It is obvious in their attempt to undermine privacy especially on reproductive issues; it is obvious in their attempts to undermine and undo the social safety net, it is obvious in their attempts to dismantle the post office for the profit of the shipping business competition.
It is obvious in their attempts to favor Christianity over other religions. It is obvious in their efforts to shut down protest speech.
It is obvious in their attempt to undo the gains made by unions, including the freedom to assemble and to associate that results in equality of power in negotiations. It is obvious in their attempts to ensure unfair taxation, and unfair discrimination in pay, for those who are treated unequally, for reasons of gender, race or ethnicity, religion, or disability - or sexual orientation.
It is obvious in the attempts to secede, it is obvious in the attempts to enact nullification legislation - contrary to the clear wording of the Supremacy Clause.
It is obvious that the right holds an utter disregard and disrespect for the Constitution in this latest outrage, where the right wing extremists attempts to suppress freedom of speech at the state level. States are prohibited from doing so not only in most cases by their own state constitutions, but by the SCOTUS decision of Gitlow v. New York, where through the provisions of the 14th amendment (the one that came after abolishing slavery) free speech was incorporated, making the same limitations on the state governments ability to limit freedom of speech.
It is obvious in their unfair taxation and the catering to special interest corruption.
Now they are trying to use the law to intimidate and criminalize; never mind if doing so is illegal. They just skate right over that part.
Here is the latest attempt by the Constitution-hating right to act in an unconstitutional manner; what greater suppression of a right to petition for redress is there, than to prohibit the redress in writing legislation to correct a wrong, debating it, amending it, and voting on it?
Or we could have the right wing 'ignorance caucus' here in MN simply pass legislation that tries to make any legislation - federal or state - unenforceable, HF 419 introduced by Steve Drazkowski, and co-sponsored by 17 other right wing nuts. They tried for awhile to claim it was bi-partisan, but apparently no one explained to them that meant having sponsors from more than one party. (I notice they changed that after I politely called the error to their attention with an explanation of the word bi-partisan.)
Only a party, an ideology, that deeply hates and fears genuine representative government could contemplate something like this:
From Think Progress:
Missouri Bill Makes It A Felony For Lawmakers To Propose Gun Safety Legislation
By Ian Millhiser on Feb 19, 2013 at 10:00 am Yesterday, Missouri state Rep. Mike Leara (R) proposed legislation making it a felony for lawmakers to so much as propose many bills regulating guns. Leara’s bill provides that “[a]ny member of the general assembly who proposes a piece of legislation that further restricts the right of an individual to bear arms, as set forth under the second amendment of the Constitution of the United States, shall be guilty of a class D felony.” There are many problems with this bill, not the least of which is the fact that the scope of the Second Amendment is very much in flux. Last week, the NRA announced it would launch of blizzard of litigation intended to expand gun rights while the courts are still controlled by very conservative judges. So a lawmaker who introduces legislation that is perfectly constitutional could conceivably find that their bill suddenly violates a new understanding of the Second Amendment after the NRA wins another lawsuit — and thus could suddenly be hit with felony charges.The biggest problem with the bill, however, is that it almost certainly violates the Missouri Constitution, which provides that “[s]enators and representatives . . . shall not be questioned for any speech or debate in either house in any other place.” Although there are very few court decisions interpreting this clause in the Missouri Constitution, the United States Constitution contains a parallel clause guaranteeing that federal lawmakers shall not be called to account for “any Speech or Debate in either House” of Congress, and courts commonly interpret parallel provisions of state and the U.S. Constitution to have similar meanings.
In United States v. Johnson the Supreme Court explained that this “Speech or Debate” clause of the Constitution is intended to prevent the “instigation of criminal charges against critical or disfavored legislators by the executive in a judicial forum” by giving them broad immunity to prosecutions for their official actions. Moreover the clause does not simply protect lawmakers engaged in literal speech or debate, but it also ensures that they will remain unmolested for actions “generally done in a session of the House by one of its members in relation to the business before it.” Thus, a lawmaker’s decision to introduce a bill for consideration by the legislature is protected by the Speech and Debate clause, and they cannot be subject to prosecution for this act.
