Constituent tries to lobby congressman on healthcare, ends up with capitol police

You accept things like this might happen in China or maybe Iran. But in the United States, a constituent attempting to lobby his own representative in Congress doesn't normally end up in an encounter with Capitol Police.

At the Big Government website, a poster at the site's Capitol Confidential offered a first person account of his attempts to explain his feelings about Obamacare to Rep. John Garamendi (CA-10),  a Democrat who plans to vote for the latest bill his party has advanced.

As an editorial aside, we are calling the bill by the name Obamacare because there are several bills in play, with the latest incarnation part of HR 4872. Other key bills include HR 3200 and HR 3590. The famous "process" Democrats hope to use to turn control of healthcare policy over to the government has been a fractured endeavor.

The constituent sharing his story at Big Government said he repeatedly tried to talk to a staffer in Garamendi's office but he wasn't successful and she hung up on him. He wrote, "I called back. This time, I asked to speak to her supervisor in order to report her repeated hanging up as well as the threat she made. I was placed on hold. Thinking I was holding for her supervisor, I was shocked when a Federal Agent with the Capital Police picked-up the telephone."

The constituent eventually resolved the problem by researching a statute prohibiting calling for purposes of "harrassment." It so happened the constituent was a lawyer. The rest of us might not be so lucky.

The agent ultimately agreed with the lawyer that he was within his rights.

The constituent wrote the column as an anonymous source, but the whole scenario is credible.

He admitted he voted for Garamendi. That, in our opinion, was his first mistake and can be easily changed next time the junior congressman's seat is up for grabs.