The lead from the story in The Detroit Free Press here:
U.S. Rep. John Conyers’ on-again, off-again roller-coaster ride for the Aug. 5 ballot took a new twist Friday when U.S. District Judge Matthew Leitman put the 85-year-old congressman back on the ballot.
Leitman’s decision, released late Friday, contradicts the Secretary of State’s review of Conyers’ petitions, which found earlier in the day that Conyers had less than half the required signatures of valid registered voters on the petitions he turned in to qualify for the Aug. 5 primary ballot.
But Leitman said the requirement that petition circulators be registered voters — the issue that got Conyers booted off the ballot in the first place — put serious limitations on the free speech rights of the circulators, the people who signed the petitions and Conyers.
“The public interest favors the enjoining of the likely unconstitutional Registration Statute,” for circulators, Leitman said.
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Every matter great and small
passed by the States into law
lately suffers in the thrall
of Fed'ral power's giant maw.
What's the point of passing them
just to feed Leviathan?
-- Brutus
