That’s Elbert With An E

I posted a link in a previous post regarding some rules House Democrats wish to pass restricting free speech of House members on the Internet. As reported on The Next Right:

In typical fashion, House Democrats are trying to pass rules that stifle debate and require regulation. Rep. Michael Capuano (D-MA) sent a letter to the Chairman of the Committee on House Administraion Kevin Brady. The letter is a response to a debate about whether the House should allow members to use YouTube, first raised by Rep. Kevin McCarthy back in April. From that story:

The reason is simple enough: The Franking Commission frowns on official links to campaign-related Web sites, political parties, advocacy groups and “any site the primary purpose of which is the conduct of commerce.”

Well, Capuano’s proposal is a disaster. It creates a list of sites, maintained by the Committee on House Administration that members are allowed to post material.

House Republican Leader John Boehner released a statement on July 8, Which I’ve reprinted below:

I’m writing to alert you to an attack on free speech that is making its way through Congress. This attack, which should concern activists of all political affiliations across the ideological spectrum, comes in the form of a new congressional rule that would prohibit Americans from viewing content published by Members of Congress on websites that are not “approved” by the Committee on House Administration, the panel that creates rules governing the internal operations of the U.S. House.

Millions of Americans today utilize free, unregulated and uncensored websites like YouTube on a daily basis to not only obtain information from their elected leaders about what’s going on in their government, but to also give feedback and easily share that information with others. The advent of new media technology has empowered American citizens with real-time information about the policy debates and actions being undertaken by Congress. This has increasingly forced Congress to become more transparent and made it easier for American citizens to hold their elected leaders accountable.

The Committee on House Administration is considering a new rule that could bring this trend to a screeching halt. The Committee is considering the adoption of new rules that would require outside websites such as YouTube to comply with House regulations before Members of Congress could post videos on them. Under the proposal, the House Administration Committee would develop a list of “approved” websites, and Members of Congress could post content only such websites. The rule has been proposed by the Democratic chairman of the Commission on Mailing Standards, Rep. Michael Capuano (D-MA), and is being considered for adoption by the Committee on House Administration, chaired by Rep. Robert Brady (D-PA). A copy of Rep. Capuano’s letter is available at http://gopleader.gov/UploadedFiles/Capuano_letter.PDF.

If the proposed rule is adopted, the free flow of information over the Internet between Americans and their representatives will be significantly curtailed. Americans who currently use free websites like YouTube to obtain uncensored daily information about congressional policy debates will instead be forced to go to websites “approved” by the House Administration Committee in order to continue getting such information. This would amount to new government censorship of the Internet, by a panel of federal officials that is neither neutral nor independent.

House Republicans, led by Reps. Vern Ehlers (R-MI), Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), and Tom Price (R-GA), have expressed their opposition to this attack on Internet freedom and proposed an alternative solution that would allow Members of Congress to continue posting content at sites of their choosing.

In response to this situation The Sunlight Foundation has started a campaign on Twitter called Let Our Congress Tweet. If you’ve got a Twitter account, stop by and take a look. A post on their blog says it simply:

If Members can use whatever brand of inkpen, or any brand of paper, or buy whatever shoes they want, they should be given radically expanded freedom to use the Internet, and make the same empowering discoveries that their constituents are. Even if that same pen was once used to scribble a ransom note.

It appears that House Democrats wish to control the debate and stifle political speech. Honestly, between their support of the Fairness Doctrine and this mess, these guys have more in common with Castro or Ahmadinejad or Stalin than our founding fathers.

Hat tip to Delaware Venable for this YouTube video of a funny speech from the floor of the US House. I was surprised.

There’s something very nice about political parties in Delaware. In general, it is fairly easy to get your political party on the ballot. This means that many choices are available to each voter. And for the most part, the minor party candidates are treated as candidates and not the red-headed step child of the election.

Today I thought I would be reading something about the Democrats when I saw this headline: Socialists register for Delaware ballot. Instead, it was an article about the Socialist Workers Party getting their Presidential nominee on the ballot here in Delaware. Yes, I should be able to tell the difference between the two parties, but explain the difference after you read this:

[The Socialist Workers Party candidates] represent a platform that includes active support for unions and labor groups, withdrawal of all American troops from foreign nations and citizen status for all residents of other countries now in America illegally. The group has branded American forces as “imperialist” representatives of wealthy American interests.

Well, I’ll give you this. The Socialist Workers apparently want to remove all troops on foreign soil, whereas the Democrats only want to remove troops fighting the war on terror.

Hube tells us about “thought showers“.

Brian talks about his adventures delivering pizzas.

Howard always has interesting posts on local history. This post about the old Benjamin’s Department Store reminds you of the rich treasure of local stores once dominating the our cities and towns.

Oh yeah, Howard found another blogger from his neck of the woods: What A Smell.

Average Girl writes about her gas experiment.

IMAO reports that since this week’s Supreme Court ruling on the Second Amendment guns have been out shooting people.

Paul provides a link to a site where you, yes you, can create your own Obama poster. Some of my ideas:

This picture is very disturbing!

One of the text ads on my Gmail web page featured a product called the Hillary Clinton Toilet “Bowl Buddy” Brush. Funny. Her head is the brush! This company also sells other Hillary Clinton paraphernalia including an “action figure,” with the ability to sign any tax increase set in front of it, and a “pez dispenser,” to dish out all the goodies.

Today in 1983, Ronald Reagan gave a speech in Orlando, FL, identifying the Soviet Union as the “Evil Empire”.

It was C.S. Lewis who, in his unforgettable Screwtape Letters, wrote: “The greatest evil is not done now in those sordid ‘dens of rime’ that Dickens loved to paint. It is not even done in concentration camps and labor camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do no need to raise their voice.”

Well, because these “quiet men” do no “raise their voices,” because they sometimes speak in soothing tones of brotherhood and peace, because, like other dictators before them, they’re always making “their final territorial demand,” some would have us accept them as their word and accommodate ourselves to their aggressive impulses. But if history teaches anything, it teaches that simpleminded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly. It means the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom.

So, I urge you to speak our against those who would place the United States in a position of military and moral inferiority. You know, I’ve always believed that old Screwtape reserved his best efforts for those of you in the church. So, in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride - the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.

I ask you to resist the attempts of those who would have you withhold your support for our efforts, this administration’s efforts, to keep America strong and free, while we negotiate real and verifiable reductions in the world’s nuclear arsenals and one day, with God’s help, their total elimination.

While America’s military strength is important, let me add here that I’ve always maintained that the struggle now going on for the world will never be decided by bombs or rockets, by armies or military might. The real crisis we face today is a spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith.

I stumbled across this article linking Churchill’s speech delivered on 3/5/1946 to Reagan’s speech. Here’s an excerpt:

Not since Winston Churchill declared that an Iron Curtain had descended over Eastern Europe had a world leader described the stranglehold Soviet communism had on human freedom with such moral clarity. At the time, Reagan was criticized for his undiplomatic frankness; today, he is universally remembered for his courage and vision. In many ways, Churchill’s Iron Curtain Speech and Reagan’s Evil Empire speeches are linked as rhetorical bookends to the underlying saga that was the Cold War. While Churchill exposed the veil descending over the world’s view of the evils and human-rights abuses of the communist regime, Reagan peeled it back to reveal the horrors behind.

The transcript of Reagan’s speech is here. You can listen to it here.