Dear Editor:
First of all, thank you for your great on-line newspaper that I read every morning to keep abreast of Wyoming news. You all do a great job bringing unbiased news, important weather conditions and forecasts and humor.
Now, to the point of my letter. Unlike the marauding band of attorneys who won’t go away and continue their temper tantrum demand that the Wyoming State Bar “investigate” Harriet Hageman with respect to her position on the 2020 election, I was not privileged to be born in Wyoming and I did not earn my “Juris Doctorate” degree from the University of Wyoming.
But, I was privileged to be raised in Wyoming and to grow up on a ranch North of Lusk. Instead of the University of Wyoming, I earned my “Juris Doctorate” degree from the University of Oklahoma. Are these enough qualifications for me to exercise my First Amendment rights of free speech regarding the issue?
Probably not by the standards of the 51 – now 41 attorneys, especially since I hold a different view from theirs. I am now in the wonderful initial phase of retiring after practicing law for over 33 years and we are headed home to God’s country where I will become a registered voter and proudly throw all of my support to Harriet Hageman.
You know, I had an older brother who was much wiser than me, highly educated and honored with various college degrees. In the context of college education and degrees, brother Joe used to say that “B.S.” means … well, you know, “M.S.” means “More of the Same,” “Ph.D” means “Pile it Higher and Deeper,” and “J.D.” means “Just Deeper.”
Brother Joe was not denigrating or belittling college education or degrees, he was simply reminding me that we all have a contribution to make to society regardless of education or college degrees held, even if you happen to hold a J.D.
Who appointed the 51 – and now 41 – degreed lawyers to question and pass judgment on Harriet Hageman’s position with respect to the 2020 election? Who appointed these holders of “Just Deeper” degrees to insist that the Wyoming State Bar “investigate” Harriet Hageman. Not I, and not the overwhelming majority of registered Wyoming voters.
It is unequivocally astonishing to me that the 51 – and now 41 – lawyers wax and wane (not so eloquently) banal platitudes about the protection of First Amendment rights and at the same time express an overtly aggressive desire and attempt to strip Harriet Hageman of her First Amendment rights. Their covert political agenda reveals itself through their sanctimonious sickening rhetoric.
Cloaking themselves in strangely out-of-context and politically motivated maxims of jurisprudence that lawyers are “officers of the court” who take an oath to uphold the Constitution and who are duty bound to always seek the truth, the 51 – now 41 – degreed lawyers pretend to know more about truth, honesty, justice, and politics than Wyoming voters? The simple fact is that these degreed lawyers are apparently “Just Deeper” than the rest of us.
I could go on much longer, but Steven D. Kahne, Colonel, USAF, Retired, of Pinedale, Wyoming, “stole my thunder” with his letter to the Editor of Cowboy State Daily published October 3, 2022, with which letter and the straight facts recited therein I wholeheartedly agree.
John B. Linford
Wapiti, WY and Bakersfield, CA
