Loyalty Oath

==Background==
* Candidates in PA need to sign a loyalty oath, as of August, 2006
==Media==
===Meet the real subversives ===
:by Dimitri Vassilaros of the TRIBUNE-REVIEW on August 7, 2006
By challenging the Pennsylvania loyalty oath -- all
political candidates in the commonwealth having to
swear they are not subversives -- the Socialist
Workers Party (SWP) has more respect for the rule of
law than does the General Assembly.
The Pennsylvania Loyalty Act was passed in 1951 during
a time when there was a very real fear of communists
subverting the government. However, in Communist Party
of Indiana v. Whitcomb (1974), the U.S. Supreme Court
ruled that the oath violated the First and Fourteenth
amendments.
And when the highest court in the land made its
decision, the commonwealth immediately did nothing.
Candidates still were required to swear they were not
subversives. The irony-challenged Legislature
presumably was oblivious to the idea that a subversive
by definition might not be likely to keep his word
about not being subversive.
====Enter Corbett====
The Pennsylvania Socialist Workers campaign gave
notice in July that it intended to challenge the oath.
State Attorney General Tom Corbett rightly ordered the
Department of State to discontinue using the loyalty
oath. Mr. Corbett, a Republican of Shaler, and the
SWP, based in Philadelphia, prove that principle, as
well as politics, make for strange bedfellows.
But why was the loyalty oath still used until now?
"The Department of State cannot speak for other
administrations," said spokeswoman Leslie Amoros. And
it also apparently cannot speak for the Rendell
administration, at least for the first three years
when nothing was done. The department finally sought
an informal opinion by Corbett's office when a
candidate in Pittsburgh raised the issue.
The answer seems to be as simple as a story published
in February in the University Times, a faculty and
staff newspaper at the University of Pittsburgh.
Professor Gerald Massey refused to take the oath in
2005 when he ran for council in a small Mercer County
town.
County officials decided the loyalty oath could not be
enforced. Mr. Massey won the seat. It was in 1975,
according to the Pitt newspaper, that "then-state
Attorney General Robert P. Kane formally declared the
so-called Pennsylvania Loyalty Act unconstitutional
and directed that it not be enforced."
====Still on the books====
The state Legislature never formally removed the act
from state law, according to a state elections
official quoted in the University Times story. The law
remains on the books; it would require an act of the
General Assembly to amend it.
Could anyone other than the bipartisan bottom feeders
who control the three branches of state government
make the Socialist Workers Party look this principled?
And speaking of meaningless oaths, how many
legislators, governors and state court justices
actually obey, respect and defend the state
Constitution?
Or for that matter, how many ever bother to read it?
The U.S. Supreme Court and the then-attorney general
were very clear. And yet the Republican and Democrat
parties -- the duopoly that has had a stranglehold on
Pennsylvania state government for generations --
simply cannot be bothered with the rule of law.
Pennsylvanians should demand loyalty oaths from the
subversives controlling state government. For all the
good it would do.
==Links==
* Party loyalty
category:democracy