On Saturday I had the opportunity to speak to my friends at the Paulding County Republican Party meeting. I offered a challenge to pay close attention to our legislators and mentioned two bills (NDAA and SOPA/PIPA) that have been topics of discussion in Washington lately.
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My good friend Micah posted the video of my comments at the meeting, and I wanted to share it with you all. A rough transcript follows the video.
2012 is a big year. It’s going to be an important year. We’ve got a lot of elections to win – and one specifically important election to win, and I wanted to challenge you guys that as the involved people in the political process, to not lose sight of what our legislators are doing in this coming year, whether it’s the folks that are going to be up here in a little bit that represent us in Atlanta or if it’s the folks in Washington.
When I asked Joseph for a couple minutes, I didn’t realize that Congressman Graves was going to be here to hear this. I promise, you don’t need to start working an exit strategy or anything. This isn’t going to get awkward. Well, you know it could, right?
There are two issues that have been talked about in Washington recently, and I just want to point your attention to them to reinforce the fact that we need to be paying very close attention to what’s going on.
In December, there was a bill passed by the House and the Senate called the National Defense Authorization Act. That bill did a number of things, but one of the things that it did was it authorized the indefinite detention of American citizens without charge or trial.
Congressman Graves in the back there actually voted against this bill. I actually brought that he put on Facebook. I love this quote, so I’d like to read it. “Erring on the side of liberty and the constitution, I voted ‘no’ on the NDAA.” Congressman, I appreciate that. (applause) And I can promise you that if you stand by the constitution and stand on the side of liberty, you will have good people behind you every time.
I am disappointed to let you know though that in the Senate, both of our senators voted for that bill. It passed mid-December and was signed by President Obama earlier this month.
This last week, you may have something here or there on the Internet about the Stop Online Piracy Act. It was a big deal. American citizens won a big victory this week. In the House, SOPA has been pulled. In the Senate, on Friday Harry Reid announced that he was taking it off the schedule.
It was scheduled for a vote this coming Tuesday. My initial challenge when I was thinking through this was to challenge you to call Senators Isakson and Chambliss Monday morning because they were voting on it on Tuesday. On top of that, they were both cosponsors of the bill. After Senator Reid pulled it off the schedule, Senator Chambliss withdrew his cosponsorship.
I’ll mention it again, last Saturday before before any of the protests last week, Congressman Graves told me he was against that bill. It was a bill that had good intentions stated – to stop piracy online – but really it was an Internet censorship bill. I use these two examples to tell you that we can’t just elections at hand. We need to make sure we keep an eye on what’s going on.
Call them. Call their offices. The people that answer the phones up there are very friendly and very courteous. It’s easy. You call and say “Hi, I’m Ron” – or, use your name – you call and say “I’m from Paulding County and I want to ask the Congressman to vote against this bill.” They’ll say thank you for your support, and if you have some supporting arguments, you can offer that, but it’s very easy to give feedback to your congressman and your senators.
I challenge you to do that and pay very close attention to what’s going on this year.
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