Pelosi Set to Attack Conservatives
Dave Eberhart, NewsMax
Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2007
Leading Capitol Hill watchdogs are sounding alarms by plans of the soon-to-be Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and her majority of House Democrats to ram through a new law that would seriously undermine free speech – and put restrictions on conservative groups and others who encourage ordinary citizens to directly deal with Congress.
Pelosi has already stated she is planning to push through major legislation during the first 100 session hours after the Democrats take control of Congress this week.
At the top of the list is seemingly good legislation intended to curb the power of lobbyists. But the Pelosi law goes far beyond bridling Washington influence peddlers. Under her proposed legislation,
Pelosi will seek to control and limit any organization in America from encouraging citizens to communicate and influence Congress.
Unlike the other Pelosi New Year's resolutions (committing to no new deficit spending, fully enacting the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, raising the minimum wage, letting the feds bargain on prices for Medicare drugs, ramping-up stem cell research, cutting interest rates on college loans, cutting subsidies to oil companies, or protecting the status quo with Social Security), this one has the hackles up and bristling early on.
Richard A. Viguerie, the famous conservative direct-mail guru and author of the recent "Conservatives Betrayed: How the Republican Party Hijacked the Conservative Cause," has sounded a clarion call about the Pelosi lobbying initiative.
"The . . . plan is perhaps the most comprehensive regulation of political speech ever proposed, and would make small grassroots causes report quarterly to Congress -- the same as K Street lobbyists representing wealthy interests before Congress,' Viguerie says.
"Communications to as few as 500 citizens would trigger reporting under lobbying laws," he warns.
"The reporting requirements and more severe penalties being written in response to recent congressional corruption scandals would apply to those who have no Washington lobbyists, who make no political contributions, and who do not provide gifts, travel or anything of value to politicians," Viguerie continues.
Viguerie, who has cranked up GrassrootsFreedom.com to counter the bill, argues that in his opinion the thinly disguised intent of the enactment is to cripple the conservative movement, for which the grassroots are often the best and sometimes the only means of affecting public policy.
Just as Pelosi plans four days of celebration around her Jan. 4 swearing-in as the first female speaker of the House, concerned conservatives like Viguerie look to ramp up their own visibility on what they perceive as nothing less than a frontal assault on the First Amendment right to free speech.
When the celebrating Pelosi is attending a tea in the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium for some 400 female politicians, supporters and activists, or listening to Tony Bennett's serenade of "I left My Heart in San Francisco," opponents of the Pelosi plan hope to be flooding Congress with petitions, emails and phone calls; inspiring OpEds, and calling into talk radio shows about what they see as dangerous flaws in the bill.
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