Right to Petition the government

Congress shall make no law ... abridging ... the right of the people ... to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Petition is the right to ask government at any level to right a wrong or correct a problem. Although a petition is only as meaningful as its response, the petitioning right allows blocs of public interests to form, harnessing voting power in ways that effect change. The right to petition allows citizens to focus government attention on unresolved ills; provide information to elected leaders about unpopular policies; expose misconduct, waste, corruption, and incompetence; and vent popular frustrations without endangering the public order.

Sinisterly, the new legislation also alters the language of Title 10, Chapter 15, Section 333 of the U.S. Code (the so-called Insurrection Act) in an ominous manner ... Why insert the bolded phrase ["or those obstructing the enforcement of the laws"]–unless your objective is to widen the category of miscreants to include those exercising their First Amendment rights? No one expects an insurgency to be launched in this day and age in America, yet peaceably assembling to protest government policies can easily be interpreted to include "obstructionists" who might be "dispersed."

Since 1999 Schulz has presented his contentions regarding the income tax's illegality to the IRS, the president, the Department of Justice (DOJ), and every member of Congress. He has humbly beseeched them to answer a list of questions ... When The New York Times asked IRS spokesman Terry Lemons why the Schulz petition was being ignored, Lemons "said that courts had upheld the validity of the tax laws and that the agency did not want to waste time and resources ... Mr. Lemons added that the recent spate of enforcement actions ... show other ways that government is answering the petition."

"[T]here was only one political avenue open to [American women of the 1830s], and they discovered it—the First Amendment right to petition." The petition process was an important tool of the abolitionists from early on ... "This first petition [in 1831]," Joan wrote, "was routinely sent to Congress's standing Committee on the District of Columbia, which didn't act on it. But more and more petitions against slavery began arriving in Congress." Within a couple of years, "in December 1833, a national American Antislavery Society was formed. ... It promoted the sending of petitions to Congress."