The Assault On Free Speech
Mark Tapscott, writing in the Examiner, takes a look at legislation likely to be introduced by Nancy Pelosi when she takes the gavel as Speaker. It is not at all pretty. In what is nothing more than an outright attempt to gag citizens and keep them from criticizing elected officials, the legislation is an outright all-out assault on free speech. Everyone, left, right or center should be very worried about this.
WASHINGTON - Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has cooked up with Public Citizen’s Joan Claybrook a “lobbying reform” that actually protects rich special interests and activists millionaires while clamping new shackles on citizens’ First Amendment rights to petition Congress and speak their minds.
Pelosi tried earlier this year to move H.R. 4682, the “Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2006,” which is now cited by Public Citizen’s Web site as the vehicle it is helping the incoming speaker to craft for the new Congress. The proposal Claybrook is helping craft for introduction early in 2007 is expected to be essentially the same bill Pelosi put forth this year.
That is bad news for the First Amendment and for preserving the kind of healthy, open debate that is essential to holding politicians, bureaucrats and special interests to account for their conduct of the public business.
The key provision of the 2006 bill was its redefinition of grassroots lobbying to include small citizens groups whose messages about Congress and public policy issues are directed toward the general public, according to attorneys for the Free Speech Coalition.
All informational and educational materials produced by such groups would have to be registered and reported on a quarterly basis. Failure to report would result in severe civil penalties (likely followed soon by criminal penalties as well).
Tapscott points out that this is an extension of the McCain-Feingold abomination. He's right. The assault began in earnest with that monstrous piece of legislation. But what this newest one will bring should concern everyone. This is a method of putting a Congressional boot down on anyone trying to get a message out that Congress does not like.
