Lamar Smith isn't a dummy but he plays one in Congress for film "I'm a schill for ExxonMobil"

If you didn’t already know, Texas Rep. Lamar Smith is the Republican chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. He is a shining example of why you have to vote blue during elections. He has been leading a Oil and Gas Industry Republican-backed witch hunt against climate scientists for over a year now. With reality, facts and history are not on his or his Republican cronies’ sides, Smith approved a budget slashing around $300 million from NASA’s earth-science budget—last month. A couple of weeks ago, Rep. Smith and his best buddies wrote letters to 17 state attorneys general and eight climate change organizations accusing them of trying to stifle ExxonMobil’s First Amendment rights. It was balls-to-the-wall insane. This week, those attorneys general and environmental groups dug into their position and said we are not going to be bullied.

Several state attorneys general, advocacy groups and philanthropic foundations have refused to comply with a broad request from a group of House Republicans for documents that might be related to state investigations of ExxonMobil Corp. over climate change. In their letters to Rep. Lamar Smith, the Republican chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, most of the organizations said the lawmakers were overstepping the panel's jurisdiction in order to conduct a partisan fishing expedition while threatening the groups' First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and association.

[My emphasis]

Rep. Lamar Smith is just the messenger bearing the response from ExxonMobil the Republicans to answer to the fact that more and more evidence is becoming available that ExxonMobil was already learning and studying man-made climate change—all the way back to the 1970s. Here is one of the letters sent to Chairman Lamar Smith.

Your request that 350.org disclose all communications with the highest state law enforcement officials and with other individuals and organizations about its advocacy on climate change strikes at the heart of the protections of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. 350.org has a constitutional right to speak out on issues, to associate with others in order to advocate more effectively, and to petition federal and state government. We appreciate that the views and positions of 350.org on climate change, informed by the overwhelming consensus of scientists, may differ from that of the members of the HCSST who signed the letter. Yet the right to petition government and to disagree with certain government officials is a core value protected by the First Amendment. Because your letter does not and cannot provide any legitimate justification for this infringement upon First Amendment rights, our client respectfully declines to provide documents in response.

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The argument they lay out is two-pronged. The first, represented above, is citizens’ First Amendment rights to petition the government. Their second point is that in going after both organizations and states’ attorneys general, Rep. Lamar Smith is doing that famously Republican thing—being an Alice in Wonderland, Through-the-Looking-Glass-level hypocrite.

The request also constitutes a legally impermissible interference with state autonomy. According to your letter, the rationale behind the request is a disagreement with state investigations and prosecutions by sovereign states, through their Attorneys General. Here we agree with the Office of the Attorney General of the State of New York, for the reasons stated in its letter dated May 26, 2016, that your committee cannot interfere with state investigations and prosecutions. As the Supreme Court has long recognized, “[f]ederal interference with a State’s good-faith administration of its criminal laws is peculiarly inconsistent with our federal framework.” Cameron v. Johnson, 390 U.S. 611, 618 (1968) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971) (creating abstention rule for federal courts where state criminal prosecution is ongoing); Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898, 924 (1997) (“[E]ven where Congress has the authority under the Constitution to pass laws requiring or prohibiting certain acts, it lacks the power directly to compel the States to require or prohibit those acts . . . .”) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Because you cannot interfere directly with state investigations and prosecutions, you cannot do so indirectly by requesting communications from private organizations with state attorneys general or others about state investigations and prosecutions.

Rep. Lamar Smith couldn’t be reached for comment as he was lapping up crude out of a golden bowl on the floor of ExxonMobil’s pantry.