Dems Priority List Includes Attacks On Free Speech And Gun Rights

[Elderberry]

Investors Business Daily 11/12/2018

Election 2018: Democrats took control of the House by talking endlessly about health care. But it turns out their actual priorities are things that they didn't talk about much on the campaign trail. Now we know why.

After having safely won the House majority, Democrats revealed their two top legislative priorities for next year: Limits on free speech and gun control. In other words, assaults on rights protected by the First Amendment and Second Amendment.

The Democratic leader in the House, Nancy Pelosi, promises that the first bill voted on by the new Congress will focus on campaign finance and ethics reforms.

Rewriting The First Amendment

According to news accounts, H.R. 1 would, among other things, establish automatic voter registration and "reinvigorate" the Voting Rights Act. In other words, make it harder to root out voter fraud. It will also push public financing of congressional campaigns, with a 6-to-1 government match on small dollar donations.

How many voters knew that's what Democrats had planned?

Those are bad enough. But the plan would also call for amending the Constitution to restrict free speech rights under the guise of campaign finance reform.

This is in reaction to the Supreme Court's 2009 Citizen United decision, in which the court ruled that the First Amendment protects political speech, allowing corporations to spend money on political advocacy. The court ruled that "The government may not suppress political speech on the basis of the speaker's corporate identity."

More: https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/democrats-house-first-amendment-second-amendment/

[Elderberry]

Democrats have attacked the ruling ever since. And they want a constitutional amendment that would overturn the ruling "and other related rulings."

That's so Congress can, in their words, "regulate the raising and spending of political money."

Sen. Ted Cruz had it right when he called this idea an assault on free speech. He said "it gives Congress power to regulate — and ban — speech by everybody."