-Free Speech Under Attack: None for House Republicans thanks to Pelosi. You're next.

Surprise surprise, no reports on this. Not in the papers, not on the news. It's getting very repetitive and every single time there is a noteworthy story that may offend the sensibilities of liberal politicians, no one hears about it.

Monday night Democrats voted to shut down the U.S. House Representatives rather than allow a handful of Republican Congressmen to speak on the floor. What could have been so offensive or frightening about our discourse that Speaker Pelosi felt she had to protect her party by gagging free speech in the House?

In fact, we had planned to speak on the lack of transparency of the House since Democrats took control. We had planned to criticize Speaker Pelosi for repeatedly denying Members, the media, and the public to right to read legislation before it was voted on. We were set to discuss House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s statement last week that if his Members were required to read the Democrats’ healthcare reform package before it was voted on, it would fail.

So the Speaker obviously feels that if the public is truly aware of her party’s agenda, they will reject it. She is now making sure the public is kept in the dark by trampling the centuries-old democratic traditions of the House.

Thanks to Atlas for these quite pertinent Ayn Rand Quotes:

Ayn Rand said, "the principle of free speech is not concerned with the content of a man's speech and does not protect only the expression of good ideas, but all ideas. If it were otherwise, who would determine which ideas are good and where forbidden? The government?"

Rand further said at a lecture, Political Vacuums of Our Age", presented to a group of women in journalism in Indiana in 1961, "Once a country accepts censorship pf the press and of speech, then nothing can be won without violence. Therefore, so long as you have free speech, protect it. This is the life-and-death issue in this country: don not give up the freedom of the press - of newspapers, books, magazines, radios movies, and other other form of presenting ideas. So long as that's free, a peaceful intellectual turn is possible.