Whether the controversial "The Tea Party" political group makes it on the November ballot will be up to the courts after the Michigan Board of State Canvassers didn't approve the party's petition.

Petition forms didn't have "The" before "Tea Party" on it, which is the proper name that the mysterious startup political party used on other campaign documents. The vote to approve The Tea Party petition failed in a 2-2 vote with the two Republican board members voting not to approve it.

Michael Hodge, the attorney representing The Tea Party, said he expected to be in the Michigan Court of Appeals as early as Wednesday. At issues is whether the missing word on the petitions is "substantially" not in compliance with the petition gathering laws, given that there is another entity claiming the title of "Tea Party," without the definite article "The" in front of the name.

Although forgetting "The" in the proper name was considered a technicality by Hodge, there were bigger issues presented to the canvassers during the Monday meeting, including allegations of fraud involving the creation of The Tea Party.

Oakland County Clerk Ruth Johnson told the canvassers that one of The Tea Party candidates said in a letter to her office that he didn't sign any papers saying he would run for office.

Johnson brought a letter dated Aug. 20, signed by Aaron William Tyler, who is listed as The Tea Party candidate for a post on the Oakland County Board of Commissioners. The letter reads: "I did not sign this. ...I have no intentions of running for elected office... I believe a fraud was committed."

According to Johnson, Tyler said he was out of the state when he was alleged to have signed election documents. She said Tyler called her office after he was sent notices alerting him to late campaign reporting fines that he supposedly owed.

Johnson showed three signed forms on Tyler's election and voter identification paperwork at Monday's meeting. She said the signature on the letter signed by Tyler and sent to her office denying his role in The Tea Party matched his voter registration card. But those two signatures didn't match the signatures on The Tea Party election documents filed to support his supposed candidacy.

Jason Bauer is the notary who approved many of the election documents for The Tea Party, including Tyler's. At the same time, Bauer was the Oakland County Democratic Party's Political Director. However, following Johnson's revelation regarding Tyler on Friday, the Oakland County Democratic Party announced Sunday that Bauer had resigned from his position as political director.

Today, Johnson told the commissioners that she forwarded her information to the Oakland County Prosecutor's office for review and to see if criminal charges should be filed. She also said she was going to report it to the Attorney General's office.

Legal counsel told the Board of Canvassers that they had to rule only on whether the signatures needed were legitimate and if The Tea Party petition was done properly.

Attorney John Pirich, who represents the grassroots tea party movement, said his clients have filed political party formation paperwork under the name "Tea Party," which means the competing political party not including "The" in their proper name could create confusion.

The two votes that stopped approval were by the two Republican commission members.

Norm Shinkle, a deputy chair with the Michigan GOP and also the chairman of the Board of Canvassers, said failure to include "The" in the proper name on petitions violated election law.

Shinkle added the mistake could have been avoided if The Tea Party officials had come before his board for pre-approval.

"They decided to do it in stealth operation," Shinkle said.

Alleged plagiarism in a study by an MSU scholar is in the news, and it matters more than just as a violation of academic standards. The deeply flawed study wildly exaggerates the amount that could be saved by consolidating Michigan school districts, claiming it to be $612 million. Widespread media coverage ensures that the specious claim will divert attention from the real solution to funding problems in Michigan public schools, which is scaling back outsized employee compensation and benefits.

This is the second time in the last year that a flawed study has been produced by an MSU scholar that serves the interests of government employees and their unions. (The previous one was actually paid for by those unions). A third flawed MSU study paid for by the state's economic development bureaucracy buttressed its own specious claims that film producer subsidies are a wise use of taxpayer dollars.

Consider this latest action from a pillar of the state's academic establishment in light of the passage below from Angelo Codevilla's masterful analysis of today's social and political landscape, America's Ruling Class -- And the Perils of Revolution. First though, here is one more possibly relevant fact - MSU officials say it could take "a full year" to review whether the plagiarism charges will carry any consequences for this particular academic.

 From Codevilla:

. . . Once an official or professional shows that he shares the manners, the tastes, the interests of the (ruling) class, gives lip service to its ideals and shibboleths, and is willing to accommodate the interests of its senior members, he can move profitably among our establishment's parts.

 

If, for example, you are Laurence Tribe in 1984, Harvard professor of law, leftist pillar of the establishment, you can "write" your magnum opus by using the products of your student assistant, Ron Klain. A decade later, after Klain admits to having written some parts of the book, and the other parts are found to be verbatim or paraphrases of a book published in 1974, you can claim (perhaps correctly) that your plagiarism was "inadvertent," and you can count on the Law School's dean, Elena Kagan, to appoint a committee including former and future Harvard president Derek Bok that issues a secret report that "closes" the incident. Incidentally, Kagan ends up a justice of the Supreme Court.

Not one of these people did their jobs: the professor did not write the book himself, the assistant plagiarized instead of researching, the dean and the committee did not hold the professor accountable, and all ended up rewarded. By contrast, for example, learned papers and distinguished careers in climatology at MIT (Richard Lindzen) or UVA (S. Fred Singer) are not enough for their questions about "global warming" to be taken seriously. For our ruling class, identity always trumps.

The central political struggle of our era is the people vs. the ruling class, which includes politicians (of both parties), government employees and academia. Michigan's academic establishment continues to provide rich illustrations of how its side engages in this struggle.