There’s an old cliche that says no one’s liberty is safe when the Legislature is in session.
Well, here in Kansas, we can go that one better.
Our state Legislature’s a threat to liberty, even when it’s out of session.
Case in point: The upcoming hearing of the 2023 Special Committee on Elections.
I’ve got the agenda for the hearing, and “special” is certainly one adjective that describes it — though not in a good way.
The committee is planning a full two days of hearings Sept. 28 and 29 to facilitate hours of crackpottery from conspiracy-minded election deniers, and smooth talk from hired guns representing billionaires who have their own interest in interfering with the election process.
The star witnesses for the hearing come primarily from two groups, the “Liberty Lion League” and the “Foundation for Government Accountability.”
Lions of QAnon?
The Liberty Lions are the Kansas version of a national group that peddles discredited conspiracy theories and claims Donald Trump won the 2020 election, bigly.
In 2022, the group submitted those claims in a report to the Kansas Legislature that was long on speculation and practically devoid of actual evidence of voting fraud.
It uncritically quoted thoroughly discredited theories from such election experts as “My Pillow” guy Mike Lindell, former infomercial producer and treasure hunter Jovan Pulitzer, and of course, Fox News, which recently paid a $787 million settlement to Dominion Voting Systems to avert an ugly court case over the network’s repeated lies about the company’s voting machines.
The leader of the Kansas Lions is Greg Shuey, a former Air Force pilot from Johnson County who wrote in the report that when he retired, “I was extremely dismayed to see Marxism come out from the closet and seep into then take over my country. To do what little I could, I started writing newsletters to enlighten family and friends, and eventually anyone who would listen, to what I was learning in constantly reading and analyzing history and political trends.”
In 2022, a report in the Kansas Reflector quoted Shuey at a Topeka church meeting peddling the ridiculous QAnon conspiracy theory known as “Italygate,” which claimed the 2020 election was stolen via satellite by operatives of an Italian software company working out of the U.S. Embassy in Rome with assistance from the Vatican.
That’s credibility!
Also speaking on behalf of the Liberty Lions:
