DISCLOSE Act Before Senate Today

Posted July 27, 2010, 12:28 a.m.

The U.S. Senate will be voting on the DISCLOSE Act later today (Tuesday, 7/27/2010). This is your last chance to make your opinion known to your representatives, and I strongly encourage you to write, call, or visit your Senators right away.

I’ve written about this pernicious act before, and the dangerous chilling effect it will have on legitimate political speech from both sides. President Barack Obama’s (D) administration has characterized this act as an effort to stymie the efforts of ‘special interest’ groups to influence politics. The act will, indeed, stymie many interest groups, but we cannot delude ourselves into thinking this is a good thing.

The problem is that these interest groups, as I stated in my previous discussions of this law, “aren’t some diabolical, nebulous enemy of our democracy; they are democracy.” You and I, whether we fall on the ‘left’ or ‘right’ of the political spectrum, have the right to support groups we agree with. Those groups we support have the right to spend their money on political speech.

DISCLOSE will muzzle these groups—the Gun Owners of America and Planned Parenthood; the ACLU and FRC; GLAAD and Freedom’s Watch alike. It is a blatant affront to Constitutionally protected free speech and free association. Freedom-loving Americans, whether they are conservative or liberal, must oppose it.

Once again, this is your last opportunity to express your opposition to your Senators. I urge you to contact them today and ask them to oppose this unconstitutional power-grab and encroachment on your political freedoms. The Capitol switchboard can be reached at (202) 224-3121.

Scott Bradford has been putting his opinions on his website since 1995—before most people knew what a website was. He has been a professional web developer in the public- and private-sector for over twenty years. He is an independent constitutional conservative who believes in human rights and limited government, and a Catholic Christian whose beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from George Mason University. He loves Pink Floyd and can play the bass guitar . . . sort-of. He’s a husband, pet lover, amateur radio operator, and classic AMC/Jeep enthusiast.

Quotes

Nothing which makes us happy is an illusion.

If tyranny is at all feared, the tyranny of the many is to be guarded against more than that of a single person.

In so far as religion is gone, reason is going. For they are both of the same primary and authoritative kind. They are both methods of proof which cannot themselves be proved.

I still feel you should rock the boat. And if you’re not in it, you should turn it over. But not unthinkingly.

In laying down a political system it is safer to rely on principles than upon precedents, because the former are fixed and immutable, while the latter vary with men, places, times and circumstances.

Poster after poster, film after film, novel after novel, associate the idea of sexual indulgence with the ideas of health, normality, youth, frankness, and good humor. . . . This association is a lie.

Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.

Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.

You can do a kind action when you are not feeling kind and when it gives you no pleasure, simply because kindness is right; but no one ever did a cruel action simply because cruelty is wrong—only because cruelty was pleasant or useful to him.

This is the real objection to that torrent of modern talk about treating crime as disease, about making a prison merely a hygienic environment like a hospital, of healing sin by slow scientific methods. The fallacy of the whole thing is that evil is a matter of active choice whereas disease is not.

For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.

Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.

Falsehood can hold out against much in this world, but not against art.

International trade is not a zero-sum contest. Both sides must gain or it would make no sense to continue trading.

He has placed before you fire and water: stretch out your hand for whichever you wish.

If America’s wealth were spread around the world it would soon be dissipated, but if her system of free government and free enterprise were spread around the world, nations would soon find them to be perpetual producers of wealth.

Nobody really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you’ll see why.

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.

In cases of this sort, let us say adultery, rightness and wrongness do not depend on committing it with the right woman at the right time and in the right manner, but the mere fact of committing such action at all is to do wrong.

All men are by nature born equally free and independent.