If the subject of this piece had his way, your Patriot Post team could very well be hauled before the Federal Election Commission, or worse, charged with a crime for publishing this article. We can be thankful that such a situation is not the case … at least for this election. Whether it remains the case for future elections rests largely upon the efforts of grassroots Patriots.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse made news recently when he appeared before the House Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet. What he provided, though, was something well short of testimony. Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, didn’t stick around to field questions after his rant against the conservative judicial organization called the Federalist Society, even though the American people deserve some answers.

Then again, Whitehouse has shown a disturbing pattern of nastiness toward those who exercise their First Amendment rights in opposition to his preferred policies. It’s a pattern revealing that should he ever gain actual power in a Democrat-majority Senate, he’d behave far less like a senator and far more like a dictator — like a Xi, a Putin, a Maduro, or an Erdogan.

Since 2010, for example, Whitehouse has been a vociferous critic of the Supreme Court’s pro-First Amendment Citizens United ruling. While that might not sound like a big deal, Whitehouse has gone beyond efforts to overturn that decision via constitutional amendment. Such amendments, though, are an extremely heavy lift and therefore little more than a pipe dream for Whitehouse.

In 2015, he called for a RICO investigation of those who opposed the radical environmental agenda being pushed by the Left. Showing himself to be a true hater of inconvenient political speech, Whitehouse would treat dissenters like mobsters.

But it gets worse. The Federalist Society has been promoting originalist constitutional jurisprudence — and it does a whole lot more, including providing a forum for conservatives and libertarians that are increasingly excluded from law school faculties. All of this — the peaceable assembly, the freedom to associate with like-minded people, and the advocacy of a certain judicial philosophy — is clearly protected by the First Amendment. Yet Whitehouse targeted the Federalist Society with a ban on involvement by federal judges. The good news is that he faced immediate pushback — this time.

Whitehouse has also been waging a campaign of bullying against not just the Supreme Court but lower courts as well. This included an outright threat to pack the High Court if it ruled in a manner that displeased Whitehouse on a recent Second Amendment case. Sadly, Chief Justice John Roberts bowed to the bully from Rhode Island.

The fundamentally un-American message from Whitehouse, then, is very simple: Shut up or face the consequences. In essence, he’s the Senate’s version of the Andrew Cuomo-Letitia James regime that targeted the NRA in New York. He’s admitting that he can’t win a fair fight within the lawful norms of our constitutional republic.

Grassroots Patriots concerned about the excesses of judicial activism have for decades worked to change the Supreme Court’s left-leaning posture. And we did so within the norms and rules of the democratic process. Now, Whitehouse seeks not only to reverse those gains with a massive power grab but to empower abuses like the IRS targeting of the Tea Party, Wisconsin’s shameful “John Doe” investigations, Operation Chokepoint, and a host of others, including the tactics of the Cuomo-James cabal.

Should the Democrats gain control of the Senate, Whitehouse might well be our nation’s next chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. That would be bad enough. But what if he’s tabbed by a Biden administration for attorney general?

Whitehouse’s clear disregard for the rights enshrined in our Constitution should have grassroots Patriots working overtime to ensure he never sniffs more power than he already has.