Somewhere, John McCain just high-fived Russ Feingold: Democrats Move One Step Closer to Banning Certain Political Books

The Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee just filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, arguing that marketing a book violates election law.

The "Young Guns" have a book. They also have a promotion tour and a video. Now, the Democrats could engage in a battle of ideas. But that’s not what they do. (are you surprised?)

...What is the mechanism? The publisher posts a  video by the authors about their book that contains a link to a website that takes political contributions. It is after all, a political manifesto.

...Democrats use the power of the federal government to attempt to prohibit the political speech and promotion of speech by their political enemies. That’s the kind of thing that lead to the American Revolution. Tea Parties make perfect sense in this context.

This sort of thing shouldn't come as a surprise. After all, new Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan (thanks, Goober Graham!) believes banning books and movies is a perfectly acceptable practice.

Elena Kagan argued on behalf of Citizens United essentially stating it would not be a violation of the First Amendment to have movies or even books banned. Of course, she only meant certain movies/books for specific times, but even so, I believe the point remains... all tyrants find a pretext for their tyranny.

The ill-named DISCLOSE Act was a similar effort. Its goal was to suppress free speech by conservatives, while leaving unions and other Democrat supporters unscathed.

The Disclose Act that House Democrats passed Thursday would "shred" the U.S. Constitution and represents a "blatant partisan maneuver to protect their incumbency," according to U.S. Chamber of Commerce Executive Vice President R. Bruce Josten... Only two Republicans voted for the act: Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao of Louisiana and Rep. Michael Castle of Delaware...

...Groups opposing the measure span the political continuum, including the ACLU, the Sierra Club, PIRG (the federation of state public interest research groups), the chamber and many others... The chamber recently called the bill a "desperate attempt" by Democrats to grab a political advantage in the midterm elections.

The act requires companies and associations to submit a mountain of paperwork to the Federal Election Commission if they want to run an ad.

Of course, the progenitor of these unconstitutional efforts was John McCain. Partnering with a far left Social Democrat, Russ Feingold, McCain led the effort to pass The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002.

The bill is better known as McCain-Feingold or, as I like to call it, "The Incumbent Protection Act". It banned, among other things, political ads funded by corporations in the 30 days before a presidential primary and in the 60 days before the general election. In January of this year, the Supreme Court -- by a narrow 5-4 margin -- ruled large swaths of the law unconstitutional.

The ruling was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace will corrupt democracy.

“If the First Amendment has any force,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority, which included the four members of its conservative wing, “it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.”

But let's not forget that John McCain and the National Social Democrat Party helped open Pandora's Box to egregious violations of the First Amendment by Congress.

When the federal government can ban movies, when it can ban books, when it can tell you what you can and can't say, then we are no longer living in the Constitutional Republic our founders created.

Oh, and thanks, "Maverick".