Ah, for those halcyon days of 2008 when criticizing the government was “speaking truth to power” and railing against the spending excesses of the President was a brave exercise in patriotic dissent.
Well, that was then. Today, we have a new leader and he has kindly invited us all to take a big swig from the jug of “shut the hell up”.
A new White House policy on permissible lobbying on economic recovery and stimulus projects has taken a decidedly anti-First Amendment turn. It’s a classic illustration of Big Government trying to control every aspect of a particular activity and in the process running up against civil liberty.
Check out this passage from a post on the White House blog by Norm Eisen, Special Counsel to the President on Ethics and Government Reform (emphasis added):
“First, we will expand the restriction on oral communications to cover all persons, not just federally registered lobbyists. For the first time, we will reach contacts not only by registered lobbyists but also by unregistered ones, as well as anyone else exerting influence on the process. We concluded this was necessary under the unique circumstances of the stimulus program.
In other words, don’t you even think about calling your Congressman to complaint about the stimulus money. Michelle Malkin calls it “Obama gangland tactics at work” and that’s exactly what this is. The administration wants us to believe that they did this in the interests of transparency, but no level of government transparency is worth shutting down the First Amendment.
We need to start posting treatises with titles like: “How to Conduct Civil Disobedience”. Oh, wait: did I just commit a crime by suggesting a document that would suggest a crime? And is anyone reading this post on your blog a criminal?
“The administration wants us to believe that they did this in the interests of transparency, but no level of government transparency is worth shutting down the First Amendment.”
Shutting down debate and criticism is PARAMOUNT to transparency. If nobody is discussing what is going on behind the scenes, is anything really going on?