Save The First Amendment! -- UPDATE! w00t! "NO" 57-41

The Demonrats in the Senate are planning on trying to cram Son Of Disclose Act through on Tuesday, 27 July.

Liberty Bell and the Tea Party Patriots send the following email/Action Alert:

We’ve updated this action alert with more specific info on each Senator to call.

The Democrats are running scared, fearful of the impact grassroots activists will have in November. With the DISCLOSE Act, which will go into effect almost immediately, in time for the November elections, they will be able to effectively and legally shut down our efforts to kick them out of office. The effort to silence us before the elections is tantamount to a witch hunt as they are exempting the huge special interests and unions! Read this email carefully for more information about this bill and then please make some phone calls NOW and tell them to VOTE NO!!

Don’t forget to text PATRIOT to 41411 for up-to-the-minute action alerts!

From our friends at Freedom Action about this speech violating bill:

Even if somehow the speech restrictions in this bill were constitutional, their uneven application would be a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection under the law. Even the left-leaning Sierra Club has labeled the DISCLOSE Act a two-tiered system that is “unfair and undemocratic" and that smaller grass-roots organizations would be disadvantaged because they lack the resources to cope with "the additional disclosure burdens." The unions and the big non-profit groups get to keep their free speech given to them in the January Supreme Court decision, but the corporations and small non-profits lose theirs under DISCLOSE.

Also, President Obama and some Democrats are dishonestly stating that the Court’s decision would “open the floodgates for special interest, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections.” However, current federal law and Federal Election Commission regulations already ban foreign corporations from participating directly or indirectly in American elections. (see 2 U.S.C. § 441e and 2 U.S.C. 437g).

Here’s an example of how this bill could affect your tea party group:

Exampleville, Ohio has two people running for U.S. Congress—Mr. A and Mr. B—in what promises to be a close race. Exampleville’s local Tea Party believes in Mr. B. The Tea Party wants to run ads highlighting Mr. B’s stance on cap and trade, federal spending, increased taxation, etc, but they don’t have enough money to fulfill the new highly complex reporting requirements from DISCLOSE. And DISCLOSE would force them to list their top donors, even if they are not necessarily the specific donors to the ads, in their ads. Besides, the disclaimers required could take up to 14 of a 30 second ad. The Tea Party gives up trying to run ads to support Mr. Republican.

In contrast, Mr. A has some well-funded unions who want to see Exampleville’s factories unionized, so the unions run ads against Mr. B and ads for Mr. A. Also, the Sierra Club and the ACLU (groups actually opposed to DISCLOSE) want Mr. A to support their issues, so they also run ads for Mr. A. None of these ads are subject to DISCLOSE’s requirements.

Guess who wins?

(For those interested, here’s a good link with information on the actual language and problems with the DISCLOSE bill, click here.

The DISCLOSE Act exempts unions and very large special interest groups!! And the little guy is left without a voice.

The "special interests" in the original bill included (or would that be "excluded"?) the NRA, the AARP, the Sierra Club, and the Humane Society.  The NRA caught pluperfect hell for dropping it's opposition to the bill as unconstitutional as soon as the Demonrats decided to  exempt organizations "with over 4 million members, and members in all 50 states."  Have heard nothing from them as of yet, althoh the Gun Owners of America reportedly want you to write your senator excoriating this "NRA-coddling" bill...

Reportedly, Taxachussetts RINO Scott "Centerfold" Brown will vote "no", but Maine RINOS Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are "undecided"; the intentions of D's Ben "Cornhusker Kickback" Nelson and Kent Conrad of NoDak are unknown.

This is yet another odious piece of drek from the Terrible trio which deserves to go down in flames.

UPDATE:   THE HILL:  "Senate fails to advance campaign finance bill"
Hapless Harry votes "NO"!  So do Snowe and Collins of Maine!