Herman

Further, is it right to characterize the speech of a single man as “an angry mob”? When Wyoming is used as a reason to unleash federal law enforcement on parents, it is the duty of the LCSD1 board to answer these questions. Their monthlong silence sounds like agreement.

The Wyoming School Board Association added more fuel to the fire when Parents Defending Education asked whether it approved of the NSBA letter. Executive Director, Brian Farmer, replied, that the WSBA “had no role in drafting or disseminating the letter from the National School Boards Association to President Biden.” Like 21 other states, they were not consulted. 

Farmer went on to say: “Any criminal behavior, including but not limited to violence, threats, harassment, or intimidation, should not be tolerated.” So far, so good. But he immediately followed this with a troubling claim: “We have seen instances of some of these things in Wyoming." Really? What, exactly, is he talking about? 

Brian Farmer

Does the WSBA believe the actions in Cheyenne were “criminal . . . violence, threats, harassment, or intimidation”? Does it know of other Wyoming school board meetings where criminal actions took place? Where? When? Wyoming parents and students deserve answers. When asked for clarification more than two weeks ago, Mr. Farmer gave no reply.

Contrary to Terry McAuliffe's assertion of state power, parents are the primary educators of their own children. When they become upset enough to address a school board, educators should drop everything and listen. They should be eager to hear from parents who can provide direct input about the effects of the policies that they adopt. 

School boards and their associations that sic the overwhelming force of the federal government on upset parents have become a large part of the problem. By ongoing silence in the face of national allegations, the LCSD1 board, and the Wyoming School Board Association are sending the wrong message to the DOJ and to Wyoming parents. These, together with every educator, should defend parents loudly and unequivocally.

Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, October 29, 2021, and the Cowboy State Daily, November 4, 2021,

Post Script: 

On October 26, 2021, after a meeting of its Board of Directors, the Wyoming School Board Association issued a letter to its members. This reasserted the same substantial claims about criminality in Wyoming school board meetings as addressed above. It also restated its non-involvement with the NSBA letter. What it added was the apology from the NSBA school board as well as the WSBA's decision not to leave the NSBA immediately. The WSBA paid $27,382 in member dues so far in 2021. It stated that it will make a decision about continued membership in the NSBA at a future date.

The Federalist: What To Do About Your Local Library Putting Porn On Kids’ Shelves

Requests to move sexually inappropriate content from children’s sections of libraries are being stonewalled and misleadingly called ‘censorship,’ leaving kids at risk at your local library.

Read on at The Federalist, October 26, 2021.

Also published at Cowboy State Daily, October 17, 2021.

Catch-22, the true censorship at your local library

Photo credit: Johnny McClung on unsplash

It was a book that introduced the term “catch-22” into America’s modern vocabulary. The 1961 novel by Joseph Heller satirized a bureaucratic loop that prevented a military man from requesting a psychological evaluation because, according to the “catch-22” rule, the very act of asking proved he didn’t need one. Merriam-Webster defines it as “a problematic situation for which the only solution is denied by a circumstance inherent in the problem.”

Heller’s novel is touted by the American Library Association (ALA) among famous “banned books.” However, the ALA admits that it was only temporarily banned in one Strongsville, Ohio library from 1971-1974. There are 116,866 U.S. libraries where it was never banned. The real irony is that a “catch-22” is precisely what prevents an open and honest discussion of civic responsibility in both county and school district libraries. 

Banned Books Week gives a platform for libraries to treat parental concerns with contempt. Here’s how it works. 

Step 1: Woke school administrators—not parents—remove classics like John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” and Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” from a high school English curriculum. This enables the ALA to call the books “censored.” 

Step 2: The ALA uses the dubious claim to include them on their “Top 10 #BannedBooksList.” 

Step 3: The same ALA then puts eight other books on the list that truly are objectionable but made to look on a par with American classics. 

Despite its official-sounding name, the ALA’s list has zero science behind it. Rather, it is a fake ranking ginned up by activists who solicit complaints from “librarians and teachers” while ignoring the concerns of parents. To make matters worse, the most pornographic books that libraries regularly display in the children’s section are omitted from the list altogether.

Anyone unable to see why parents should object to the open display of “Doing It,” “The V-Word,” and “This Book is Gay,” in the children’s section of a library has no business being around our children. Despite what progressive ideologues will tell you, this has nothing to do with “sexual identity” and everything to do with exposing children of both sexes to inappropriate sexual content. 

Lincoln County Public Library
children's display, April 10, 2019

Unless you read the above-named titles for yourself, you will likely not believe what unsuspecting children can encounter in your local library. These titles would be perfectly at home in the seediest “Adult Shop.” But they are foisted on children.

That brings us to the real catch-22: The pornographic language and pictures found in the children’s section of Wyoming’s libraries is so over-the-top that examples cannot be printed in any respectable newspaper. This is the very definition of catch-22. The public needs to know the extent of the problem. But a full disclosure is “denied by a circumstance inherent in the problem.”

Thus, parental concerns are censored from the public by sheer decorum and decency. But that same decency is not restraining librarians from exposing even the youngest children to abusive content. They regularly encourage children to read what your local newspaper editor is ashamed to print. 

So, what’s a citizen to do? First, educate yourself. Under the radar, virtually every county and school district library in Wyoming indecently exposes children to explicit content. Concerned citizens should search the card catalogue for books of a sexual or otherwise objectionable nature. Work with other people in the community to share the workload.

Second, go to administrators and discuss your findings. Seek a solution that protects the community’s children above all. Sexually objectionable books should, at the very least, not be exhibited on the direct eye-level of kids wandering past book displays. Better yet, move them into the adult part of the library. Parents that actually want their children to read them can find them there.

Third, learn the library’s policies and whether they are being followed. If not, file a complaint. If the policy itself is inadequate, bring up the matter before the appropriate oversight board—either the school board or the library board. Schools and counties are not answerable to the American Library Association. They are answerable to the voters. Sadly, the ALA has abused the public trust and squandered the credibility it once enjoyed.

Finally, remember that not only parents have a duty to make public libraries safe for children. The entire community shares the duty to create safe spaces. Parents, grandparents and those with no other connection to the community’s children than a desire to see them thrive—all have a legitimate concern. Don’t be censored because you don’t have a child in the school system or spend time in the library. Children need and deserve the protection of every member of the public. That’s why libraries exist in the first place. 

Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, October 15, 2021, the Cowboy State Daily, October 17, 2021, Digital Business Books, and Wintermann Library.

When it comes to Ivermectin, Seriously, y'all, stop it.

Photo by Matt Seymour on unsplash

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has now officially joined the ranks of federal agencies that have scuttled their own credibility with media-enabled nonsense. At 5:57AM on a Saturday morning, August 21, it issued the folksy tweet: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all, stop it… Using the drug Ivermectin to treat COVID-19 can be dangerous and even lethal. The FDA has not approved the drug for that purpose.” 

By Monday morning, as if on cue, every compliant media outlet from Seattle to Miami published articles as if this were a serious problem. Rod Miller was the first out of the gate in the Cowboy State. He profanely opined, “I sure as h--- wouldn’t ingest it [Ivermectin].” He failed to notice that over a billion doses have been given to human beings since 1988. In all that time, and in 125 countries, zero deaths have been tied to its use. 

Rod Miller, columnist

What is more, the FDA approved Ivermectin for human ingestion in 1996 and it made the World Health Organization’s “Model List of Essential Medicines” in 2019. Nevertheless, the FDA deliberately created a narrative that Ivermectin is horse medicine. The condescending, “y’all” was calculated to paint anyone who might imagine otherwise as uneducated yokels. 

Soon Ellen Fike parroted the narrative by calling Ivermectin an “anti-parasitic medication most often used to treat livestock.” While admitting that the FDA had approved it for human use, the unmistakable point was that Ivermectin is not FDA-approved for treating COVID-19.

In the pharmaceutical industry, this is called “off-label” use. Doctors do it all the time some for good, and some for ill. As this column discussed several weeks ago, Testosterone is regularly prescribed off-label to minor girls! For more examples, Wikipedia has an entire page on the subject. 

What good could come of prescribing Ivermectin for COVID-19 off-label? Here is where it gets interesting. Barely a month after COVID-19 hit America, researchers submitted a paper to Antiviral Research that found Ivermectin to be effective against COVID-19 in the lab. It turns out that the same properties that make it effective against parasites also make it promising against viruses. 

Before the paper even could be published, the FDA issued a “Letter to Stakeholders” that threatened “FDA investigation and potential enforcement action” against any doctor with the temerity to try it against COVID-19. The letter stated: “Additional testing is needed to determine whether ivermectin might be safe or effective to prevent or treat coronavirus or COVID-19.” It then went on, bizarrely, to warn against people taking Ivermectin packaged for animal use.

Okay. That’s a weird caution. But at least we could expect the FDA to do the additional testing that would either prove or disprove the effectiveness of Ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19. After all, thousands were dying daily, and millions of cases were available for Randomized Controlled Trials that could provide a definitive answer.

One might think that while granting “emergency use authorization” to Remdesivir, two mRNA injections (Moderna and Pfizer), and one vaccine (J&J) against COVID-19, the FDA could have included a study of one of the safest drugs known to man. But, alas, 17 months later and we still have no such study. Nor has the FDA updated its guidance based on multiple external studies. Rather, on August 21, 2121 we got a snarky tweet bringing up the same unlikely scenario that it had imagined on April 10, 2020. 

The intellectually curious soon asked: Where are all these people slurping down ointments intended for cows? Dr. Jason McElyea went on the Rachel Maddow show to say that they lived in Oklahoma. In the very heart of hick-dom, supposedly, so many people were ill from taking “horse de-wormer” that gunshot victims were turned away from emergency rooms. Rolling Stone even put his claims into print. But he was lying.

The hospital issued a statement saying that Dr. McElyea didn’t currently work there, and that it had treated no cases of Ivermectin abuse—not a single one. We are still waiting to meet the knuckle-draggers that the FDA is so worried about.

Why am I taking up this subject? I am no doctor—not even a veterinarian. But two things kept me from passing over this ridiculous tale. First, a newspaperman, whom I respect, asked me to address it. Second, people are tired of lies. They just want to know what is real and go about their daily lives. If Ivermectin is proven ineffective, just show the receipts. But don’t peddle silly narratives that make even Rolling Stone print a correction. 

Ellen Fike, reporter

Truth begins with accountability for lies told. People need and deserve reporters and columnists who will publicly apologize for public falsehoods. Where that doesn’t happen, they will look elsewhere for reliable information, and they should.

Those at the CDC and FDA, who have spent a year and a half failing to study Ivermectin, should be put out of a job. The Centers for Disease Control was created to control diseases, not to control the narrative. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.

Post Script: 

On May 25, 2021 the Indian Bar Association sued Soumya Swaminathan, the WHO chief scientist for India. On June 13, 2021 an additional legal brief was filed. Both seek prosecution for causing the deaths of Indian citizens by sending a Tweet that caused the state of Tamil Nadu to withdrew the use of Ivermectin from their protocol. 

On August 19, 2021 Haruo Ozaki, Chair of the Tokyo Metropolitan Medical Association explained the data on why doctors should prescribe ivermectin for COVID-19. Perhaps this explains the timing of the FDA tweet on August 21.

Also published in the Cowboy State Daily, September 9,2021, and in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, September 10, 2021.