Reply To a Judicial Committee Member

A member of the Judicial Committee writes to me complaining of "misinformation" from me about JudCom at http://libertarianintelligence.com/2009/05/california-libertarians-appoint.html.  Here is my response:

The part about Tom Campbell was of course a joke.  The part about JudCom follows straightforwardly from http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2009/04/statement-from-the-lp-judicial-committee-regarding-wrights/

If 8.4 is not automatic in the same way as 8.5.3 is, then 8.4 is effectively just an optional guideline in the case of regional reps, and the whim of a region to ignore 8.4 is apparently unreviewable by anybody. Such whims are certainly not reviewable by the JudCom, per its jurisdiction defined at 9.2.  And the LNC clearly has no 8.5.1 for-cause power to remove regional reps for an 8.4 violation.  So if what I wrote is "misinformation", please quote the Bylaws provision that can make a region adhere to 8.4 if it doesn't want to.  You can't, because no such provision exists.  Of course, the spectre of a region ignoring 8.4 is just as unlikely as the bogeyman of a rogue Secretary de-credentialing at-large reps under false pretenses.  At least the latter case can be trivially corrected by the JudCom, but all the people who are shouting about the latter bogeyman lose their tongues when asked about the former spectre, which doesn't even have a route to remediation.

Sorry, but you guys have construed the Bylaws in such a way as to make 8.4 absurd in the context of regional reps.  The JudCom apparently overlooked the second fundamental principle of interpretation (RRONR p.570): “When a provision of the bylaws is susceptible to two meanings, one of which conflicts with or renders absurd another bylaw provision, and the other meaning does not, the latter must be taken as the true meaning.”