43 Democrats in the Senate have signed onto a bill to effectively repeal the First Amendment. This month a cloture motion was introduced in order to stop debate and move the bill forward.
S.J.Res.19 would effectively give Congress the power to control any political speech in the United States.
Led by Harry Reid, the bill would eliminate the ability of campaigns, political parties and outside groups to spend money in elections. We would all like to see corruption via campaign spending to end, but to eliminate the 1st Amendment is not the way to do it.
Limiting or ending your rights is often initiated under the guise of addressing a problem ‘we all agree on’ and this is no different.
“What the amendment [to the Constitution] would do if adopted is give Congress plenary authority, absolute authority, to regulate all political speech,” stated Ted Cruz, who warned us last week this was coming.
Saying the foundations of democracy are threatened, Senate Democrats took the first step Tuesday to rewrite the First Amendment, holding a hearing to rally support for their proposed constitutional change that would give government the power to ban all spending on political campaigns.
The effort drew vows of resistance from Republicans, who harangued Democrats for abandoning free speech rights for political gain. Republican lawmakers said the solution was for Democrats to improve their arguments, not to silence their critics in an assault on fundamental freedoms.
“Where are the liberals today? Why is there not a liberal standing here defending the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment?” Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, demanded of his Democratic colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Forty-three Democrats are sponsoring the amendment, which would give Congress and the states powers to set strict limits — or eliminate — the ability of campaigns, political parties and outside groups to spend money in elections.
Democrats said they were spurred by several recent Supreme Court rulings that have freed up outside groups to spend money advertising for their points of view in elections, leading to a flood of cash, much of it spent anonymously, in the 2012 election.
testify at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on “Examining a Constitutional Amendment to Restore Democracy to the American People” focusing on campaign finance on Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C., Tuesday, June 3, 2014. (Andrew Harnik/The Washington Times)Enlarge Photo
testify at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on “Examining a Constitutional Amendment … more >Signaling the stakes in the fight, the Senate’s top Democrat and Republican testified at the hearing, mounting feverish attacks on each other.
“We sit here today with a simple choice: We can keep the status quo and argue all day and all night, weekends, forever about whose billionaires are right, whose billionaires are wrong, or we can work together to change the system, to get this shady money out of our democracy and restore the basic principles of one American, one vote,” Mr. Reid said.
Mr. Reid acknowledged that he felt “so unclean” after his hard-fought 1998 Senate campaign, when one major donor contributed a quarter of a million dollars to the Nevada Democratic Party and let Mr. Reid know he had done so — apparently an effort to curry favor.
“I hope that didn’t corrupt me, but it was corrupting,” Mr. Reid said.
He continued his assault on the conservative Koch brothers, two billionaires who fund conservative causes and who have become special targets for Mr. Reid.
But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, said Mr. Reid was attacking the Koch brothers as a smoke screen for “how incredibly bad this proposed amendment is.”
He said even liberal lions such as the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy voted against this kind of effort. Indeed, a 2001 effort to amend the Constitution on campaign finance was defeated by a 56-40 vote, and a 1997 effort was defeated by an even wider 61-39 vote.
Mr. McConnell said Democrats’ push this year is an election strategy, not a serious effort to work through constitutional issues.
“This proposal is never going to pass Congress. This is a political exercise and that’s all it is. The goal here is to stir up one party’s political base so they’ll show up in November,” he said.
The amendment Democrats are pursuing is strikingly broad. If ratified, the amendment would let federal and state governments set limits on how much money could be contributed to campaigns, spent by candidates or raised and spent by outside interest groups such as the National Rifle Association or the Sierra Club.
Kinda like Cash’s song. One piece at a time, they are taking our rights away.
Vote these fools out
People are stupid enough to believe this, no wonder they vote GOP.Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
they want all dems so Reid can give Obama absolute power and do what he wants with a dem house and senate
so much BS to install fear in people.
Well the name of the site is “truth and action” and there’s an eagle in front of the American flag so therefore everything they say must be true and patriotic. I won’t bother to read anything else because that would take to long and in America we only need the headlines. I will now hop on the brain dead bandwagon and post a picture of George Washington with a quote that says something about god. Then I will post a picture of Hitler with an Obama quote because that’s how democracy works. I’m so patriotic I’m watching Americas got talent and I’m cleaning my gun. Yee-haw! Sean Hannity is Jesus’s brother! Fox News never ever lies. Reagan was the greatest everything! George W Bush was the smartest president ever. I just bought another gun! Paid vacations are for socialists! The KKK do not represent Christians but ISIS represents every Muslim! Corporations are the closest thing to truly knowing god! I just bought another gun! Bill O’Riley parted the Red Sea! Ann Coulter is really the Virgin Mary!
idic5 says:
“43 Democrats in the Senate have signed onto a bill to effectively repeal the First Amendment.
No. it is an attempt at stopping the hijacking and the perverting of the 1st amendment by the GOP and their corporate patrons by clarifying that a corporation is NOT a person with a person’s rights to free speech. A corporation is not people , my friend. that is just insane and this leads to a crazy skewed landscape and the subversion of our govt. from ‘We the people’ to ‘We the corporations’. also it attempts to clarify that free speech is NOT money. Otherwise, the billionaire would be more equal than others and the poor would be less free and the jobless without money would not even be free.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijSsZdCatTM”
From: http://www.truthandaction.org/democrats-move-end-free-speech/comment-page-75/#comment-503834
You hypocrites. You have no problem with Soros, Buffet, and Steyer using their corporate money to advance your socialist agenda. Why don’t you take a long walk off a short pier?
If everybody forgot we are in control of this country not them but they are.making everybody they are in control over us to stand and take everything back we have to get rid of a lot of them out of this country and never let them back in this country or they can be shot and shipped back to the other country and barried ..there and not in this country ,.
rehenrick says:
“I love our constitution as much as the next guy. I surely take advantage of my rights every day, and I used to put on a uniform to defend those rights. These days, however, I think things have somehow gotten distorted…
Somehow, someone somewhere convinced the overwhelming majority of you that the Constitution is some sort of pseudo-holy document. It’s almost scary. Others idolize the founding fathers and would never dispute what they wrote and/or said.
Here’s the deal, though: the Constitution was written near the end of the 18th century. That’s over 200 years ago! In that time, we’ve passed 17 amendments. They range from freedom for former slaves to presidential succession to congressional salaries. That’s the way we govern, folks. We amend the Constitution of the United States of America when necessary. If an amendment passes, so be it. It’s the law of the land. If it doesn’t pass, boo hoo. We’re back where we started. A lot of you people seem to think this is some kind of slippery slope, but it’s not. There’s no snowball effect here. What’s enunciated in the passed amendment will be just that: the amendment’s verbiage. There’s no asterisk that goes next to it or anything. It would appear that some of you tend to forget that there are other people out there with opposing viewpoints. We shouldn’t call them traitors or curse at them because they don’t agree. We should embrace them and find our common ground. You might be surprised at how much Democrats love our Constitution, too.
And another thing: this idolization of the founding fathers needs to stop. Were Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, et al. great thinkers and leaders? Sure. They weren’t saints, however. Glenn Beck likes to gloss over the fact that Jefferson and Washington owned slaves. They hired brutal men to chain other men together and force them to work for no wages, all the while barely giving them enough food to get by and sometimes working them to death. The founders were great when it came to the notions of democracy and freedom, but they were hypocrites when the rubber met the road. “That all men are created equal” was one of the biggest lies in history. Luckily, we’ve made amends – and not the phony amends Michele Bachmann talks about. Our founders passed the buck on slavery, leading to the Civil War. They didn’t legislate it. Heck… They didn’t even want to talk about it.
Bottom line: if this proposed constitutional amendment passes, it’s the will of the people and it becomes enshrined into law. SCOTUS can’t do a doggone thing about it, because the will of the people – by definition – cannot be unconstitutional. If this proposed amendment fails, too, it’s still the will of the people.
Thank you for allowing me to post this.”
From: http://www.truthandaction.org/democrats-move-end-free-speech/comment-page-52/#comment-456670