“Otherwise it's a “he said, she said” situation and that's a minefield I don't like walking through when it comes to politicians with competing agendas they want to push. But for the moment I'll believe Carter and the responsibility is on the Franking Commission to fully prove otherwise.”

The Franking Commission is a bipartisan commission made up of 3 Republicans and 3 Democrats. If Carter's depiction of the healthcare legislation or the Republican chart of same is incorrect, the Democrats have the opportunity to send out their own mailings explaining where it is wrong. The Franking Commission is also known as Commission on Congressional Mailing Standards. It is rare that it has been used for censorship. The Democrats may be hurting themselves here.

http://cha.house.gov/franking_about.aspx

“Public option health care plan,” is, apparently, the (Democratic) preferred terminology. I can see why. “Government-run health care” does seem to imply a negative slant on what Obama is trying to do with creating universal/choice-based health care for all. It says: “Democrats are just big government and this is a way for them to control your health.” I am not well-versed (yet) on the current points, but intend to read on. In my experience, it seems that Republican-semiotics lean toward the induction of fear in people. Fear, consume, obey, and so on. I am not necessarily a Democrat, so I'm not just sticking up for my party. I vote for who seems best, which is usually the libertarian party, or green…but we all know there are really only two choices at this point. I am trying to be my own devil's advocate and see where this is all coming from. If it's really speech control, or something else.

I don't think this is so much about free speech as it is about government officials branding a new policy in a negative/positive way in order to receive a particular, manipulated, response from people who will base their opinion on one statement or title, rather than researching and understanding what it really is.

It's propaganda, from both sides of the aisle.

~r.

I'm still not quite sure I fully understand the current controversies though. I noticed that my own Congressman, Tom Price, is actually one of the Rs on the Franking Committee. I don't know if I'll get around to contacting his office to try to get the scoop, but I may try to do so.

But it appears there's more controversy than just mailing. Some here have pointed out that if mailing costs are going to be paid, the committee would naturally have some oversight and rules about what it will fund. But apparently there's been a partisan fight going back a few months over Pelosi attempting to change the rules so that the Franking commission also now will oversee email messages (and presumably telephone- which appears to be the case with this Carter incident regarding a recorded phone message for a telephone town hall.)

Now, I don't think the same basis would apply for those communications, since there isn't funding involved. So perhaps the GOP that have fought against the new rule are correct to point out this overreach. If they're not getting funding for sending out those kinds of messages, then what business is it of the committee to even review the content?

And the best point of all was made by Joeinhell:

The true purpose is give the incumbent senator or congressman a huge lead automatically over any challengers in contacts, government letterhead, propaganda and false statements. There may be no other direct benefit that so favors the incumbent in the federal government legislative expenses. How much would a challenger have to sell out for to have the money to even begin to approach the mailing by franking privileges by incumbents.

Franking should be totally abolished.

The true purpose is give the incumbent senator or congressman a huge lead automatically over any challengers in contacts, government letterhead, propaganda and false statements. There may be no other direct benefit that so favors the incumbent in the federal government legislative expenses. How much would a challenger have to sell out for to have the money to even begin to approach the mailing by franking privileges by incumbents.

Franking should be totally abolished.

Remember the House bank scandal when a slug of congress critters were basically running what was supposed to be a convenient check cashing service as a no limit no interest credit card. Well, that cost about .000001 per cent as what franking would cost if it were ever totaled up and it isn't.

1

Oh, it “=” alright. It “=” like crazy.

LL

I get your point loud and clear that you wouldn't want people to decide exactly how people describe the Iraq War. Each member has the right to choose occupation or liberation. I agree.

You also seem to think that the committee has some rights to not fund some mailings, which I take based upon your Pelosi the Cannibal example. We agree again there.

So the Franking Committee then has a right to prevent mailings, but they went way too far in this particular decision. Isn't that a decent summary? Going forward, the question is what the standard should be. I don't know enough to decide, though I'm inclined to agree with you on this specific case. The free speech motive is a good reason to keep the bar very low, but there's a good reason to not put it too low as well, namely, turning Congressional mailings into the mail room for the parties.

There's a rule in place that you can't do campaign work in the White House. People were angry at Al Gore a few years back for this. In the same way, it makes some sense to not let the Congress fund the DNC and RNC campaigns. Do you want the Congress funding “Vote Obama!” stickers? I assume not. Each party has to do their own fund raising.

So, my take is that some group should try to decide what is excessively partisan rhetoric, such that it's not news but campaigning, but that they made a bad decision here.

That's a fairly amazing jump to make, if I may say so, given the amount of time I put into answering you. In some odd, alternate universe, I suppose the answer to that could somehow be construed to be yes, but it obviously doesn't go far enough. Unfortunately, the existence of such a commission relies on the now fictional beast known as “common sense” or the oft maligned pornography analogy, “I know it when I see it.”

If the mailer says that Nancy Pelosi is secretly a member of an occult wiccan group who dines on the flesh of children and includes a badly photoshopped graphic of her doing so, then it just might possibly have gone over the line. But when the two parties have their own characterizations of a particular bill and there is at least some possibility of merit to each, then the commission is engaging in severe overreach.

As I tried to say before, I'd be outraged if they changed “the invasion and occupation of Iraq” to the “liberation of Iraq.” But to be honest here, if a Republican sent one out saying “liberation of Iraq” and they said it had to change to “invasion and occupation” we have to be equally bothered. Is that in any way unclear?

I should note that one party didn't call the other fascist, but AustinRoth did, “Once again, the Left in the embodiment of the current Democratic majority shows their true feelings towards free speech, and their tendencies toward acting in a Fascist manner towards communications.”

The bar, in the past, seems to have been set awfully darned low on that one. It's communication between a seated member of congress and the voters in his/her district. Surely, having run a campaign, they are aware that their representative has at least SOME partisan, party oriented bias. How could they not? And the rep can express those opinions.. in fact SHOULD express those opinions to the voters in the district within reason so they know what they are getting.

My example in the last comment, I would hope, would ring true to you. There's a pretty big difference between saying “the invasion and occupation of Iraq” and the “liberation of Iraq” in partisan political terms, but both have validity to those using them. The “public option” for health care reform, as it's called, most certainly can have a connoation of being a govt. run plan, as some of your more liberal co-commenters here have even acknowledged. That's not one party calling the other Nazis or Fascists or brownshirts. It's a policy discussion. If you don't want the Franking Commission to be telling this guy not to say government-run health care plan and substituting a phrase straight out of a Pelosi press release, then I certainly hope you will be up in arms demanding that they be able to retrofit all past and future mailings on Iraq to term it the “liberation of Iraq.”

Alright, so what we have going on is that there is a bi-partisan committee in place who's job is to make sure that all Congressionally paid for mailings follow the franking rules that have existed for a long time. One of those rules, from CStanley's linked article, is that newsletters paid for by Congressional funds cannot be “partisan, politicized, or personalized”. I don't know if they have any rules to determine what does and does not meet this standard, but some committee members have decided the Carter newsletter does not meet these standards. So what is the issue here? There are so many possible scenarios here that it's still hard to make a call.

1) Carter thinks his mailing does meet the standards and therefore disagrees with the ruling of the Franking Commission. Is there any procedure for these disagreements, or did Carter circumvent them and just go for the political jugular?

2) Did the Republicans on the committee make the same determination or is this only the Democrats? Since it's a 3-3 commission, if this is an official ruling, then I assume one Republican went along or they have some way to break ties.

3) Maybe Carter doesn't think the Franking Committee should have any ability to control what's in congressionally paid for mailers. That's possible, but we accept every corporation's right to decide what's in the mailers that they themselves pay for. The Franking Commission doesn't control what the congressman says, only what they pay for. With the “Brady Chart” for instance over 50 congressman have put the chart on their web site.

4) Is this just a delaying tactic where there was no actual ruling, but the Dems on the committee put it “under review” with no intention to ever actually review it? If so, then bad on them.

Again, I'd want to know more history of this committee than two recent decisions, both being bandied about by a single party.