News
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- Written by: Jay Edgar
- Category: Latest News
ALERT: EMINENT DOMAIN IN MOUNT HOLLY ON HOLD.
Read on for more details, then please CALL the Mount Holly Township Council at 609-845-1100 and tell them to let the Gardens homeowners stay in their community. Their e-mails are also available here:
- Thomas Gibson, Mayor:
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- Written by: Jay Edgar
- Category: Latest News
This Memorial Day, let us remember the soldiers of past and present and demand an end to our foreign interventions. The United States has over 369,000 soldiers stationed in over 150 countries across the world. Soldiers are sacrificing their lives without making Americans any safer. The best that can be said for our efforts is that we provide free defense to other nations. Democrats and Republicans have both pushed for endless war, at an enormous cost in both money and lives. Thousands of Americans, Iraqis, and Afghans are killed and maimed while the band plays "Waltzing Matilda."
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- Written by: Jay Edgar
- Category: Latest News
On June 4th a silent dance in is planned for the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. Dancing will commence at noon. The facebook event has 673 people who have RSVP'd so far.
This began back in 2008 when Mary Obwetter was arrested for silently dancing in place in celebration of Thomas Jefferson's birthday. An appeals court upheld her conviction.
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- Written by: John Paff
- Category: Police Accountability Project
In April 2010, Police in Maplewood Township (Essex County) cited a man for violating the Township's "public intoxication" code even though the Township Committee repealed that provision of the code approximately a year and a half earlier. The municipal court accepted the man's guilty plea and assessed $80 in fines and costs.
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- Written by: Jay Edgar
- Category: Open Government Advocacy Project
An Open Government Forum was held in Hunterdon County on Thursday. Three of the four panelists are NJLP members. The forum was reported on by Lehigh Valley Live:
Open-records advocate John Paff estimates 80 percent of governing bodies in New Jersey knowingly or unknowingly fail to follow portions of the Open Public Meetings Act.
"I don’t think the system works very well," Paff said, a Libertarian from Somerset County who has waged numerous open records fights. "We're it. We're the enforcement."
Paff was one of four panelists taking part in an open government meeting Thursday at the Historic Hunterdon County Court House in Flemington.
Read the full story on the Lehigh Valley Live Website.
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- Written by: Webmaster
- Category: Police Accountability Project
In a May 23, 2011 letter, the chairman of the New Jersey Libertarian Party's Police Accountability Project asked Egg Harbor Township (Atlantic County) Mayor James McCullough to review and update the police department's on-line internal affairs reporting form.
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- Written by: Alex Pugliese
- Category: Selected Blogs
In every war that the U.S. has fought in, from the Korean conflict to today, these wars were never declared by the institution called Congress. They were declared, instead, by the presidency, both in Democratic and Republican hands. Under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, the power to declare war is the sole responsibility of Congress and no other. Yet, as with most issues, Congress has been diverting more and more power to the executive branch. Even the War Powers Act of 1973 allows for the President to commit troops to battle provided that Congress is notified 60 to 90 days of deployment. This act is nothing more than a poor and faulty attempt at compromise. The question of whether it is the president or Congress that has the power to declare war has never been decided by the Federal Courts, let alone the U.S. Supreme Court.
If I had the standing, I would challenge the authority of the executive not only to wage war, but to also commit troops overseas. I would file the papers in court if I were allowed to do so. I am surprised that a member of Congress, who would have more of a standing than I, has never filed with the courts on such an important issue such as war, peace, life and death. It is high time that the question be answered once and for all. Can one person decide to send young men and women to face gun fire? Or is that the duty of 535 persons? Can the executive commit troops to battle? Or is that the right of the legislative? These and other questions must be resolved and must be answered for the sake of the future and the sake of the American people.
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- Written by: John Paff
- Category: Preempted Ordinance Repeal Project
At the request of the NJ Libertarian Party's Preempted Ordinance Repeal Project, Brick Township has moved to repeal their illegal loitering ordinance. The Brick Patch quotes the Project's Chairman:
"The ordinances are clearly unenforceable, and they confuse people - including the police," Paff said, explaining that a person mistakenly arrested or ticketed for loitering could turn and sue the township. "The laws against loitering were so often abused or misunderstood. It used to be just too easy to pick on certain groups."
Read article at The Brick Patch.
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- Written by: Webmaster
- Category: Police Accountability Project
Libertarians demand that cops live under the same laws as the rest of us
| Contact: Jay Edgar Office: 732-962-NJLP Cell: 848-525-0578 |
For Immediate Release |
Tennent, NJ, May 18, 2011: Prompted by recent Star Ledger articles regarding police officers' habitual failure to enforce drunk driving laws against State Trooper Sheila McKaig, the New Jersey Libertarian Party (NJLP) has formally petitioned the New Jersey Attorney General to take corrective action.
On May 16, 2011, the NJLP State Board unanimously voted to send a "petition for rulemaking" to Attorney General Paula Dow asking for "some rules that genuinely and substantially address the problem of police showing favoritism to fellow officers. A copy of the petition, which was submitted to Dow on May 17, 2011, is on-line at http://njlp.org/uploads/petitionToAG.pdf.
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- Written by: John Paff
- Category: Open Government Advocacy Project
The public comment portion of a Mount Laurel Board of Education meeting (the date of the meeting is not known) is below.
The comments are from students and parents praising and supporting certain teachers. By sliding the timer to 6:15, viewers will witness the board's determination that since the speakers are all making similar comments, future speakers will be ejected from the meeting unless the topics of their comments are "different" than what the board has already heard.
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- Written by: John Paff
- Category: Open Government Advocacy Project
On April 15, 2011, Hunterdon County Sheriff Corporal Sandra Ford delivered a writ of execution to the Wells Fargo Bank at 74 Church Street, Flemington and levied on Hunterdon's County's bank accounts. The levy amount, $93,265.37, represented legal fees that the County owes to the South Jersey law firm Friedman & Doherty, LLC of West Berlin.
The County was ordered to pay the $93,265.37 by Superior Court Assignment Judge Yolanda Ciccone's February 7, 2011 order that arose out of a class action lawsuit captioned James Gensch et al v. Mary H. Melfi, Hunterdon County Clerk et al, Docket No. HNT-L-307-07.
Gensch's lawsuit was a class action, filed on May 8, 2007, challenging the 25 cents per page charged by the self service copier machines located in the deeds and mortgages recording room. Gensch alleged that the 25 cents per page was too high and that the County was legally allowed to only collect its actual cost per copy, which Gensch estimated to be 7 cents.
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- Written by: John Paff
- Category: Open Government Advocacy Project
I am sometimes asked how I word my OPRA requests to public bodies that I wish to audit for compliance with the Open Public Meetings Act's closed session requirements.
I use the following form of request, since it is informs me of a) how current the body is on making its closed session minutes publicly disclosable, b) the level of detail contained in the body's closed session minutes, c) how closely the topics that the body resolved to discuss in closed session correspond to the topics that the body actually discussed in closed session, and d) the extent to which the body's closed session minutes are "reasonably comprehensible" as required by law.
Subcategories
NJ Libertarian Blog
Imported from NJ Libertarian News from the published feed
Videos
This is a page of various videos that we have either created or found interesting. Be sure to check out and follow our YouTube page.
Open Government Advocacy Project
The Open Government Advocacy Project is a committee of the NJ Libertarian Party. Its goal is to ensure transparency and accountability at all levels of government. Articles posted here are a subset of the work of the committee. For more information visit the Open Government Advocacy Project blog.
If you would like to demand accountability and ensure that your local governing body or school board adheres to the Open Public Records Act we can help you request information from them. Contact John Paff, the project chair here.
Insight New Jersey
NJ government is huge and complex. Private industry is shrinking while the size and cost of government bureacracy continues to grow. The articles posted here provide a guide of the NJ State Government and can be used by citizens and candidates for office to evaluate what departments can be reduced drastically in size.
We'll start with just some of the departments and provide a breakdown on what they do (or purport to do), how many employees they have and how big their budget is.
Preempted Ordinance Repeal Project
The New Jersey Libertarian Party's Preempted Ordinance Repeal Project (“the Project”) seeks to get New Jersey municipalities to repeal loitering ordinances that should have been -- but were not -- repealed when the New Jersey Code of Criminal Justice was enacted in 1979. The Project has successfully had loitering ordinances repealed in over 30 towns. For a summary listing of all the towns see Preempted Ordinance Repeal Project page.
Police Accountability Project
The Police Accountability Project is a committee of the NJ Libertarian Party. Its goal is to search out cases of police misconduct, file former Internal Affairs (IA) complaints when appropriate, and to publicize violations of rules and laws by the police. There may be other stories posted on the NJLP Police Internal Affairs Complaint Blog page.
If you would like to help or know of a case we should be looking at, contact the committee at
Legislative Affairs Committee
The Legislative Affairs Committee was created to allow a select core of Volunteers to take action on legislation and policies which directly affects the people of New Jersey.
[INTRO VIDEO - HOSTED ON NJLP STATE YOUTUBE AND EMBEDED HERE]
Staff
Legislative Director and Committee Chair
Volunteers: