Silencing Conservatives

While you were hopefully enjoying a 3-day weekend, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and the Committee for Justice’s Curt Levey penned op-eds addressing the increasing threat to political free speech coming from the Left. In the Washington Post, Sen. McConnell explained his opposition to the Disclose Act that Democrats have been pushing since Citizens United. McConnell pointed out that “Selective disclosure would be used to harass people who have participated in the political process or to scare others from doing so."

At FoxNews.com, Mr. Levey warned that “groups on the left are increasingly enlisting the coercive power of government in their intimidation and harassment campaigns” against conservatives, thus “threaten[ing] the First Amendment’s guarantee that government shall not abridge the freedom of speech." Levey concludes that

“Media Matters and other groups on the left have the right to boycott, lawfully protest, and denounce opponents to their heart’s content. What they don’t have is the right to commit criminal acts or enlist the government’s help in silencing conservatives – no matter how morally superior and self-righteous the left may feel.”

Sen. McConnell ends by noting that

“[In 2000], I feared that a government could use [disclosure] information against people, just as President Richard Nixon did. I did not know that a decade later [the Obama] administration would validate those concerns and that a free press would do so little to hold it accountable.”