As our ruling elites become more confident in our docility, they become bolder. They know the bit is secure in our mouth, so they can pulling on the reins. For today’s example see “Grayson wants to send critic to jail for 5 years”, Orlando Sentinel, 18 December 2009 — Excerpt (red emphasis added):
In fact, U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson of Orlando took such offense at a parody website aimed at unseating him that the freshman Democrat has asked that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder investigate the Lake County activist who started the anti-Grayson website “mycongressmanisnuts.com.”
Specifically, Grayson accuses Republican activist Angie Langley of lying to federal elections. His four-page complaint highlights the fact that the Clermont resident lives outside his district, but that Langley still uses the term “my” in “mycongressmanisnuts.com.”
“Ms. Langley has deliberately masqueraded as a constituent of mine, in order to try to create the false appearance that she speaks for constituents who don’t support me,” writes Grayson. “[She] has chosen a name for her committee that is utterly tasteless and juvenile.”
Grayson’s office did not respond with comment other than to confirm the letter exists — including its request that Langley be fined and “imprisoned for five years.”
Langley did not immediately respond with comment. Her webpage, which imitates Grayson’s own congressmanwithguts.com, was launched this fall as a way to raise money against him. He has infuriated Republicans this year, most famously by saying the GOP healthcare plan was for sick patients to “die quickly.”
She had hoped for a major fundraising “money bomb” on Dec. 16, but the website shows that only 92 donors have given $3,725 as of Friday afternoon. Grayson’s complaint to the attorney general was dated on Dec. 15 — one day before the website’s planned fundraising event.
The Grayson letter also took issue with how Langley organized the corresponding fundraising committee. In documents filed with the Federal Election Commission October, she says that the committee’s intent is to support or oppose “more than one Federal candidate.” “The website, however, clearly shows that the Committee opposes only me,” writes Grayson, an attorney who made a name for himself before joining Congress by going after war profiteers.
Read the complaint here (PDF).
This is neither the first nor last use of campaign finance laws by politicos to bash critics. At least, it will not be the last so long as we tolerate such travesties of justice.
Afterword
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Ooh, he’s so vain, i be he thinks the web is about him. Oh wait, it IS about him, doh!
Arrest and imprison. Without trial, it seems. What a surprise.
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FM reply: The CongressCritter is requesting prosectution. Not imprisonment without trial.
Not long ago there was an effort to legitimize our government by limiting the ability of lobbies to pour enormous sums of money into political campaigns thereby obligating the elected officeholder to those whose money elected him. Defenders of the status quo objected claiming that any such restraints would be a violation of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech.
Sophistry such as this, while claiming constitutional purity, is in fact the enabler and preserver of our actual form of government, an oligarchy of lobbies.
Until this is changed American democracy remains a farce.
For my part I listed various undemocratic facts in the USA (since the Sixties) – Is the American democracy a Fascism disguised ? (here the complete article if that can interest : http://bit.ly/5pHGZe )