The Koch Brothers and Brendan Eich: Hypocrisy of Their Attackers Revealed

Last week there were two widely covered attacks on free speech, one happened in private industry Brendan Eich the other came from the world of politics, Harry Reid's attack on the Koch Brothers. During the past twenty-four hours the hypocrisy of the attackers have been revealed as we learned the founder of OkCupid, the website which lead the attack on Mozilla's Brendan Eich once donated money to an anti-gay candidate, and we also learned that both Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer each received Koch Brother's money for their campaigns.

The OkCupid revelation comes from a liberal source, Mother Jones:

OkCupid's co-founder and CEO Sam Yagan once donated to an anti-gay candidate. (Yagan is also CEO of Match.com.) Specifically, Yagan donated $500 to Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah) in 2004, reports Uncrunched. During his time as congressman from 1997 to 2009, Cannon voted for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, against a ban on sexual-orientation based job discrimination, and for prohibition of gay adoptions.

He's also voted for numerous anti-choice measures, earning a 0 percent rating from NARAL Pro Choice America. Among other measures, Cannon voted for laws prohibiting government from denying funds to medical facilities that withhold abortion information, stopping minors from crossing state lines to obtain an abortion, and banning family planning funding in US aid abroad. Cannon also earned a 7 percent rating from the ACLU for his poor civil rights voting record: He voted to amend FISA to allow warrant-less electronic surveillance, to allow NSA intelligence gathering without civil oversight, and to reauthorize the PATRIOT act.

The Washington Free Beacon reports that campaign finance records prove former Koch Industries lobbyist Robert P. Hall III donated $500 to Harry Reid’s campaign in 2003, while he was working for the "evil brothers."

Hall worked for Koch Industries from 1998 to 2004, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. He was previously a lobbyist for INVISTA, the Koch Industries subsidiary that Democrats are targeting in their latest campaign to “other” the Koch brothers. Hall currently lobbies for General Electric, the chief sponsor of explanatory journalism website Vox.com. Coincidence? Maybe.

While Chuck Schumer has not been as vocal Harry Reid, he too has been criticizing those "evil" Koch Brothers daring to exercise their First Amendment right to free speech via campaign donations. That didn't stop Schumer from taking their money. John Hinderaker at Powerline found a letter from the Chuck Schumer thanking KochPAC for helping to fund his campaign.

For some reason, every time we find someone making an unwarranted attack on free speech or freedom of expression they turn out to be hypocrites.