get in bed with pelosi, sell out your countryman's right to free speech, it's only a matter of time before they come for yours..divide and conquer is alive and well in 2010 as it was thousands ago.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Martin_Niem%C3%B6ller

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http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/06/14/yet-again-the-nra-sells-out-to-democrats/

Yet Again the NRA Sells Out Freedom to the Democrats

Posted by Erick Erickson (Profile)

Monday, June 14th

From the NRA press release on the day of the Citizens United decision, Wayne LaPierre called the decision “…a defeat for arrogant elitists who wanted to carve out free speech as a privilege for themselves and deny it to the rest of us.”

SOURCE

There are few organizations purportedly on the side of freedom that aggravate me more than the National Rifle Association.

In fact, these days I cringe when I see good conservatives with their lifetime member sticker from the NRA on the back of their cars. I support GOA, which is a consistent and uncompromising defender of the second amendment, not a weak little girl of an organization protecting itself while throwing everyone else under the bus.

But that’s what the National Rifle Association is doing. You and I are willing to stand together because we know we either stand together or hang separately. The NRA legislative strategy in the past few years has been to hang everybody else so they can be the last man standing — more interested in maintaining the veneer of bipartisanship than actually standing up for the second amendment.

The Democrats 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. The NRA had objected to the Democrats’ proposal, but then secured a carve out for themselves from the legislation and have dropped their objection.




The new agreement would exempt organizations that have over one million members, have been in existence for more than 10 years, have members in all 50 states, and raise 15 percent or less of their funds from corporations, from the disclosure requirements. The NRA, with four million members, would fall into the exempted category and will not oppose the DISCLOSE Act now, according to Democratic sources.

So if you are a small organization that just started up to defend freedom, you are screwed. But if you’ve been collecting a large file of members for decades off the image of Charlton Heston while repeated screwing conservatives, you’ll be safe.

This is just the NRA not wanting competition for itself. If they were really committed to freedom, let alone the second amendment, they should be encouraging more freedom loving, second amendment loving organizations to rise and fight. Instead, they are collaborating with the left to shut out competition.

Remember, the NRA had to be cajoled into opposing Sotomayor.

The NRA refused to oppose the most anti-gun Attorney General nomination in American history.

The NRA supported Dede Scozzafava and it attacked Marco Rubio.

Now the NRA is endorsing the Democrat in Ohio against John Kasich while collaborating with the Democrats on restricting the freedom of speech.

Remember, the NRA also opposed taking the Heller case to the Supreme Court because it was too scared of what might happen.

The one bit of good news here is that Mitch McConnell is a serious first amendment advocate and while I’ve been open with my criticisms of him, he and I typically stand shoulder to shoulder on this issue and I hope he’ll kill it off in the Senate.
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there have been some late-breaking developments in the fight to kill this bill, but you're not going to believe what's happening. This is what Politico.com reported yesterday:

House Democrats have offered to exempt the National Rifle Association from a sweeping campaign-finance bill, removing a major obstacle in the push to roll back the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling.
The NRA had objected to some of the strict financial disclosure provisions that Democrats have proposed for corporations and politically active nonprofits and that had kept moderate, pro-gun Democrats from backing the legislation.
But if the NRA signs off on the deal, the bill could come to the House floor as early as this week. The NRA said it would not comment until specific legislative language is revealed.
An NRA official also noted that the group would not be supporting the bill but would not actively oppose it if the deal with the Democratic leadership holds up.

So if the NRA gets an exemption for itself, it will not oppose the anti-freedom DISCLOSE Act (HR 5175). This legislation is designed to overturn major parts of the recent Supreme Court decision which restored the ability of groups like GOA to freely criticize elected officials during a campaign.

But the NRA would no longer oppose the bill once they've won an exemption for themselves. As reported by Politico.com:
The legislation in question is designed to restore more campaign finance rules in the wake of last year's Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, which removed prohibitions on corporations and unions running TV ads opposing or backing candidates in the run-up to an election.
Democratic leaders fear the Citizens United decision could open the floodgates for corporate money to flow into this year's midterm elections, which they believe would favor Republican interests.
The legislation, offered by Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, would require special-interest groups to disclose their top donors if they choose to run TV ads or send out mass mailings in the final months of an election.
In addition to benefiting the NRA, this "exemption" amendment will benefit Blue Dog Democrats who will be given a green light to support the Obama-Pelosi backed bill:
Democrats are justifying the NRA exemption, saying the organization has a long history of being involved in the political process, and they say the real goal of the new campaign finance bill is to expose corporations and unions that create ambiguous front groups to run attack ads during campaigns. Unions would not be allowed to use the NRA exemption.
North Carolina Rep. Heath Shuler, an NRA backer and conservative Democrat, proved to be pivotal to the NRA deal. Shuler was the first to offer an amendment to exempt the NRA and other nonprofits from the legislation, but that move drew objections from campaign watchdog groups.
"There were a number of concerns that the DISCLOSE Act could hinder or penalize the efforts of certain long-standing, member-driven organizations who have historically acted in good faith," Shuler said, referring to the NRA. "Most of those concerns are addressed within the manager's amendment."
But here's the rub, the special exemption amendment will ONLY benefit the NRA and no other groups whatsoever. It will leave all other groups who are currently in Obama's crosshairs dangling in the wind:
The proposal would exempt organizations that have more than 1 million members, have been in existence for more than 10 years, have members in all 50 states and raise 15 percent or less of their funds from corporations. Democrats say the new language would apply to only the NRA, since no other organization would qualify under these specific provisions. The NRA, with 4 million members, will not actively oppose the DISCLOSE Act, according to Democratic sources.
The exemption for a huge group like the NRA is sure to outrage smaller special-interest groups [like Gun Owners of America].
We are in a political war, and our opponents are trying to change the rules of the game by gagging those groups that are their political enemies. Some might say that the requirement to disclose our membership is not a gag rule, but it most certainly is. Gun Owners of America will NOT do anything that would jeopardize the privacy of our members!

Gun owners know the dangers of being registered, as it has often proven to be the first step towards gun confiscation -- which, by the way, is why it's lamentable that the management of the NRA is selling out its members for the proverbial bowl of pottage. (Go to http://tinyurl.com/2uw9sm9 to see what a leading Capitol Hill blog has written about this sell-out.)

We're positive that regular members of the NRA would never want this to happen -- where all the other pro-gun organizations (like GOA) that are fighting to protect our rights would be gagged, while special favors are cut for one group in particular.

We stand shoulder to shoulder with NRA and all the other pro-gun groups when they are fighting to defend our Second Amendment freedoms. We all have to stick together if we are going to win these battles.

We're not sure who is making the decisions over at the NRA headquarters... but this type of thing would have never happened in the past, and we're positive that the NRA membership would not be happy with it. This cannot stand!