In its Citizens United ruling, the Supreme Court held that Americans do not forfeit their First Amendment rights when they join together to form businesses. This hardly remarkable conclusion produced howls of indignation among Democrats, who summarily denounced both the justices and the “corporations,” about which they are inclined to whisper darkly. Now the president is contemplating the imposition of free-speech restrictions through executive fiat.
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Democrats’ main response to Citizens United was the DISCLOSE Act (if you must know and can stomach it, that’s the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections Act) which, among other things, would have encumbered private, individual political donations made by employees of firms that bid on federal contracts. Unhappily for Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the DISCLOSE Act’s sponsors, their campaign to chill Americans’ political speech did not fare well in Congress, and the bill foundered. Democrats sought to impose similar restrictions through the Federal Election Commission, again with no success. Having been defeated both in the democratic forum and in court, Pres. Barack Obama has had drafted a diktat to simply impose DISCLOSE limitations by White House decree. You might wonder: Upon what constitutional authority might the president issue a directive abridging Americans’ First Amendment rights, recently reconfirmed by the Supreme Court? We wonder, too, and suspect that President Obama is getting a little big for his constitutional britches.
Federal contractors, it bears noting, already face disclosure rules. What the new restrictions would do is require Big Business to play Big Brother and keep tabs on employees’ private political activities. Which is to say, the same Democrats who decry the political influence of corporations want to empower — to require – those same corporations to spy on their workers in the name of political transparency. The political uses of a list of the political activities of a firm’s employees are obvious, and obnoxious.
Individuals making campaign donations already face disclosure rules, and the new restrictions the president contemplates would not shed any new light on the operations of American campaign finance. What they would do is have a chilling effect on the private political activities of a particular class of Americans, based simply on where they work, and provide the president with a handy device for aggregating his critics for future political retaliation. In short, this is Barack Obama forcing those he regards as his enemies to compile his enemies list for him.
Agreements with private firms for goods and services are not the only sort of contracts the federal government negotiates. The contracts it negotiates with its unions, for example, dwarf in financial scale the typical business contract. Those public-sector unions, as you may have heard, are rather lopsidedly Democratic in their political sympathies. No surprise, then, that they are to be exempt from these restrictions. Likewise, organizations receiving grants and other support from the federal government — public dependents that unsurprisingly tend to favor a large public sector and, consequently, Democrats — remain immune.
We are generally in favor of disclosure, as opposed to outright restriction, as the main tool for achieving openness and transparency in campaign finance, and it is reasonable that some scrutiny be given to the political activities of parties negotiating contracts with the government. We already have sufficient standards and rules in place — in fact, we have too many of them, thanks in no small part to the tirelessly wrongheaded efforts of John McCain. Worse still, the decree Obama is considering would place similar restrictions on non-campaign expenditures, such as donations to issue-advocacy groups and nonprofit organizations. The case for having politicians police political campaigns is weak enough; having them police private, non-campaign endeavors that intersect with public affairs is a deep and grievous violation of Americans liberties. For the president to simply command that it be so, having lost in Congress and in the Court, would be more troubling still.
One cannot help but think Mr. Obama is channeling Louis XIV. I keep waiting for him to say something equivalent to "L'etat, c'est moi!" in public.
That such an act is actively contemplated, and the fact that a substantial number of citizens would approve, illustrates as well as anything that this nation is more divided than at any time in its history, including the War Between the States.
Anyone who doubts that the Constitution is a dead letter in DC should catch up on current events.
Democrats actually impeached Nixon for skulduggery in the furtherance of his re-election - something our current Chicago crew takes as an inalienable right.
Republicans tried to impeach Clinton for staining the nation's character - seedy, but not really worth the political pain, and they learned the wrong lesson from the attempt.
Now, we have a president, who, even if qualified to hold office, blithely flouts constitutional limits as a matter of course, and the Republicans seem afraid to speak up.
Let me remind our elected representatives, of both parties, that you took an oath to uphold and defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC. If the brazen usurpations by the current occupant of the white house do not stir you into action, then you, ladies and gentlemen of the congress, are breaking your oath, and YOU should be removed for deleliction of duty.
It is time to remove Barack Obama.
We need to start teaching civics again, starting in elementary school. Part of the problem today is that people no longer know (because they aren't taught) about how our governmental system is supposed to work, why and how our systems protects us from govermental abuses. (and still would if people had the strength of their espoused convictions)
Gee imagine my surprise to find that Mr. Obama has no regard for the constitutional limitations of Congress, or his office.
This too will get all the appropriate icing from the Obamedia in an effort to make Constitutionalists look the villian.
I think an interesting project for an organization with investigative resources would be to take the donor list from 2008 for both Mr. Obama and Senator EGO, excuse me McCain, (I did vote for him out of desperation) and identify those contributors that made donations either on paper or on-line and used a credit card to effect payment.
Then, cross reference that list to the credit card bankruptcies granted after the election. My guess would be that through the change in banckruptcy laws, we the taxpayers actually financed Mr. Obama's campaign in ways and amounts we would be shocked by.
Given his utter disregard for the basic 1st ten amendments it wouldn't be surprising to find that his campaign orchestrated this little shell game.
By keeping his enemies list secret, Nixon acknowledged that he knew it to be contrary to an open democracy, and when acted upon, was illegal. Our current President seem to lack Nixon’s awareness.
This WOULD be an impeachable offense. Nixon didn't do half the stuff this incompetent charlatan has been doing in the way of executive orders and defiance of the courts. Unfortunately, there will be insufficient votes in the Senate, again, to convict.
@ms..nobodyuknow:
Sorry, no time for "Civics" here in the Demokratik Peoples Republik of Kalifornya. Can't squeeze it in between teaching only the positive contributions of gays, lesbians, Mexicans, Asians, Africans, little people, heavy people, people with more than 20 fingers and toes, left-handed people, ambidextrous people, the homeless, the God-less, etc., etc., etc.
Executive orders have rarely been challenged in the courts and there are only two post-WWII EO's ever overturned (Truman's Internment order and Bill Clinton's EO barring companies from federal contracts if they use non-union strike-breakers).
However, I think this EO could be overturned by the courts based on Equal Protection grounds (not Free Speech arguments) IF, and i say IF, there is an exclusion for unions. One could argue that the EO would create a protected class of speech for a narrow segment of the population which would be very hard to defend based on the recent deluge of union money into elections. However, a court challenge would likely be of little use anytime before 2012 given the torturous route it would have to take through the federal judiciary.
Also remeber that in the Citizen's United ruling, even Justice Scalia agreed that the government could regulate the disclosure of campaign contributions (ie, speech) just not limit it or ban it all together.
Free Speech is meaningless with an ‘unfree’ press, our media has devolved and coalesced into a governmental propaganda arm.
Is anyone else disgusted at the increasingly (hard to believe it is getting worse) absurdly biased media coverage?
This week on all the weekend talking head panel shows...McLaughlin Group, This Week, Fox - Chris Wallace, Meet the Press – the liberal pundits/media gurus are sticking to the White House talking points with a complete absence of independent thought.
They literally just repeat the President’s speech highlights (minus even his veneer of congeniality). Literally all they say is the conservatives want and will get tax cuts for the rich at the expense of the poor. Its sophomoric, anti-intellectual, disingenuous, demagoguery, deceitful...its just propaganda plane and simple.
Worse, the conservative response is incapable of articulating a three sentence cogent response.
Further these media outlets continue to give creditability and legitimacy to charlatans like Al Sharpton (he was on with Amanpour). What is he expert in that deserves a national audience?
If an alternative message is not available to the citizenry, the monolithic state society of Orwell’s 1984 will be a reality.
I love the acronym they chose for the new bureaucracy to oversee this bit of political gangsterism -- Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council (“FARC”). I don’t know who came up with that one, but first guesses would be Stern or Trumka. No one ever accused those guys of being subtle. Obama second term: Che Guevara glaring back at us from our “forever” stamps?
In fairness I see I must exonerate Obama and his crew from coming up with "FARC" for the bureaucracy overseeing this -- this acronym goes back at least to the Clinton administration. Purely serendipitous!
As to why is Obama doing this? Just remember that he is a liberal, plain and simple. Admit it or not, this president is an alien in his own country (I am not referring to his place of birth). His whole way of life has been anti-American. Just look at whom his mentors were; Frank Davis and other Marists professors. What were/are the views of Obama, Sr. and Jerimiah Wright? So do not be surprised at any thing Obama does.
Although it would be very difficult for me to single out but one thing from the corrupt, bureaucratic, expansionary cesspool that is Washington today as most bothersome, I think that, were I asked to do so, the tendency of politicians to ascribe supposedly clever acronyms to programs like this would certainly be among the most grating.
How much more abuse of power must we endure before Congress actually takes a stand against this sort of imperialistic agression against the American people that they are representative of? This administration is the most appalling on record and the most divisive in our history. Sorry @A Strike but he is quite incompetent as far as POTUS goes and has no business being there in the first place.
