Pelosi Supports Suppressing The Freedom of Speech

House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) has pledged to take up a lobbying reform proposal that would impose new regulations on speech by grassroots organizations, while providing a loophole in the rules for large corporations and labor unions.

The legislation would make changes to the legal definition of �grassroots lobbying� and require any organization that encourages 500 or more members of the general public to contact their elected representatives to file a report with detailed information about their organization to the government on a quarterly basis.

The report would include identifying the organization�s expenditures, the issues focused on and the members of Congress and other federal officials who are the subject of the advocacy efforts. A separate report would be required for each policy issue the group is active on.
link

Which freaking part of the first amendment don't these legislators understand? The Bill of Rights is pretty damn clear: "Congress shall make no law respecting... abridging the freedom of speech...". Democrat trash, republican trash... Its all the same to me.

At a glance the bill does seem very counter-intuitive in a number of ways, but on closer examination it looks like a status quo bill, which if introduced will probably pass with bipartisan support.

The biggest problem that I can see is the following:

Communication to registered members is exempted. It won't hurt unions or religious organizations, corporations (which donate to both sides), really it won't affect most PACs. The damage is done to the small upstarts just trying to get a message out: a campus organization like MEChA which generally relies on a small cadre of members to reach a larger target demographic.
If this bill had been law during La Gran Marcha and the immigrant boycott, people could have been in big trouble for organizing it.

This bill seems to be designed to shut down immigrants, abortion rights advocates, swiftboat veterans, etc etc etc so that candidates and more importantly their parties can set the agenda and not worry about little guys raising issues that the machinery doesn't want driving the Selection.

It's pretty amazing to realize that under such a law, I'd presumably need the services of a paralegal to do something as simple as get a booth at the street fair to hand out material about the flaws of electronic voting, for instance, but Diebold can pay some jackass 10,000 dollars to go bribe a congressman and not even have to sign a form.

I'm hoping against hope that I've read something wrong- a bill was mentioned in the article which I intend to look up later so that I can give a complete and objective analysis, but my kneejerk here is pretty scarry. Just don't go believing that the this is partisan- the Democrats aren't the only ones who benefit from silencing the Republican base- and the Republican base isn't the only side that will be silenced either. At a glance, the intent seems to be to disorganize the mechanisms by which the parties are held accountable to the voters, making us all just one guy with no hope of making a difference.

The legislation would make changes to the legal definition of “grassroots lobbying” and require any organization that encourages 500 or more members of the general public to contact their elected representatives to file a report with detailed information about their organization to the government on a quarterly basis.

This is so vague as to be totally unenforceable, esp. in the internet age of blogs and email.

I love this part, also:

To help dramatize the bill this time around, Pelosi is planning to assign sponsorship of various amendments to incoming freshman, which they will promote in their maiden House floor speeches.

What a slimebag. Make it appear that this was the newbies idea, so if public reaction backfires, she can blame it on them.:shk:

I'm not so sure. It certainly CAN be done that way- throw out a benign bill and let somebody else be the bad guy who inserts the poison pill.

The other possibility however is that Pelosi purposefully left goodies out of the Bill so that the newbies in narrowly-won districts can prove how smart and moderate they are by tweaking this scarry old bill.

The rank and file democrats throw one up to the guys in purple districts, they knock it out of the park, voters are happy with their choice, the party benefits.

Pelosi and Newt Gingrich would make a cute couple. Not surpised to see this kind of nonsense popping up anymore. Our gov is completely out of control IMO.

No, it's not just your opinion, you're entirely correct. Our government has been out of control since the 1800s when they completely threw away the values of the Constitution, which was designed to limit government, and began infiltrating every area of American society. A revolution right about now would be like a breath of fresh air.