On Friday, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins — who earlier last week managed to connect the Isla Vista shooting to the Affordable Care Act — tied the imprisonment of a Sudanese Christian woman to a Senate hearing on a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, a ruling which allowed for unrestricted, undisclosed corporate political donations.
Speaking on his radio program, “Washington Watch,” Perkins chastised Democratic leaders like Chuck Schumer — who Perkins said “thinks he understands freedom better than America’s Bill of Rights” — and Mark Udall for opposing the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision.
“The National Archives will need more than bombproofing to protect America’s founding documents,” he warned. Perkins then invited Sen. Pat Roberts onto the show to discuss the proposed amendment.
The Kansas Republican thanked Perkins for not only defending Citizens United but also bringing attention to the imprisonment of Meriam Yehya Ibrahim, a Sudanese woman married to an American who is in jail in Sudan for converting to Christianity. Perkins replied that the two cases are actually related: “The two of them are very connected. In our First Amendment we have our freedom of religion and freedom of speech and we keep our freedom of religion by working to keep our freedom of speech, and political speech is actually what’s under attack here.”
Roberts accused Senate Democrats of trying to “restrict the free speech of those who simply disagree with them.”
Later, Roberts said supporters of a constitutional amendment like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid seek to “regulate free speech so they can silence their critics and retain their hold on power.”
“This is voter suppression, this is to silence his critics,” he said.
