Smart-ALEC Durbin Targets Another Conservative Group
From righteous indignation to rank hypocrisy. View Enlarged Image
Stand Your Ground: A big hypocrite in the IRS scandal targeting Tea Party groups sets his sights on a conservative think tank, asking its suspected supporters: "Are you now or have you ever been a conservative?"
Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin is on a witch hunt that threatens anew the free speech rights of Americans who don't hold his views or those of the Obama administration.
This time he has targeted the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group of state legislators who promote free markets, limited government and federalism, ahead of a "stand your ground" hearing Durbin announced after George Zimmerman's acquittal in the shooting of Trayvon Martin.
Durbin chairs a Senate subcommittee on the Constitution, civil rights and human rights. The hearing scheduled for next month will probe state stand-your-ground laws and ALEC, whose model legislation was adopted by various state legislatures.
In a letter sent last Thursday to 300 companies he suspects of funding ALEC, Durbin said: "Although ALEC does not maintain a public list of corporate members or donors, other public documents indicate that your company funded ALEC at some point during the period between ALEC's adoption of model 'stand your ground' legislation in 2005 and the present day."
Which "public documents" are you talking about, Sen. Durbin? Could they be IRS documents such as those used to target Tea Party and pro-life conservatives in the last two election cycles? What about the public document that protects free speech and association known as the U.S. Constitution?
ALEC is standing its ground in the face of this intimidation. "Members and donors to 501(c)3 organizations are specifically protected by the Internal Revenue Service and the Supreme Court to shield them from the type of political intimidation found in Sen. Durbin's letter," said ALEC First Vice Chair and Iowa Majority Leader Linda Upmeyer.
Durbin is the same senator whose voice, in the early days of this spring's IRS scandal, rose in righteous indignation on May 15 to say:
"It is absolutely unacceptable to single out any political group — right, left or center — and say we're going to target them. That is unthinkable. That goes back to some of the worst days of the Richard Nixon administration."
Yet the IRS acted exactly as Durbin wanted it to. In an Oct. 12, 2010, letter to then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, the senator urged an investigation of "several 501(c)(4) organizations that appear to be in violation of the law." Yet he mentioned only one — Crossroads GPS, the Karl Rove-affiliated group that, like ALEC, promotes fiscal responsibility, limits to government regulation and attention to national security.
Before his 2010 letter urging the IRS to target conservatives, the Senate majority whip's 1996 campaign benefited from the targeting of his opponent, conservative Al Salvi, by a Federal Election Commission official with a familiar name, one Lois Lerner.
"Have you no sense of decency?" the Goldwater Institute responded in a letter to Durbin echoing a famous question posed to Sen. Joseph McCarthy. "It is the same question we pose to your office today in response to your effort to intimidate us for daring to associate with the free market, limited government organization known as the American Legislative Exchange Council," the institute continued.
We have our own doubts about the Senate majority whip or the Obama administration he serves when it comes to free speech, gun rights, the right of citizens to collectively petition for redress of grievances or any of the rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, a document Sen. Durbin and President Obama trample on at will.
Power, in their view, is to be used not to serve, but to bludgeon your opponents. Durbin is a downstate Illinois politician, but he knows the Chicago Way well.
Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/081213-667217-durbin-targets-american-legislative-exchange-council.htm#ixzz2bodX0A00
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