This past November, lawyer and chief architect of Arizona’s likely unconstitutional immigration law — Kris Kobach (R-KS) — was elected Secretary of State of Kansas. Kobach is already a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City law school, serves as an immigration consultant to several local officials, and fills the role of Counsel at the Immigration Law Reform Institute (IRLI). Kobach has been actively involved in the patchwork of draconian local immigration laws that have popped up across the country. As a growing number of states are considering passing their own versions of the Arizona immigration law, this year promises to be both busy and profitable for Kobach who charges at least $300 an hour for his advice.

However, Kansas House Minority Leader Paul Davis (D) plans on introducing legislation which would force Kobach to focus solely on fulfilling his duties as Secretary of State. The Wichita Eagle reports:

The Kansas House’s Democratic leader said Wednesday that he’ll push legislation to stop Republican Secretary of State-elect Kris Kobach from continuing legal work for city officials and legislators across the country who want to crack down on illegal immigration. [...]

House Minority Leader Paul Davis, D-Lawrence, told the Topeka Capital-Journal that he plans to propose a bill that would prevent statewide elected leaders, Cabinet officials and other department heads from having any outside employment “of significance.”

Davis said the measure probably would apply to the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, insurance commissioner, state treasurer and about a dozen officials appointed by the governor. But he cited Kobach as the reason the state needs such a law.

“When you’re hired to do a job by the people of Kansas they expect you to be doing it on a full-time basis,” Davis said. “I don’t think there is room for people to have second jobs.”

Kobach has promised to work at least 40 hours a week as secretary of state and handle outside legal work in his spare time. In response to Davis’ proposal, he stated “It’s a brazen attempt to stop me from making the progress and reforms I’ve made in the illegal immigration area.”

Yet, it doesn’t appear there are any accountability mechanisms in place to hold Kobach to his word. The Wichita Eagle additionally notes that Kansas law does not require a state official to list an exact amount of compensation, or to provide employment details other than client names and addresses.

Kobach’s Republican rival and Democratic opponent both slammed him during his election campaign for not promising to fully devote himself to the Secretary of State position. Kobach responded, “Some people golf in their spare time, I defend American sovereignty.”

Asking the same question I did last month, Georgetown Law Professor David Cole wonders, “Did former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Tom Ridge, a former homeland security secretary, and Frances Townsend, a former national security adviser, all commit a federal crime last month in Paris when they spoke in support of the Mujahedeen Khalq [MKO] at a conference organized by the Iranian opposition group’s advocates?”

Free speech, right? Not necessarily.

The problem is that the United States government has labeled the Mujahedeen Khalq a “foreign terrorist organization,” making it a crime to provide it, directly or indirectly, with any material support. And, according to the Justice Department under Mr. Mukasey himself, as well as under the current attorney general, Eric Holder, material support includes not only cash and other tangible aid, but also speech coordinated with a “foreign terrorist organization” for its benefit. It is therefore a felony, the government has argued, to file an amicus brief on behalf of a “terrorist” group, to engage in public advocacy to challenge a group’s “terrorist” designation or even to encourage peaceful avenues for redress of grievances.

As Cole notes, he himself represented the Humanitarian Law Project in the Supreme Court case that affirmed Mukasey’s and Holder’s definition of “material support”:

[T]he Supreme Court ruled against us, stating that all such speech could be prohibited, because it might indirectly support the group’s terrorist activity. Chief Justice John Roberts reasoned that a terrorist group might use human rights advocacy training to file harassing claims, that it might use peacemaking assistance as a cover while re-arming itself, and that such speech could contribute to the group’s “legitimacy,” and thus increase its ability to obtain support elsewhere that could be turned to terrorist ends. Under the court’s decision, former President Jimmy Carter’s election monitoring team could be prosecuted for meeting with and advising Hezbollah during the 2009 Lebanese elections.

While I agree with Cole’s argument here in regard to the counter-productivity of the Mukasey-Holder definition (it would, for example, make you or me a criminal if we were to advise a Hamas activist to embrace non-violence) and his suggestion that Congress should reform the laws governing material support of terrorism to “make clear that speech advocating only lawful, nonviolent activities… is not a crime,” it’s worth noting that this would still place some of the MKO’s advocates on the wrong side of the law.

For example, one of Washington’s most vocal MKO advocates, Raymond Tanter, has suggested that the U.S. should assist the group in launching a cross-border insurgency against Iranian regime targets.

In November, Rep. Michelle Bachmann, by way of advocating that “the Islamic regime of fraudulently-elected President Ahmadinejad must be removed now, before it is too late,” called on the Obama administration to support the MKO, lamenting, “We have shackled this freedom-seeking group which has the ability to help Iranians rise up against that tyrannical regime.”

In my view, it shouldn’t be illegal to suggest such things, it should just be recognized as extraordinarily dumb. (Is it really that hard to understand why an Iraq-based organization backed by Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war might not be embraced by Iranians as tribunes of freedom?) But it is curious why Tanter, Bachmann and other MKO supporters seem able to flout the law as currently defined.