BETWEEN THE LINES

HOW DEMS ARE CRIMINALIZING DISSENT

Exclusive: Joseph Farah sounds alarm over government threats against climate skeptics

Elections really do have consequences.

What’s at stake in the 2016 presidential election?

For sure, the First Amendment is.

Even with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, Democratic politicians at the state level have joined Barack Obama and the U.S. Justice Department in a grand, audacious assault on freedom of speech.

I could give you give you many, many examples of what I am talking about – and may do that in future columns or maybe even books. But, for now, let me provide one shocking case study.

Last month, A coalition of Democratic attorneys general in 19 states announced a truly horrifying and scary campaign to go after companies that offer a dissenting narrative on catastrophic climate change. It’s a blatant example of state power being used to punish political foes of the Democratic Party.

Standing beside former Vice President Al Gore, the high priest of this religious position, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said his counterparts in a coalition of states are committed to “working together on key climate-related initiatives,” including queries into whether fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil have committed fraud by deceiving the public and shareholders about the impact of man-made carbon dioxide emissions.

Two states – California and New York – have already have launched investigations into ExxonMobil, while attorneys general from Massachusetts and the Virgin Islands indicated Tuesday that they would follow suit.

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Listen to what Schneiderman said: “The bottom line is simple: Climate change is real; it is a threat to all the people we represent. If there are companies, whether they’re utilities, whether they’re fossil fuel companies, committing fraud in an effort to maximize their short-term profits at the expense of the people we represent, we want to find out about it. We want to expose it and want to pursue them to the fullest extent of the law.”

That’s the criminalization of a difference of opinion.

At the event, which you can watch for yourself below, Gore, with his typical hyperbole, said: “Every night on the news now it’s like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation.”

The New York press conference was live streamed.

Asked if criminal investigations into dissent on climate alarmism have a chilling effect on free speech, Schneiderman said: “There have been those who have raised the question, ‘Aren’t you interfering with people’s First Amendment rights?’ The First Amendment, ladies and gentlemen, does not give you the right to commit fraud.”

Fraud? That’s what the perpetuation of climate alarmism is all about. The climate cartel suppresses any facts that don’t agree with its conclusions and manipulates the data to make sure much of it does agree.

“[T]he Congress has been sharply constraining [the] ability of [the] executive branch to fully perform its obligations under the Constitution to protect the American people against the kind of fraud that the evidence suggests is being committed by several of the fossil fuel companies, electric utilities burning coal and the like,” added zealot Gore. “So what these attorneys general are doing is exceptionally important.”

But there’s more. Exxon/Mobil has plenty of resources to fight back – if it has the will.

One of the members of that attorney general cabal, Claude E. Walker of the U.S. Virgin Islands, has subpoenaed the non-profit Competitive Enterprise Institute for a stunningly wide array of documents from 1997 to 2007 related to policy work on climate change.

CEI’s General Counsel Sam Kazman responded: “This is the latest effort in an intimidation campaign to criminalize speech and research on the climate debate. CEI will vigorously fight to quash this subpoena. It is an affront to our First Amendment rights of free speech and association for Attorney General Walker to bring such intimidating demands against a nonprofit group. If Walker and his allies succeed, the real victims will be all Americans, whose access to affordable energy will be hit by one costly regulation after another, while scientific and policy debates are wiped out one subpoena at a time.”

The age of “thought crimes” is truly here – in the “land of the free.”

You can see this form of coerced “political correctness” at work in other areas of controversy – whether public restrooms should be labeled for men and women, whether ordinary Americans have the right not to be forced to participate in “same-sex weddings” and whether it is still OK to voice criticism of Islam in a what has been a free and open society for the last 240 years.

What do you think?

Is the First Amendment under fire?

Is freedom of speech on the line?

Is there a bigger issue in this election year than that question?

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2016/04/how-dems-are-criminalizing-dissent/#rLzrm0PK9DOAbpwc.99

My comments: The First Amendment is under fire; Freedom of Speech is under fire. If Hillary is elected ALL of America's Freedoms will be LOST! With Trump it is not so Clear. However, his Support of Transgederism puts him in the same Category as Hillary.