Culberson's SOS: We must respond!

If you were logged onto either Facebook or Twitter last night, you may have received a distress call like I did—like an SOS signal over a telegraph, a Mayday call from a ship or plane, or the an air-raid siren over London two generations ago. However, the source of this distress call came from an unusual victim: one of our local Republican Congressmen, John Culberson. As surprising as that source might be, if you care about liberty, free speech, and the future of our two-party system, the call was as dire as any you could imagine. You can read the series of message on Congressman Culberson's Twitter page.

As many of you know who have followed Representative Culberson’s exploits since the Democrats seized control of Congress in 2006, he has been a constant agitator for sunshine and disclosure in a chamber that increasingly is trying to cloak its work in secrecy. He has constantly challenged Speaker Pelosi’s strategy of burying legislators under reams of paper that no one could read and comprehend in a decade, let alone in the hours that House members are now given to absorb the content of what they are voting on—the content of policies that will change the nature of the federal governments reach and power for decades to come. Truly, Culberson’s has been a voice in the wilderness.

But no one could have imagined that Pelosi truly intended Culberson to be thrown into a wilderness where he could no longer be free to speak to his constituency. That, in essence, is what Culberson was trying to warn us about in those distress calls last night. The Speaker now is censoring everything he is trying to write to his constituents under the threat that he will no longer be able to use the mailing privileges of a House member if he continues to speak his mind in such writings. This is appalling, and it must not stand. We must answer this distress call with action.

At the very least, for now we must do what Congressman Culberson asked us to do in his last message: “Bombard Pelosi & House leadership; let the sun shine in; post all bills online for 72 hrs bf vote, open debate/amendments & end censorship!” To broadcast this message, I ask the current leadership team of the HCRP at Richmond Avenue to use the fruits from the new social-networking training programs, the new Rapid Response program, and the party email system, not to toot your own horn, but to alert Republicans to Culberson’s plight and how to respond. To Republican bloggers and talk-show hosts, flood the airwaves with Culberson’s distress call, and demand the Speaker to stop. To the Tea Partiers, 9/12 organizers and other grassroots conservatives, make your voices heard on this issue.

Above all else, let this be a wake-up call—as if we needed any more wake-up calls—to the realization that elections matter; that seeking change for the sake of change has consequences; and that ceding power to those who see no danger in the accumulation and exercise of power in a centralized authority will ultimately lead to the loss of the liberties we cherish. If a Congressman’s First Amendment right to political speech can be censored, whose speech, and whose liberty is safe? Republicans, we must unite, we must expand, we must organize, and we must win in the next elections—there is no alternative to taking back our country!

Listen to this distress call, and act!