Last year, the far left, union-funded Ballot Initiative Strategy Center responded to Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson’s outrageous prosecution of Paul Jacob, Susan Johnson and Rick Carpenter (the Oklahoma Three) with an atta-boy letter urging Edmondson to find some way to also strike at the donors to the Taxpayer Bill of Rights effort. BISC would no doubt relish an even wider round-up of its political adversaries.

To counter media attention to Paul’s case, which has been almost universally condemnatory of Oklahoma Attorney General’s transparently unjust prosecution, BISC started a new web site—misnomeringly url-ized as StopBallotFraud.com (hereinafter “SBF,” to be pronounced with a Bavarian accent)—that dubs Paul a “Fraud Merchant.” SBF is nominally produced by an outfit called FraudBusters, which is just an offshoot or incarnation of BISC.

Why is BISC so eager to toss Paul Jacob and others in prison? In Paul’s case, it’s because he supports the initiative process and is actively working to expand it to more states. Moreover—and this is pivotal—Paul supports using the initiative process to further causes opposed by the folks at BISC (like term limits, taxpayer rights fiscal sanity, reform of eminent domain abuse, and other such popular heresies).

But the “strategy” of this “Strategy Center” is all about opposing initiative rights except when deployed to further its own left-wing causes. And because they sense that their reform agenda is less popular with voters than reforms like term limits, taxation caps, spending caps, and curbing eminent domain abuse, the folks at BISC would rather deny expansion of initiative rights to voters in the 26 states that lack them than risk seeing even more initiatives enacted to protect citizens from political monopoly, out-of-control spending and taxes, and property grabs.

Per BISC, all advocacy of more conservative or libertarian political causes is intrinsically fraudulent, you see. (Another villain featured at the site is civil rights activist Ward Connerly, excoriated as a “fraud” for his opposition to racial quotas.) Certainly, no advocates of BISC-favored political causes are targeted as fraudsters at SBF; nor does BISC suggest that proponents of BISC-favored political causes be imprisoned for working to further left-wing causes or for supporting democracy.

As for BISC’s own ideological goals, the BISC people apparently believe that these can be advanced well enough by lobbying legislators, spewing congratulatory letters to attorneys general acting to imprison their ideological opponents, building bigger gulags, and so forth.

A few days ago, FreePaulJacob.com took note of the histrionic umbrage and loose logic SBF has punily unleashed on the burning question of whether Paul should have allowed a podium-crasher to occlude him during a rally for the Oklahoma Three rather than deflect the sign the troublemaker was shoving at him. Such is the “evidence” SBF proffers to prove what a crum bum Paul “really” is. Not only does the man believe in democracy and the right of citizen initiative, why, he also wants to be able to say what he came to say at a forum set up expressly to enable him to do so! Oh the humanity. And this is par for the SBF site. This is what they come up with when they’re straining to conjure smearpower of the very highest caliber.

Anyone who knows Paul knows that he is a thoughtful and decent soul who deeply believes in freedom and the rule of law. BISC’s smear campaign—which scrupulously evades cardinal facts that are also scrupulously evaded in Edmondson’s indictment—won’t work. It might prove adept at churning out talking points for persons as wantonly dishonest as the BISCquickers themselves. But it can’t persuade anyone honestly concerned with rights, truth, liberty, constitutional rights, and what actually happened in the Oklahoma TABOR petition drive.