DISCLOSE Act the latest permutation of the newly discovered ‘right’ to pry

Just where in the creases, folds and penumbras of the Constitution have our lawmakers and some judges discovered a “right” to figuratively strip search anyone who dares to exercise his acknowledged free speech rights?

On Thursday, the House passed the misnomer-labeled DISCLOSE Act (Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections Act) as an end-run on the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, which shredded major portions, though not enough, of the McCain-Feingold gag-nonincumbents-act. The roll call shows Nevada’s Democratic reps Berkley and Titus voted for it, while Republican Heller exercised common sense.

The act requires all kinds of disclosures and on-camera endorsements of anyone who dares to speak up about political issues and candidates, while granting carefully crafted exemptions for a favored few groups such as the unions, the Sierra Club and the NRA.

This vote is in the same vein as the recent ruling by a Carson City judge who basically upheld a Nevada law requiring a permit be obtained prior to exercising one’s political free speech rights. If it requires a permit, it ain’t a right.

"Nevadans have a right to know who is behind election advertising," the judge wrote in an opinion that just made up rights as he went along. "Continued violation of the statutes and depriving Nevadans of information about who is behind its election advertising will cause irreparable harm as voting will be influenced by unknown persons and voters will not have, through the proper channel, i.e., the Secretary, information they need to determine what weight to give the advertising."

Read that as saying: The voters are too stupid to figure things out for themselves without someone from government holding their hands and shielding their eyes from those bad people who would dupe them into voting the wrong way.

The DISCLOSE Act — or the Disgusting Invasion of Constitutional Logic on Speaking Ease — now goes the Senate where it may face an uphill path.

But Nevada’s own Harry Reid and Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, according the the Washington Post, say they will work ”tirelessly for Senate consideration of the House-passed bill," but made no promise it will even be voted on. But if they do pass it, Obama will surely sign it since he called for such a bill in his State of the Union speech in front of a majority of the Supreme Court.

If passed, it is sure to face the same legal challenges as McCain-Feingold and it may come down to who is sitting on the high court when it gets there. Ellen Kagan is no friend of free speech and, in fact, argued as solicitor general in favor of upholding the political gag lifted by Citizens United.

Such laws have nothing to do with free flow of information for the sake of the electorate and everything to do with laying down costly speed bumps for those who would challenge the orthodoxy of the establishment.

Eugene Scalia, an attorney for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and son of the high court justice, tells reporters in May about the problems with the act.