Online Petition: Charge Government Shutdown Ringleaders with Sedition

YES!!!

MoveOn.org is circulating a petition calling for the arrest — and prosecution on charges of sedition — of the ringleaders of the government shutdown.  The petition states:

“I call on the Justice Department of the United States of America to arrest Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Speaker of the House John Boehner, and other decision-making House Republican leaders for the crime of seditious conspiracy against the United States of America…The House GOP leadership’s use of the Hastert Rule and H. Res 368 to shut down the government and threaten the U.S. economy with default is an attempt to extort the United States government into altering or abolishing the Affordable Care Act, and thus, is self-evidently a seditious conspiracy.  Arrest the perpetrators in Congress immediately and bring them to justice.”

This may seem farfetched, but the sedition law has been used in other recent cases.  In 2005 a nurse was charged with sedition — and acquitted — when she wrote a letter to a local newspaper criticizing the Bush Administration for the Iraqi war and for the Administration’s slow “response” to Hurricane Katrina.

Anyway, here is the petition.