Ms. Pelosi isn't thrilled about the 1st Am. either

Z

zukiphile

New member
The House passed HR1, a sort of grab bag of further federalization of state elections, including mandatory election registration and donation disclosure and politicization of the FEC. The most obviously objectionable part involves the federal regulation of speech, a purported legislative reversal of the decision in Citizens United in substance and a call to amend the Constitution, and would regulate any speech that promotes or supports the candidate, or attacks or opposes an opponent of the candidate. The prohibitions set forth carry incarceration as the penalty for violation.

Ms. Pelosi's wish list is ghastly enough to have united the ACLU, https://www.aclu.org/letter/aclu-letter-house-rules-committee-hr-1, and Mitch McConnell.

The text:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1/text

The Heritage Foundation issued a short report on the bill:
https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/report/the-facts-about-hr-1-the-the-people-act-2019

If you are interested in how your congressman voted:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2019/roll118.xml
 
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KyJim said:
Mitch McConnell has been a consistent defender of free speech, to the point of opposing the 2006 attempt to amend the Constitution and ban flag desecration. http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1208509,00.html
Click to expand...

As you may recall, the "Flag Desecration Amendment" failed by one vote in the Senate in 2006, but the back story is that several additional Republicans were prepared to vote against it if they were needed to kill it. The final tally (like many votes) was politically choreographed beforehand to spread around political cover as necessary.

I didn't actually realize that McConnell logged a public "No," but credit to him for having done so. This would have been the first amendment ever passed specifically to curtail the First Amendment and expand the government's power to suppress unpopular expression. That would have been a far greater affront than some random douche burning a flag he bought at WalMart for 10 bucks.

Now I kinda wonder where McConnell came down on the "Stolen Valor Act of 2005," which made it a crime to go around claiming to be a decorated war hero -- not as part of some financial fraud, mind you, but simply for lying about it. Since when did the government have the power to tell us what we can and can't lie about on our own watch?
 
Control the flow of information and you can get one group to attack itself or allies. Or give up all their weapons.
Recent history has shown that numerous times (and since before Rome):

“One man with a gun can control 100 without one.” – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjugated races to possess arms... So let’s not have any native militia or native police.” -Adolf Hitler

“All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns, that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party.” – Mao Tze Tung
 
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