Reading Paul Hodes blog at the daily KoS is the literary-equivalent of watching monkeys throw poo. What is perhaps more disgusting is that the KoS Kids roll in it like heather and serve it to each other as if it were pâté de foie gras , encouraging their own sheer ignorance as they dance nine times widdershins about the burning remnants of the US constitution.
This week’s poo fling comes after Chuck Schumer’s evil plot to water-board the first amendment failed to properly rise in the oven Schumer usually cooks his constitution in. He’d helped craft something called the DISCLOSE act, which disclosed to us just how brazen power hungry incumbents can be when their brazen power-hungriness gets the best of them. They write laws to silence the speech they don’t like while ignoring speech they do. So when the soufflé dropped after Paul Hodes already voted for it he did what any cry-baby liberal does. He grabbed his talking points and hid in the skirt of the moon-bat mother ship.
I’d offer you a link, but I’m not that cruel. But if your curiosity has gotten the best of you, or you are simplly smitten with seeing the literary equivalent of simian patty pitching, there’s a cross-post over at that pot- hole Boo Hoo Hampshire; still a liberal dive but a slightly more tolerable pond to stick your virtual toe in if you must.
As to what Hodes has done by supporting the Act, that is worth far more time and attention than his posturing on influence and money in politics and anyone who has ever looked at his funding knows that the poo isn’t just air born; a large portion of it remains under confinement. Because wail as he might, what Mr. Hodes has tried to do by supporting the DISCLOSE act is attempt to protect his incumbency by stifling speech using the power of the federal government and nothing he says can change that.
Enough exposition; let’s get to the charges.
Mr. Hodes voted for a bill that would allow the federal government to define paid political speech differently for different kinds of group’s organizations. Oddly enough groups that favor Mr. Hodes and his party have an easier time of it than those who do not. That’s Mr. Ethics for you.
"The DISCLOSE Act should really be renamed the New?Sedition Act—it is clearly intended to intimidate and deter organizations, including nonprofits, from engaging in any?political criticism?of incumbents like its main sponsors,?Chuck Schumer?and?Chris Van Hollen," said?Hans A. von Spakovsky.
The eight former FEC commissioners describe how the bill would introduce asymmetrical rules for unions and companies for the first time since the early twentieth century. Unions, for example, would not be subject to the bill’s ban on political spending for government contractors or companies with a small percentage of foreign ownership.
Mr. Hodes voted for a bill that would encumber the effort of engaging in political speech such that groups and small business owners, many of them LLC’s right here in New Hampshire, could neither afford, nor take the time to understand and meet the government’s requirements for exercising their first amendment rights.
This bill has been promoted as ‘mere disclosure,’ but through the expanded definition of electioneering communications combined with the ban on electioneering communications by even the smallest of contractors, it actually prohibits a tremendous amount of political speech that was legal before Citizens United," said Bradley A. Smith. "Congress can’t respond to a decision striking down speech prohibitions by outlawing still more speech, yet that is what this bill would do."
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"The ‘DISCLOSE Act’ contains a bevy of burdensome, unnecessary and constitutionally suspect provisions," said?Michael E. Toner. "If the First Amendment’s clarion call for Congress to ‘make no law… abridging the freedom of speech’ is to have any force, this legislation must be summarily rejected."
Mr. Hodes voted for a bill that will make it almost impossible for grass roots groups to exercise free speech without fear of violating the law—it is therefore a deliberate effort to silence opposition through intimidation and regulation of the current government and to Mr. Hodes himself in the midst of an election he and they happen to be losing.
The commissioners’ analysis, though, explains how the bill adds a complicated scheme of arduous and vague rules-with no hope for clarification through the rulemaking process-designed to confuse and intimidate grassroots groups while midterm campaigns are underway.
"In America, good-faith errors by those attempting to comply with our complicated maze of campaign finance regulations should not result in jail time or eye-popping fines," said?Lee Ann Elliott. "These regulatory burdens fall hardest not on large-scale players in the political world but on grass-roots movements, low-budget campaigns, and unwitting volunteers. Congress would worsen this situation by passing ‘DISCLOSE’ without giving the FEC time to implement regulations for it.".
Mr. Hodes greatest crime should be thinking that he has the right to regulate political speech at all. But he takes it further by signing on to a law that would rig the rules to favor speech destined to benefit him while complicating matters for his opposition. If he were a store clerk or even just a dopey liberal lawyer he would be dismissed as naieve or ignorant, but as a congressman with designs on the US Senate it violates common sense, our god given rights, equal protection under the law, his oath of office, and borders on treason.
WSJ , Heritage and here, Campaign For Freedom
