Thor Hearne

Ouch. 

EDITORIAL: MOST AMERICANS ARE EAGER TO RESOLVE HEALTH CARE REFORM

Last week, the Obama administration decided to skip an intermediate step and ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review its health care reform law...

The U.S. Department of Justice lists 18 different federal court challenges to the Affordable Care Act, 10 of which already have been dismissed. The most ridiculous of these may well have been Missouri's own Kinder et al. v. Geithner et al., which U.S. District Judge Rodney W. Sippel tossed out on April 26. His ruling suggests he was unable to detect in it anything remotely resembling facts or relevant plausible assertions in Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder's lawsuit...

It's been a rough week for Peter Kinder. 

In addition to his inability to move the nimbus surrounding his penchant for billing taxpayers for campaign and personal travel expenses, the Department of Justice informed him via a new motion in his Health Care Inaction lawsuit that yet another piece of his factually challenged and poorly reasoned complaint has fallen apart. 

The new filing and memo from the Department of Justice can be read in full below the break.  In summary: Kinder and attorney Thor Hearne made big assumptions about what might come to pass in the health care reform law, and key assumptions that might give three of his five co-plaintiffs standing to sue did not come to pass.

This afternoon in federal court, the Department of Justice asked a federal judge to dimiss the amendment complaint filed last year by Lt. Governor Peter Kinder and a few other plaintiffs as part of his Health Care Inaction media tour.  In a memorandum detailing the reasons why the suit should be dismissed (embedded below the break), the DOJ details a host of problems of standing for Kinder and his co-plaintiffs, and an embarrassing list of factual errors included in their complaint, which was drafted and filed by GOP attorney Thor Hearne. 

Essentially, the DOJ argues that Kinder and his co-plaintiffs lack the standing to make a number of their claims, are improperly claiming to have been harmed by parts of the law that haven't yet taken effect, and say their rights are being trampled by provisions that exist only in their imagination.  

A detailed summary of the feds' arguments may be found below the jump -- along with all documents filed tonight -- but here are a few lowlights:

• In three counts, Kinder's complaint alleges that the minimum coverage provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will, beginning in 2014, require a young woman -- who just happens to be a campaign staffer for Rep. Vicky Hartzler -- to buy more health insurance than the catastrophic coverage insurance she has and desires to retain. However, Kinder's co-plaintiff is only 21 years old, and the ACA expressly provides that a catastrophic coverage policy can satisfy the minimum coverage requirement for anyone under 30.
• In one count, Kinder's complaint argues that the ACA extends special treatment for Medicare Advantage participants in parts of Florida. But the law, as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (HCERA), does no such thing.
• In another count, Kinder's complaint argues that the ACA establishes panels that will prohibit them from receiving medical treatment that they and their physicians decide upon unless the panels agree. But the law does no such thing, and Kinder's team cannot demonstrate any jury from the provisions Congress actually did enact.
• Finally, Kinder and his co-plaintiffs repeatedly makes claims about portions of the lawsuit that will not take effect for years, and makes claims that could only be brought by the state.  

Earlier today, Judge Rodney Sippel denied the motion from Lt. Governor Peter Kinder and attorney Thor Hearne demanding an immediate response from the Obama Administration to their complaint about the federal health care law.  Kinder has repeatedly alleged that the DOJ's response is long overdue -- but since his legal team did not serve the US Attorney for the Eastern District as they were required, the clock never started running for the feds. From today's order:

Plaintiffs do not cite any legal authority that would permit me to disregard the express requirements of Rule 12(a)(2) and shorten the amount of time the United States Defendants have to file an answer once the United States Attorney has been served. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provide a framework for the fair and orderly adjudication of a case, and I cannot ignore them simply because Plaintiffs ask me to do so. As with any motion, such a request must be supported by relevant legal authority and facts. Because neither has been provided by Plaintiffs to date, the motion will be denied without prejudice and may be renewed if properly presented and briefed.

Because Kinder didn't serve the proper US Attorney until November 16, a response from the defendants is not due until January 18.

The full order can be found below the break.

When these facts were first reported here at Fired Up!, Kinder accused me of lying, tweeting that my post was "100% false."  I'm sure that he'll tweet an apology any minute now to correct the record, along with a press release announcing today's ruling for all of the news outlets who covered his premature whining in November.

Last week, Lt. Governor Peter Kinder generated a decent amount of media attention for himself demanding that the federal government respond to his Health Care Inaction lawsuit.  Kinder claimed that the time limit for a response had passed, and called the Department of Justice's alleged delinquency a "disgrace."

But there appears to have been just one problem in Kinder's grandstanding: he and attorney Thor Hearne served the wrong U.S. Attorney. From a response filed Monday by Assistant Attorney General Tony West and U.S. Attorney Richard Callahan:

Under Rule 12(a)(2), Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, where, as here, the defendants in a civil case are officers of the United States sued in their official capacity, an answer, motion to dismiss, or other response to a complaint is due “60 days after service on the United States attorney.” Plaintiffs argue that they served the United States attorney more than 60 days ago. Hearne Declaration ¶ 5.

However, Rule 12(a)(2) should be read in concert with Rule 4(i)(A)(i), which specifies that it is not enough to serve some United States attorney; service must be “on the United States attorney for the district in which the action is brought.” (Emphasis supplied). Plaintiffs’ argument that they have served the United States attorney cites as evidence Exhibit E to the Hearne Declaration. That exhibit shows service on the United States attorney for the District of Columbia. However, the “district in which the action is brought” is the Eastern District of Missouri. There is no evidence that the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri has been served.

Accordingly, the time for defendants to answer, move to dismiss, or otherwise respond to the amended complaint has not yet expired.

Accordingly, United States District Judge Rodney Sippel ordered Kinder and his legal team to "show cause no later than November 30, 2010 that service was made on the United States Attorney for the Southeastern District of Missouri."

A response filed yesterday by Hearne, Kinder's attorney, states that a summons and copy of their complaint have now been served to the proper U.S. Attorney.

Somehow, Kinder has failed to publish a single tweet about this development.  Nevertheless, I'm confident that all of the press outlets who covered Kinder's actions last week will file a new round of stories documenting his incompetence. 

Filings from the DOJ and Kinder's All-Star Legal Team may be found below the break.

First, Peter Kinder promised that he would be joining Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum's lawsuit about the federal health care law.  We now know that Kinder didn't know what he was talking about when he made that promise.

Kinder then decided he would sue the federal government on his own.  He wants to do this in his official capacity, but with secret private financing .  He's promised on multiple occasions, going back to his appearance on Fox News, that his solo suit would be filed before the end of April (i.e. next Friday). Since that time, he's made similar promises to the press, to the Americans For Prosperity-sponsored rally at the state Capitol on April 13 and on his new private company's website.

But this week, Kinder told KOMU that he and Thor Hearne still need "several weeks" to get their sure-to-fail lawsuit together.  As captured by KOMU:

It will be several weeks before we file.  We are going through a 27-hundred page monstrosity of a federal health care bill looking for all of its damaging aspects.

It's almost like Kinder is making all of this up as he goes.  Almost.

TPM Editor David Kurtz:

YOU CAN TAKE THE BOY OUT OF MISSOURI ...

Thor Hearne, the GOP election lawyer in St. Louis who became a TPM fave in the mid-oughts with his euphemistically named American Center for Voting Rights -- which was actually a nationwide Republican voter-suppression effort -- went to ground after the U.S. attorneys scandal blew up and the spotlight focused on Republicans' bogus voter fraud charges.

Consistent with his commitment to keep his "quixotic lawsuit-to-be" as apolitical as possible, Peter Kinder announced today on both his official website and private corporation's blog that DC-based lawyer Thor Hearne will "advise him on the constitutionality" of the new federal health care reform law.

Kinder did not reveal who was paying Hearne's legal bills -- those are all funneled through the black box that is Health Care Inaction LLC.

As noted in The Beacon, Hearne played a "major role" in GOP efforts to skew voter rolls with government-issued photo ID requirements.  He is also the form director of election operations for the Republican Lawyers Association.

The public looks forward to learning more about the team's "unique" constitutional arguments, who is financing this misadventure, and who is getting paid. 

Color me confused by these statements in a Saturday Beacon article from GOP activist lawyer Thor Hearne:

[Hearne] told fellow conservatives Saturday that the best way for them to attack voter fraud was to get involved as a poll worker, so that they could familiarize themselves with Missouri's election laws and offer up some front-line protection against potential fraud.

Hearne also rejected audience queries about the possibility of widespread voter fraud. While acknowledging "a rare group of people wanting to subvert an election,'' Hearne added, "I'm not a big believer in conspiracy theories."

First, Hearne's comments are at odds with the decidedly weak GOP argument employed to justify a constitutional amendment and new laws to require voters to show a government-issued photo ID at the polls.

Second, Thor Hearne has not exactly been a passive observer of Republican campaigns to enact photo ID legislation, based on conspiracy theories of widespread voter fraud. 

If you only read one article today, read this, which details the back story on the Republican attempts to shove through a restrictive measure that will prevent registered law-abiding voters from voting. 

In an irony of ironies, the man famous for fabricating --and then suddenly disappearing-- an organization expressly for purposes of spreading misinformation about "voter fraud" in order to suppress Democratic vote counts is now hitting classroom to teach Missouri lawyers about campaign finance laws and lobbyist disclosure.  

Thor Hearne is apparently set to headline an event next week sponsored by the Missouri Bar which is titled "Then and Now: Update on Campaign Finance and Lobbying Laws."

More so than ever before, the interconnected nature of the national and Missouri-based efforts to advance specious "vote fraud" claims and bend the operation of government entities to specific partisan political advantage is becoming clear.  And the centrality of Mark F. "Thor" Hearne II to all of those efforts has never been more obvious than it is after the aggregation of a number of key facts. 

Jo Mannies has a piece up on the PD blog in which she tosses softballs to Thor Hearne, underhanded, about his role in the fee office, U.S. Attorney purge, EAC manipulation, etc.

In the post, Hearne denies having sought Cummins' ouster, and claims he didn't talk to the White House about it.

However, he does acknowledge playing a role in the EAC's decision to manipulate the findings of a research study that found that GOP claims of voter fraud are a form of fraud themselves.

And, Hearne acknowledges facilitating the hiring of a former Chief of Staff to a Senior Justice Department official to weigh in on behalf of Governor Blunt in the fee office investigation.

Hearne says:

What Hearne did do, he said, was "have a role in confirming'" that Gov. Matt Blunt was not a target of the fee-office investigation.

"I was involved in making sure, in evaluating those rumors,'" Hearne said.

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In early 2005 the Fired Up Missouri community was instrumental in figuring out and reporting on the intricate web of corporate shell LLCs used by the Blunt Administration to effectuate its fee office money funnelling scheme. One of the key facts from those posts was the central involvement of the law firm of Lathrop & Gage in the design and construction of fee office management company entities.

Now some are speculating that relationships between a key Lathrop & Gage attorney and the Bush White House may have led to the firing of U.S. Attorney whose investigation might have implicated Lathrop & Gage in a government corruption scheme.