Yesterday’s somber thirteenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks was marred by a brand new and savage act of violence against the very essence of America: the First Amendment.
Who orchestrated the attack? Responsibility was not claimed by ISIL or ISIS … or North Korea’s Kim Jong-un … or even Dennis Rodman.
The culprits? A majority of the United States Senate.
Fifty-four Democrats voted to scratch out the words “freedom of speech” from the First Amendment to be replaced by giving Congress new power to regulate the spending, and thereby the speech, in their own re-election campaigns.
Conflict of interest, s’il vous plaît?
The assault was only thwarted because a simple majority falls short of the two-thirds required to send the constitutional amendment to the House.
Dubbed the “Democracy for All Amendment,” supporters and their many cheerleaders in the media pretended Senate Joint Resolution 19 would overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and get big money out of politics. Certainly an amendment could do that, explicitly, but this one would have done no such thing.
Instead, SJR 19 would have empowered our despised Congress to regulate as it pleased, with such sweeping power that the amendment’s authors felt the need to reassure supporters (such as the New York Times) by stating expressly in the amendment that, “Nothing in this article shall be construed to grant Congress or the States the power to abridge the freedom of the press.”
Let’s hope that, for the 54 Senators who voted to repeal freedom of speech, this goes down as a suicide attack … politically.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.