Another 1st Amendment Challenge
4 January 2007Today was the first day of Democrat control of Congress and the “historic” occasion of the first woman Speaker of the House. True to her word, Nancy Pelosi has already begun her 100 hour plan and, contrary to Democrat claims to want bipartisanship, they have completely stopped floor debates and even bypassed committees. The 100 hour legislation is going straight to the House floor.
While there are some good measures included, like earmark reform. Of course, we’ll have to wait and see if they are serious about that. One measure of particular concern, masked as ethics reform, is legislation called lobbying reform. While there my be some actually lobbying reform in the legislation, it will impose vast restrictions and reporting requirements on grassroots organizations. It amounts to an attack on the First Amendment rights of free speech and the right to petition the government.
No one should be surprised that Congress would be willing to assault the First Amendment this way. McCain-Feingold was a direct attack on free speech, yet Congress passed it and President Bush signed it. Unlike McCain Feingold which needed to be pumped up to generate interest among the electorate, the lobbying scandals and apparent corruption in Congress make this almost a slam dunk. The problem, as pointed out at Opinion Journal.com, is that this approach is backward.
As for the bad, most of the rest of these “reforms” are about controlling the lobbyists, not the Members, which gets it exactly backward. Putting restrictions on the right of citizens to petition government is a strange way of handling ethically challenged politicians. If a Member can be bought with a free lunch or skybox ticket from a lobbyist, he shouldn’t be in Congress anyway. And even as they’re forgoing lunch, the Members will still be telling corporate lobbyists they’d better ante up that PAC money, or else.
This is precisely the rational behind McCain-Feingold. John McCain was caught up in the Keating Five scandal which involved corruption of members of Congress so his approach was to restrict the public rather than those who were actually corrupt, including himself. Now we see it again. It has been said that those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. Nowhere is that truism better illustrated than in the present case.
There is, however, a more insidious side to this whole issue. It seems that the current legislation predominately affects only conservative organizations. Unions and corporations are exempt! From Rev. Lou Shelton of the Traditional Values Coalition,
The legislation being proposed by Speaker Pelosi and Public Citizen will seriously undermine free speech and place incredible time and financial burdens on small grassroots organizations, noted Rev. Sheldon. “It would require these groups to detail the organization’s expenditures in contacting the grassroots, the issues focused on, and the Members of Congress and other federal officials who are targeted for lobbying.
“This legislation is obviously a thinly veiled effort to hamstring only conservative groups. Why? Because it cleverly exempts trade unions and corporations from communicating with their members,” said Rev. Sheldon (emphasis in the original).
As Opinion Journal pointed out Democrats, for the most part, as doing what they campaigned on. Since they won the elections, we should expect them to do what they said they would do. But Opinion Journal also had this to say.
The country spoke loud and clear on behalf of Democrats last November, but we doubt this means it voted for everything on the party’s partisan wish list. Attempting to shove these measures through the House without allowing votes on amendments or alternatives isn’t the way a confident majority behaves. We guess this is why the Founders created the Senate.
Folks, there’s a lot more where this is coming from. Over the next several days I’ll be writing about various aspects of this 100 hour plan, much of it harmful to our economy and to our Constitution. Pelosi said she would “drain the Republican swamp’ in the first 100 hours but it looks like she wants to replace it with a sewer.
From what we’ve already seem we cannot expect Bush to whip out his veto pen with any sort of regularity. In fact, he will actively support much of the Democrat agenda! If you care about this country you need to make sure you are educated on the issues and you need to make you voice heard with your member of Congress, particularly if your member is a Democrat. They have the majority and that gives them the right to govern. But it does not give them the right to destroy it in the process. Only we can stop it!
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