Disclose Act Resurrected?

It appears that the Disclose Act may be resurrected in the Senate. You can find the story here.

The "NRA Exemption" will be preserved, but it appears that the exemption for the unions (tucked in the bill by he House) is gone, which means they won't be happy.

As I've always said, it's not over until the gavel adjourning the session drops. Will RINOs Snowe or Collins be the vote that gets it to 60 to overcome the promised filibuster?

Hat tip to Sebastian.

NRA and Disclose Act Continued

The Wall Street Journal has a piece on the Disclose Act and the NRA's exemption from the bill.



There is some talk now that the "carve out" for the NRA may have doomed the bill and even if it does pass in the House the fate is uncertain in the Senate. It was pulled from the House Calendar over the weekend and added back late yesterday for this week. Newsmax reports that the Democrats believe they are close to having the votes to pass the bill.

On Monday, the NRA reaffirmed they do not support the bill - that they just protected their members should (as has happened already this year) a bill thought to be dead ends up passing.

NRA Responds to Member Concerns Regarding Disclose Act

NRA has released this statement addressing concerns expressed by members regarding the Disclose Act. It says in part:

We appreciate some NRA members' concerns about our position on H.R. 5175, the "DISCLOSE Act." Unfortunately, critics of our position have misstated or misunderstood the facts. We have never said we would support any version of
this bill. To the contrary, we clearly stated NRA's strong opposition to the DISCLOSE Act (as introduced) in a letter sent to Members of Congress on May 26 (click here to
read the letter).

...We didn't "sell out" to Nancy Pelosi or anyone else. We told Congress we opposed the bill. As a result, congressional leaders made a commitment to exempt us from its draconian restrictions on free speech. If that commitment is honored, we will not be involved in the final House debate. If that committment is not fully honored, we will strongly oppose the bill.

Our position is based on principle and experience. During consideration of the previous campaign finance legislation passed in 2002, congressional leadership repeatedly refused to exempt the NRA from its provisions, promising that our concerns would be fixed somewhere down the line. That didn't happen; instead, the NRA had to live under those restrictions for seven years and spend millions of dollars on compliance costs and on legal fees to challenge the law. We will not go down that road again when we have an opportunity to protect our ability to speak.

I stand by my earlier post that NRA has made a decision that is in the best interest of its members and gun owners in general.

NRA and Disclose Act

I have avoided posting on this topic but there has been so much chatter around the web, some of which has been completely off base, that I feel compelled to address it.

Much of what has been written refers to NRA as "selling out" or having "amnesia." For those not familiar with the issue, the liberals in Congress, egged on by President Obama, are trying to come up with a new law to respond to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision on campaign finance rules that was handed down earlier this year. In that case, the court ruled that provisions of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, which severely restricted the rights of corporations and nonprofit groups to run political advertising, were unconstitutional.

NRA has been very outspoken before and since its passage that McCain/Feingold was an unconstitutional infringement on the First Amendment rights of Americans who participate, or wanted to participate in the political arena. Citizens United further chipped away at McCain/Feingold and challenged the liberals ability to control political speech. Obama and his minions could not have this. Enter HR 5175 - Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Election (Disclose) Act. The Disclose Act seeks to roll back the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United by once again restricting companies' and associations' political advertising.

Now, Republicans and a number of conservative bloggers and groups are complaining that the NRA cut a deal that exempts themselves from the bill and throws everyone else under the bus. Liberal groups aren't real happy either - in a way validating that NRA has made the right decision for it's members.

NRA has explained their decision in a an email to members:

The NRA’s opposition to restrictions on political speech includes its May 26, 2010 letter to Members of Congress expressing strong concerns about H.R. 5175, the DISCLOSE Act. As it stood at the time of that letter, the measure would have undermined or obliterated virtually all of the NRA’s right to free political speech and, therefore, jeopardized the Second Amendment rights of every law-abiding American.

The most potent defense of the Second Amendment requires the most adamant exercise of the First Amendment. The NRA stands absolutely obligated to its members to ensure maximum access to the First Amendment, in order to protect
and preserve the freedom of the Second Amendment.

The NRA must preserve its ability to speak. It cannot risk a strategy that would deny its rights, for the Second Amendment cannot be defended without them.

I have to admit to having had concerns about not standing up and fighting the bill rather than carving out an exemption. But the more I thought about it, and reminded myself what happened with Obamacare, it is highly likely that Pelosi would have twisted enough arms to pass the bill out of the House. While there is still uncertainty as to the fate in the Senate, I would rather not take my chances that Olympia Snow, John McCain, or some other Republican squish would cave and allow the bill to pass. So, NRA did what it felt was in the best interest of its members and the organization's ability to speak for them.

Finally, probably the best explanation of the NRA's decision in this matter has come not from the NRA, but from a fellow blogger, Sebastian:

One reason I’m not all that sympathetic to conservative groups and Republican hacks complaining that NRA won’t do their fighting for them is that they’ve never really lifted a finger for us when we needed them.

Sebastian points out that this is the most Democratic Congress in years, but they seem to have learned their lesson from 1994 and the Clinton Gun Ban. They have bent over backwards to not tick off the NRA and have actually attached some pro-gun legislation to bills that Obama was not about to veto - thus giving us more wins in the last two years than we had in 14 years of a GOP Congress.