Gingrey (R-GA, 11) interested in FR, and in law restoring free speech

Meeting | 12-14-2003 | Robert A Cook

[Robert A Cook PE]

Spoke briefly with Congressman Phil Gingrey (R, GA-11th) after church today.

http://www.house.gov/gingrey/

Gingrey is a OB-Gyn physician, a first-time conservative Congressman from a democratic gerry-mandered district spreading through democratic regions in west GA and metro Atlanta.

(1) I asked him to sponsor legistlation REMOVING the free-speech restrictions imposed under McCain-Feingold. He thought it was a good idea, but didn't know how much other Congressional support there would be.

Therefore: CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSMAN AND CREATE SOME SUPPORT for removal of this section of the law.

Constitutionally, even though the vast majority of the bill has been upheld by the Court (thanks to liberal judges demanded by the Senate!), there is no reason the single section restricting free speech can't be also removed by a second law. The Constitution doesn't have a clause IMPOSING restrictions (yet!), so a law removing ("illegally-declared-but-liberally-declared-constitutional") restrictions should be "legal."

Further, this would FORCE the liberals (in Congress, in the press, and on the courts!) to visibly oppose free speech by publically opposing a law that explicitly restores free speech!

Removing the "money" talking points, and the other dnc-focus points of McCain Feingold from the discussion may get this bill through since it would be targetted ONLY at the 60-day advertising limits - if not in this session, maybe in the next.

Best? Sure; completely remove McCain-Feingold. But it won't happen in today's media climate, given the power this yields to the "national press corpse". So we shouldn't weight down a "possibly-successful" bill with dreams of revoking the whole thing.

It is at least a step to remove this clause. After all, even the whole Amendment invoking Prohibition was removed!

(2) Write, call, or email Gingrey's office(s) local and naitonal to support this bill.

Since it's not proposed yet, we need to show Phil that free speech is supported at the grass roots level. His office, frakly, will listen mostly to GA constituents, but evry call will help!

(3) He is interested in what we discuss here, in how widely-read the Free Republic site is, and how much more thorough we are than "the natioinal press corpse" who slavishly repeated only what they read from the dnc's faux fax sheet. When he expressed an interest in Free republic, I invited him to register and contribute (or at a minmum read along silently) to protect his public persona.

But, he needs a login-id.

So, I'm asking you respond to his web-site above and do three things: Thank him for supporting Bush in his war on terror;

Ask to submit his bill lifting restrictions on politcal speech imposed by the liberal press and the democrats,

Warmly welcome him to Free Republic, and recommend a screen name for FreeRepublic.com

[Robert A Cook PE]

As mentioned, he will most likely only respond to GA emails, but the rest will be noted.

Contact your local representative and see if we can get this started.

[sirshackleton]

I know some folks in his office....great people.

[NonValueAdded]

Great idea. My congresscritter is a doc too. Maybe they can come up with a prescription for the McLame-Feingold flu.

[CounterCounterCulture]

BUMP

[Lazamataz]

His user-id should be his name.

This should be posted to Valin's daily CFR reform thread.

[Orangedog]

Constitutionally, even though the vast majority of the bill has been upheld by the Court (thanks to liberal judges demanded by the Senate!), there is no reason the single section restricting free speech can't be also removed by a second law.

Congress getting rid of that part of the law would be nice, but won't repair the serious and long-term damage done to the 1st Amendment. The Supreme Court has ruled that it is OK to restrict political speech based on nothing more than the calender. There is absolutely nothing stopping any congress in the future from expanding upon those restrictions.

[COURAGE]

Here we go again, way too many vanities.
Admin Moderator | December 12, 2003 | Admin Moderator


Posted on 12/12/2003 6:13:33 PM PST by Admin Moderator


There have been way too many vanities. We have asked numerous times to please limit your vanities to either the General Interest (Chat) forum or to post your one line vanities on an already existing thread. Guess what, didn't work. So, we will be deleting one line vanity threads, unless it is truly news as reported by a major media outlet. We will be deleting threads misposted to news that clearly belong in the General Interest (Chat) forum. Remember, this is a conservative news forum.

So, get ready, your vanity posts will be removed if you can not follow these simple guidelines.


Here's how to post an article in a forum other than the main news forum:


On the threads page (in any forum), on the right hand side, above the sidebars you will see a group of links that look something like this:

Campaign Central
General Interest (Chat)
News/Activism
Religion
RLC Liberty Caucus
The Smokey Backroom
VetsCoR


Select the appropriate forum prior to posting your article. In that forum, you can post your article the same way as the main news forum.


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And as always, solicitations and fundraising from outside FR will not be allowed. Have a Merry Christmas.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Respectfully written, but I disagree until corrected by an Admin Moderator or Jim R.

A direct meeting with a Congressman about breaking news of the week, even if informal and not covered by the "mass media," DOES properly belong to "Breaking News."

Further, since a "call to action" is specifically invoked to have Freepers help correct a bad Supreme Court ruling, your judgment that "Activism" isn't invoked is incorrect.

[tutstar]

bttt

[Diva Betsy Ross]

Hmmm, interesting if this thread had photos of half naked women, I think Courage would be more supportive....

Great report. It should be on the daily CFR thread as well!

Valin has a ping list if you are not already on it. Good work!

[backhoe]

Respectfully written, but I disagree until corrected by an Admin Moderator or Jim R. A direct meeting with a Congressman about breaking news of the week, even if informal and not covered by the "mass media," DOES properly belong to "Breaking News." Further, since a "call to action" is specifically invoked to have Freepers help correct a bad Supreme Court ruling, your judgment that "Activism" isn't invoked is incorrect.

I support Mr. Cook in this matter. For whatever it's worth.

[Wheee The People]

My congresscritter is a doc too

Mine is a snake.

[Valin]

Bump and bookmark.
This is just the sort of thing I am talking about!

[aristeides]

Congressman Billybob has also been advocating legislation limiting to repealing the ad provision. He may be interested in your idea.

Since the Democrats have been expressing misgivings about CFR since the Supreme Court upheld (even if their misgivings spring from partisan considerations,) I do not think repeal of this one provision is a lost cause.

To judge by the cover article in the current Human Events< Speaker Hastert might be won over to the idea of such a repeal, which might mean the House leadership could make sure it got to the floor. But without some Democratic support, the Democrats could always filibuster it in the Senate.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Fine.

Let the Senate democrats go specifically on the record filibustering a specific law restoring JUST the free-speech limits of McCain Feingold.

Sure, they'll lie. They always have. They'll probably claim they are "preventing" corporate money, or lobbyists, or hate-speech from coming into the political process, but force them back on the record.

For that matter, force Bush to go on the record opposing some means to restore free speech!

[weegee]

I recommend pushing the constitutionality of the CFR laws. Congress shall make no laws abridging free speech and political speech is of the highest concern.

A law that is not stricken down on constitutional grounds sets a precedent for other laws that limit political speech. Using a law to repeal it and not the constitution is just setting congress up for a later repeal of "that" law. If it is not in the constitution then it needs to be added to the constitution (luckily that won't be necessary since it is already IN there).

[Valin]

Martin Olav Sabo is mine...lets just say he never met a tax he didn't like.

[Lazamataz]

Wheee The People

Everybody's got a cool screen name but me. :o(

[Lazamataz]

I thought I pinged you to this thread! Durned FR musta lost your name in my post to Bob Cook. Oh well, you found it.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Too late though.

All it would take is some lower (liberal) judge to cite the Supreme Court "already ruled" that CFR IS constitutional. That locks in the judicial review, since it's much, much easier to "go along" with an existing ruling (which creates an even tighter bottleneck for future lawsuits!) Thus, we need to get rid of the restrictions ... and NOT rely on some judge changing "her" mind about something "she" already decided. "She" will NOT want to go on record saying "Oh shoot. Guess I screwed up the first time..." Anyway, look at the Amendments: Prohibition sets a bad enough example where the 2nd Amendment, 1st Amendment, or 10th can get revoked if the MEDIA creates the dnc pressure!