Serfs

Steve has written about this already, and I did as well, but in the time that the NH Senate decided table the bill last week, word is (Jeb Bradley from the Senate floor, from what I’m told) that this bill is going to be brought up AGAIN an voted upon on Wednesday.  Why are we bringing this up?  Once again, simple words that should be taken literally by ALL politicians are these words by the Founders:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Freedom of Speech; and the type of Speech with which they were most concerned with was Political Speech, which this bill addresses and not in a flattering way – in fact, in a really BAD way.  Political Speech – that category of speaking (be it audio, written, video, or other) that criticizes or upholds the actions of the Government pertaining to the issues of the day.  They KNEW that this was a pillar holding up our new country – putting any strictures on it in the political realm would be tantamount to opening the door to bad cronyistic government at best and tyranny at worst. And if the Amendments that I know about, if some of the wording that has already made it into the bill stays, I have two questions for the Senate Republicans:

Yo, chuckleheads!  What part of “abridging the freedom of speech” do you not get?  And WHY, in this time where many of you were put into office by folks who, more and more are Constitutionally minded, you think that your hides are more valuable than our ability to speak our minds freely to rip your hides to shreds (having earned such treatment or not) and therefore, wish to act contrary to that Constitutional philosophy??

In a lot of ways, what the Republicans are about to do is pass the hated HassanSpeech simply because THEY don’t want to be criticized by others.  Simpletons all – you all put yourselves out there voluntarily, and if what you think that the “incoming” is bad now, go read your political history again and see the stuff that was passed around in the late 1700s and early 1800s for electioneering.  Whether you think it “civil” or not is not the point and to be blunt, should matter not a whit.  Anyone should be able to say what ever they want in the political sphere (calling for violence and the like is obviously not in the political realm and remains defenseless and vile). I maintain that the real damage is NOT allowing politicians to pass laws to protect themselves but that this law will codify bullying of private citizens by forcing those engaging in political speech to list their Donor records.

Either reason is enough to kill this bill off as soon as possible (although Sean Doherty is right in trying to clarify how much can be collected for races – except I would raise the amounts much higher).  That said, let’s first start with identifying the bad parts of the bill as shown at NH.GOV as well as the three amendments that I know of are bad for political speech.  Also, there are parts of the current RSA that are NOT amended – and our Chuckleheads should be brought to account for not reviewing those given the current political retributions now taking place across the country (and, to be blunt, by the Obama campaign’s example).

Subsequent posts will fisk the amendments, which are FAR, FAR worse than what is listed below

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