Freedom of Speech

[Stephen Eisel]

http://townhall.com/columnists/judgeand ... page/full/

Last week, President Obama signed into law the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011. This law permits Secret Service agents to designate any place they wish as a place where free speech, association and petition of the government are prohibited. And it permits the Secret Service to make these determinations based on the content of speech.

Thus, federal agents whose work is to protect public officials and their friends may prohibit the speech and the gatherings of folks who disagree with those officials or permit the speech and the gatherings of those who would praise them, even though the First Amendment condemns content-based speech discrimination by the government. The new law also provides that anyone who gathers in a "restricted" area may be prosecuted. And because the statute does not require the government to prove intent, a person accidentally in a restricted area can be charged and prosecuted, as well.

Permitting people to express publicly their opinions to the president only at a time and in a place and manner such that he cannot hear them violates the First Amendment because it guarantees the right to useful speech; and unheard political speech is politically useless. The same may be said of the rights to associate and to petition. If peaceful public assembly and public expression of political demands on the government can be restricted to places where government officials cannot be confronted, then those rights, too, have been neutered.

[Brian Pedaci]

I'm sorely disappointed he signed it, and I'm OK with "The Buck Stops Here"-style placing of responsibility on the President's shoulders, but the vote in the House went 399 Aye, 3 Nay, 30 Present/No Vote. It passed the Senate unanimously.

Why such overwhelming support for this among the legislators, when the content of the new law infuriates citizens on the left and right? Can't very well make this about Obama himself without indicting the entire Congress along with him.

P.S. The three nays were Republicans Paul Broun (R-GA), Justin Amash (R-MI) and Keith Ellison (D-MN)