That’s the title of a recent op-ed in the Orange County Register by Michelle Steel, who, according to a bio-line just under the byline, “serves on the Board of Equalization, a state taxing agency, representing the 3rd District, which includes Orange and Los Angeles counties.”

Um, Board of Equalization? Sounds like something out of Animal Farm or Anthem.

Notwithstanding the prefatory eyebrow-raiser, though, the piece itself offers a pretty good understanding of the meaning of Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson’s unlawful indictment of the Oklahoma Three.

A grand jury in the Sooner State this month unsealed indictments against three activists for limited government whose sole crime was circulating a Taxpayer Bill of Rights for last November’s election. Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson, leader of this political witch hunt, is pioneering the Left’s latest political tactic of prosecuting conservatives under unconstitutional state restrictions on the initiative process.

California, historically a nationwide initiative trendsetter, has reason to fear the westward expansion of this frightening new political tactic. This year, conservatives can thank Gov. Schwarzenegger for vetoing an attempt by liberals in the state Legislature to bring Sooner-style restrictions on the initiative process to the Golden State.

Under Oklahoma law, only registered Oklahoma voters are allowed to circulate petitions. It is under that provision that the Oklahoma Supreme Court threw out State Question 726, known as the “Stop Over Spending” initiative, because of “substantial illegal participation of out-of-state circulators.” Unhappy with simply defeating the initiative, liberals then turned their attention to prosecuting the initiative’s three proponents on felony charges. If convicted, the three each face up to 10 years in prison and $25,000 fines.

Liberals know that they cannot defeat spending caps at the ballot box, so they are increasingly turning to restrictions on the initiative process to defeat conservative activists.

That’s why California legislative liberals introduced, passed and sent to the governor Senate Bill 408, which would bring Oklahoma’s unconstitutional initiative restrictions to our state. Just like Oklahoma’s law, SB408 would create a durational residency requirement to circulate a petition and, consequently, deny First Amendment rights to new California residents.

The couple of comments posted so far on the Register’s page for this op-ed are about as judicious, clear-sighted and fair-minded as we have come to expect from the opposition. For example, a cheery fellow who styles himself Fourth Generation explains that “Oklahoma and liberals in the same line is the closest to an oxymoron that you can get. Your ideological blinders make you see liberals everywhere man. Get a life.”

Well, let’s see here. Oklahoma is a state. It’s a state with a population of around 3,579,000 souls. None of those persons are liberals? The definition of “oxymoron,” by the way, per American Heritage: a rhetorical term that combines contradictory or incongruous terms. Like “deafening silence.” Or, per our friend, “liberal Oklahoman” (if that’s what he was trying to propose as an oxymoron).

I don’t think of the politics here primarily in terms of liberals versus conservatives. But if certain Oklahoma “liberals” in power are offended by the Taxpayer Bill of Rights initiative, which sought to restrain the ability of the state government to spend taxpayers’ money; and if such “liberals” would like anybody who dares favor TABOR-like restraints to be summarily repressed; and if such “liberals” then clap loudly when the attorney general of the state of Oklahoma tries to do just that, threatening petition organizers Paul Jacob, Susan Johnson, and Rick Carpenter with up to ten years in prison–well, then, yes, they’re “liberals,” among other things. Let’s call them liberals.

But many liberals in the modern political sense of that word would be and should be as appalled as any “conservative” and anybody posting at FreePaulJacob.com by the Oklahoma attorney general’s flagrant abuse of power and by the unconstitutionality of the law he is using to rationalize that abuse. Certain ideological views–for example, the view that the contents of taxpayer wallets should be surrendered as fast and fully as possible to the government, so that the politicians and bureaucrats can plan and subsidize all our lives for us–may well pave the way for deterioration of respect for the rule of law, democracy, political freedom. But all Americans of every ideological stripe, to the extent they value their democratic rights at all, are jeopardized by the potential consequences if Edmondson and his co-thugs in Oklahoma are allowed to get away with destroying the liberties of the Oklahoma Three.

All Americans are jeopardized who believe in the right of association, in the right to petition their government, in the right to speak in favor of what they believe politically and to engage in the democratic process in hopes of furthering their political values.

Power brokers like Edmondson may say they don’t want persons and ideas coming into their state from other states. But these guys do look to the results of political machinations in other states for cues about what they can get away with. So–contra another commenter’s assertion at the Register page that the Oklahoma travesty is an “isolated” case with no possible connection to California–anti-democratic politicians in California and elsewhere are indeed going to watch with interest whether the Oklahoma politicians manage to pull off this attempted heist of citizen initiative rights; and they’ll make a note.