By John Seiler

The Freedom Law School was founded by one of California’s boldest defenders of liberty, Peymon Mottahedeh. This weekend, March 8-11, it’s holding a Freedom Rally at the Sheraton Ontario Airport, 429 North Vineyard Avenue, Ontario, CA 91764.

The keynote speaker is retired Judge Jim Gray, the 2012 vice-presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party.

Other speakers are Sheriff Richard Mack, who has been rallying sheriffs around the country to resist the imposition of unconstitutional federal edicts against our Second Amendment “right to keep and bear arms.”

And Adam Kokesh, a U.S. Marine veteran of the Iraq war and a 2010 candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives who was endorsed by Ron Paul, but lost.

For more information, click here.

I met Peymon about 15 years ago when I was writing editorials for the Orange County Register and he was promoting the Fully Informed Jury Association, which advances telling juries that they can try not only the person on trial, but the law itself.

This actually is a part of American law, but little-known. For example, suppose the government arrests and puts on trial for violating drug laws a grandmother suffering terminal cancer who puffs medical marijuana to keep her from starving to death. Even if the government fully proves its case, the jury can agree that the case was proved, but it also can find that the law was unconstitutional or absurd, and dismiss the case.

By Brian Calle

I interviewed the Libertarian Party’s Vice Presidential candidate, Judge Jim Gray, about how public sector unions are draining the public coffers of local governments throughout California. Gray is a retired Superior Court judge from Orange County.

By John Seiler

More than two years ago on CalWatchDog.com, I was the first to report that the Top Two voting system would destroy third parties. My article was entitled, “Will Prop. 14 kill third parties?”

It did.

Prop. 14 passed that year. It set up the system we have now, by which anyone, of any party, can run in the June primary. But then only the “top two” winners advance to the November general election.

I reported:

I talked to three of the four top “other parties” or “minor parties,” as they sometimes call themselves. Currently, they’re the only four parties that meet state law to be automatically listed on state primary and general-election ballots. The Peace and Freedom Party didn’t get back to me.

Prop. 14 would be disastrous for minor parties, Libertarian Party spokesman Richard Winger told me.

The other parties I talked to were the Green Party and the American Independent Party.

Critics pointed out that, in other states that had adopted the Top Two system, Washington and Louisiana, no third-party candidate ever had advanced to the finals.

Well that’s just what happened here in our June 5 election. Reported Capitol Weekly:

“no minor-party candidate was among the top voter getters in any of the Assembly, state Senate or congressional races across California. In addition, the law that created the top-two primary eliminated write-in candidates.”

So we’re stuck with the usual Democrats and Republicans who have messed with us for more than a century. Top Two was supposed to bring more “moderate” candidates.

What it really did was reduce choice and shut down dissent.

If a small, Third World country had done this, right now the U.S. president would be sending in the drones.

Our old friend Art Pedroza has started a great new blog, OCPoliticsBlog.com. I’ve known Art for something like 15-20 years. Back when I was at the Orange County Register in the 1990s, he wrote great letters to the editor on the shenanigans in Santa Ana city and school politics.

When blogs came around in 2003, he started the Orange Juice blog, which quickly became the top local blog in Orange County. He gave that to others about two years ago. He then started the New Santa Ana blog about the city where he lives.

Like yours truly, Art has wandered among the political parties, and currently is back with the Libertarians. America’s constricted political system doesn’t provide enough choice of where to roost politically. The two major parties have erected numerous legal barriers to competition.

Republicans, despite their small-government rhetoric, too much want to run our lives and invade foreign countries (while making hefty profits on their investments with military contractors). It’s too bad more Republicans aren’t like Ron Paul or Assemblyman Chris Norby of Fullerton. But that’s the fact.

Democrats, who interested Art for a while, believe everything would be great if we just gave the government 100 percent of our money to pay for government-worker pensions.

Art’s now back in the Libertarian Party. He wrote in an email, “That may seem nuts since the new open primary system will shut third parties out of our general elections, but I am hoping the courts will overturn the open primary.  If not, oh well.”

That’s about my attitude on American politics as the country, and California, sink into the slough of despond: Oh, well.

Art wrote, “Have I learned a few lessons over the past couple of years?  You bet. My new blog will be informative and I am sure my sense of humor will pop up, but I am going to try to present OC politics in an informed and entertaining way — and we’ll steer clear of the nuttiness that was the old OJ blog.”

Even if you’re not in Orange County, its politics affect all of California, and America.

So check out OCPoliticsBlog.com.

— Jan. 3, 2012