{"id":2194,"date":"2010-09-01T12:57:12","date_gmt":"2010-09-01T12:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=2194"},"modified":"2010-09-01T12:57:12","modified_gmt":"2010-09-01T12:57:12","slug":"politics_in_government_offices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=2194","title":{"rendered":"Politics In Government Offices"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Hatch Act of 1939 is a United States federal law whose main provision is to prohibit federal employees (civil servants) from engaging in partisan political activity.  According to a story in the Washington Examiner<\/a> on Monday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan sent a memo to more than 4,000 employees of the Department of Education on Wednesday inviting them to join Al Sharpton’s ‘Reclaim the Dream’ rally on Saturday.  Mr. Sharpton created the event in reponse to Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally at the Lincoln Memorial.<\/p>\n

Technically, the e-mail does not violate the Hatch Act, but it made at least one department employee uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

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“”It sends a signal that activity on behalf of one side of a political debate is expected within a department.  It’s highly inappropriate…even in the absence of a direct threat,” (David) Boaz (executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute) said.  “If we think of a Bush cabinet official sending an e-mail to civil servants asking them to attend a Glenn Beck rally, there would be a lot of outrage over that.””<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Unfortunately, the conservative movement has been too polite too long.  We need to learn to apply the same standard of conduct to liberals that liberals apply to us.  If sending this e-mail is acceptable, then it is acceptable for someone on the right side of the political spectrum to do the same thing.  If sending this e-mail is unacceptable, then the people who sent it need to be reprimanded at least, and action taken against anyone who practices politics on government employees in the future.<\/p>\n

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<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Hatch Act of 1939 is a United States federal law whose main provision is to prohibit federal employees (civil servants) from engaging in partisan political activity.  According to a story in the Washington Examiner on Monday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}