A petition at MoveOn.org Petitions calling for the Justice Department to “Arrest and Try House GOP Leadership for Sedition” is making the rounds in the liberal blogosphere.
The call Thursday morning boasted more than 16,300 signatures and was growing rapidly.
“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 petition statement reads.
According to the petition, the GOP had been extorting the government with the government shutdown and debt ceiling to eliminate Obamacare and was therefore involved in a “seditious conspiracy.”
“The House GOP leadership’s use of the Hastert Rule and H. Res 368 to shut down the government and threaten the US 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,” the petition explains. “Arrest the perpetrators in Congress immediately and bring them to justice.”
While Congress voted to end the shutdown and raise the debt ceiling Wednesday night — with House Speaker John Boehner violating the so-called Hastert Rule, an informal practice in which the speaker only brings legislation to the floor if it has the majority of the majority, to do so — the petition signatures continued to grow Thursday.
MoveOn.org Petitions, the liberal advocacy organization’s petition site, is a tool open to anyone who wants to start a petition pushing for his or her cause. MoveOn.org notes that the organization does not necessarily endorse the contents of the petitions on the site.