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Open Letter To C-J from Greg Holmes, Concerning The Firing of Donna Mancini

As the Courier-Journal reported on May 26, Donna Mancini, State Chair of the Libertarian Party of Kentucky, was recently fired from her position as a dietitian with the Jefferson County Health Department SOLELY because of her activities on behalf of the Libertarian Party. Specifically, Mancini was fired for refusing to resign as State Chair of the Libertarian Party of Kentucky and also for daring to exercise her Constitutional freedoms by running for Congress in Kentucky's Third District last year.

This abusive and heavy-handed treatment of a citizen by the government should outrage every American who cares about individual liberty in general and our Constitution in particular. Donna Mancini is trained and experienced in a profession (dietetics) which the government has wrongfully swallowed up in large part. Having unjustly moved to dominate the profession of dietetics, making it difficult to work outside the so-called public sector, the government then arrogantly proceeds to deprive a practitioner of that profession of the most basic Constitutional guarantees--the right to participate in the American political process.

The hypocritical and outrageous conduct of Jefferson County Government is made even more unreasonable by the fact that George Unseld, a respected local Black leader, was permitted to work for Jefferson County Government while he was simultaneously holding the elected position of Louisville City Alderman.  The facts concerning Mr. Unseld are publicly verifiable and were made known to the Courier-Journal, which chose not to report them.

On May 10 of this year, Courier-Journal editor David Hawpe addressed the Jefferson County Libertarian Party, speaking eloquently on the pressing need to keep the government out of activities protected by the First Amendment. Every person in the room enthusiastically agreed with him.  I only wish that Hawpe and this newspaper were as eloquent and uncompromising in defending the rest of the Constitution, particularly the right to participate in the political process, the right to keep and bear arms, and the right to the presumption of innocence and a fair trial.