This bill would prohibit that right. How can it be constitutional?
The right to petition the government harks back to the Magna Carta.
This is so fundamental that our country cannot exist if it is limited -- and it is already too limited.
Wikipedia explains in language we can all understand:
n the United States the right to petition is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the federal constitution, which specifically prohibits Congress from abridging "the right of the people...to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Although often overlooked in favor of other more famous freedoms, and sometimes taken for granted,[1] many other civil liberties are enforceable against the government only by exercising this basic right.[2] The right to petition is fundamental in a Constitutional Republic, such as the United States, as a means of protecting public participation in government.[1]
. . . .
Historically, the right can be traced back[2] to English documents such as Magna Carta, which, by its acceptance by the monarchy, implicitly affirmed the right, and the later Bill of Rights 1689, which explicitly declared the "right of the subjects to petition the king."[5]
. . . .
The first[6] significant exercise and defense of the right to petition within the U.S. was to advocate the end of slavery by petitioning Congress in the mid-1830s, including 130,000 such requests in 1837 and 1838.[7] In 1836, the House of Representatives adopted a gag rule that would table all such anti-slavery petitions.[7] John Quincy Adams and other Representatives eventually achieved the repeal of this rule in 1844 on the basis that it was contrary to the right to petition the government.[7]
. . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_petition_in_the_United_States
Imagine what our country would be like had our Congress prohibited African-Americans from petitioning the government about school segregation, separate restaurants and hotels, separation of the races in public transportation and in housing.
They could have, but we would still be fighting for the rights of African-Americans.
We have the right to petition the government about our grievances. The courts have limited this right perhaps to insure their efficiency. But now Congress wants to limit that right in order to protect itself and all administrations from having to answer to us about excessive surveillance.
If you read the Wikipedia article, you learn that the failure of the British government to respond favorably to the petitions of early Americans was one of the reasons given for our American Revolution in 1776.
And now -- we are forsaking our Revolution, rendering the guarantees to us in our own Constitution meaningless.
This is a very, very bad development, and from Patrick Leahy no less. He should know better.
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