Warning: you are entering a speech free zone.

As of Friday, when the 60-day blackout period for “electioneering communications” by nonprofit interest groups begins, political speech will enjoy less protection than dirty movies. While a sexually explicit film is protected by the First Amendment if it has some socially redeeming value, an “electioneering communication” is forbidden even if it deals with important and timely public policy issues.

Supporters of this ban, imposed by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, say they want to eliminate “sham issue ads” that are aimed at electing or defeating a candidate and therefore should be funded only by political action committees subject to campaign contribution limits. But since the ban applies to any TV or radio spot that mentions a federal official who is up for re-election, it also prohibits genuine issue ads.

Club for Growth has a list of all the RINO’s who helped make this attack on free speech possible.

More on the folly of McCain-Feingold.

How do people like Congressman Hal Rogers come to be in the Republican party in the first place?

EL: Having served in Congress for 25 years ? you as all elected officials ? have your critics. National Review Online recently called you ?a congressional disgrace.? The editorial comment specifically mentioned earmarks to retain and attract companies in Kentucky as providers of products and services for homeland security. The Lexington Herald-Leader called you the ?prince of pork.? Do you feel these types of editorial comment are justified?

HR: If you define ?pork? to mean a floodwall to protect a poor person from flooding or bringing a job to a community and providing a person an opportunity to stay at home and raise their kids in Kentucky, then I plead guilty. Pork is the bad word for making good things happen.

Bureaucrats (in the executive branch) earmark millions of items in the president?s budget. When Congress sees a need in somebody?s district, that the bureaucrats in Washington overlooked, and adds spending onto the president?s budget it?s called an ?earmark.?

I don?t think the Lexington newspaper would call the extension of Newtown Pike (in downtown Lexington) pork, but what?s different between that and building I-66? New roads create new jobs and improve convenience and safety.

Henry Clay was Kentucky?s most famous federal representative. His platform was called the American Plan. What was it? Building canals and highways. The Maysville highway to Lexington was Henry Clay?s program. Today, the Herald-Leader would probably call him the ?king of pork.? I?m walking in Henry Clay?s footsteps.

Whether or not a specific earmark is good or bad policy is beside the point, since the very fact that it’s an earmark denies the people the right to have that debate. Rogers seems to think the ends justifies the means, but the means in this case is itself an undesirable end. That is, pork spending is not accountable to anyone, so any spending that utilizes such methods contributes to a pernicious problem. If these programs are truly as desirable as Congressman Rogers claims, he should submit them in the open on their own merits, rather than tucking them away and sneaking them by in such a way that most of his colleagues probably won’t even know about it.

It should be of no surprise to anyone that Rogers was one of the 112 Republicans to vote 0 for 19 on Congressman Jeff Flakes pork fighting amendments.

Hat tip: Club for Growth

New York Representative Peter King has gone off the deep end over the funds New York will receive to fight terror from DHS. The press has wrongly labeled the funds a “cut”, when in fact the funding is for one-time purchases and each year is determined independant of the previous year. There are no contiguous programs to fund here, thus there cannot be a “cut”. Chris Mathews threw him some pathetic softballs on his show the other day, allowing King to show himself for the pandering fool that he has become.

MATTHEWS: Republican Congressman Peter King of New York, of the New York area, is the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. And he said today that the Department of Homeland Security has declared war on New York City.

Congressman, how did this happen? Your city, New York, was the hardest hit in history by terrorism, and yet it?s been cut for anti- terrorism funds. How?d that happen?

KING: Chris, this is absolutely indefensible. The Department of Homeland Security changes the story by the hour. There has never been one allegation of even one penny being misspent on any of the counterterrorism money in New York.

This is 100% false. New York has squandered and wasted almost $10 billion in anti-terror and 9/11 funds.

Newsflash to Mr. King. New York is not at war here, America is at war. Bin Laden has said that they want to attack us in our “heartland”. They aren’t interested in just terrorizing New Yorkers, as much as the New Yorker ego might wish it to be so. They want to terrorize all Americans.