Photo ID required to attend townhall meeting in Houston

~2009 Summer of Unrest in America continues~

Photo ID is required to attend a townhall meeting to speak with your elected representative? Would that keep hired union thugs out?

From Investor's Business Daily we learn:

Hypocrisy: Rep. Gene Green has voted against bills that require people to present a photo ID before they vote. But don't show up at one of his public gatherings without a driver's license. You won't get in.

On his Web site, Green, a Democrat who represents working-class Houstonians, says that "due to a coordinated effort to disrupt our town hall meetings, we will be restricting further attendance to residents of the 29th congressional district and verifying residency by requiring photo identification."

Green's position isn't wholly unreasonable, particularly when crowds are too big for the venues in which meetings are held. In that case, constituents should be given priority. But by requiring attendees to produce a photo ID, he has exposed himself as inconsistent at best and hypocritical at worst.

Thanks to Tom Blumer, from whose Newsbusters.org blog we learned about Green's plan, we know that in 2005 and 2006 the congressman opposed legislation requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls.

Now, what's more important to the current and future health of our republic? Trying to hold clean elections or excluding "outsiders" from public meetings?

The shenanigans of the 2009 Summer of Unrest in America continue as lawmakers refuse to schedule townhall meetings, or pack them with hired Democrat demonstrators, and show arrogance toward their constituents as was the case with Sheila Jackson Lee who took a cell phone call even as a constituent was talking during a townhall meeting.

The arrogance is a big part of the frustration building in voters who feel helpless in the face of huge tax increases and government programs being forced on them. As IBD said of elected reps, "All of them should have the courage to come out of hiding and get the verbal flogging they deserve."