Ralph Aldrich recently received a letter from Mathew Staver (that's right, just one "T" in Mathew) who is Chairman of the religious rights organization, Liberty Counsel Action. The letter concerned the Obama administration's heartless (and thoroughly unjust and unconstitutional) prosecution of pro-life activist Mary Sue Pine -- a prosecution which was denied quite forcefully by a federal judge.Here's part of that letter below as well as the link to the LC's online petition to Barack Obama asking for the speedy termination of Eric Holder's job as head of the Justice Department.
Thankfully, a federal judge has ended Attorney General Eric Holder’s two-year political persecution of Florida pro-life educator Mary Susan Pine!
Holder and the DOJ had sought to levy thousands of dollars in fines against Pine as well as get a permanent injunction banning her from continuing her faithful 20-year ministry outside an abortion clinic in West Palm Beach, Florida.
But this scheme was thrown out of court and drew criticism from Judge Kenneth L. Ryskamp, who concluded that the government lacked evidence to prove not just one, but “all three elements of its FACE (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act) claim.”
Judge Ryskamp concluded that “the evidence could not lead a rational jury to find that Ms. Pine’s conduct [i.e., having peaceful conversations with clinic visitors on a public sidewalk] constituted a physical obstruction within the meaning of FACE.”
The Judge chastised Holder for seeking to apply federal law in a clearly unconstitutional manner:..
The government’s decision to prosecute Pine despite having no evidence of wrongdoing prompted Judge Ryskamp to suspect a conspiracy at the highest level of the Obama Administration: "The Court is at a loss as to why the government chose to prosecute this case in the first place. The Court can only wonder if this action was the result of a concerted effort between the Government and the [abortion clinic], which began well before the date of the incident at issue, to quell Ms. Pine’s activities…"
When Eric Holder should be prosecuting terrorists, he is wasting time manufacturing baseless lawsuits against law-abiding, pro-life Americans and engaging in other politically-inspired campaigns against pro-liberty, pro-family citizens! Such actions by the Attorney General are abuses of power and examples of intolerably misplaced priorities!
Here is the petition.
