(USA Features) Free-market groups are firing back at Senate Democrats’ coordinated attack on climate-change skeptics, the latest assault on the First Amendment in the left’s relentless effort to intimidate and silence conservative speech.

“We, the undersigned, have long since known that you have a list — an enemies list of intellectual foes you wish to isolate. But our policy differences are not why we write,” states a letter from the 22 free-market organizations to the senators who have spent the last two days calling out “climate-change deniers” on the Senate floor.

“We write today with grave concern over political leadership in a time of deep national division. We write at a time when free speech and association are more important than ever in our national experiment. How will we, together, solve problems if we cannot speak? How can you lead when you refuse to listen?” ask the conservative groups, including the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

The Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, Watchdog.org’s parent organization, is one of  the 22 organizations that signed the letter to lawmakers.

CEI has been targeted in a controversial prosecution by a coalition of left-wing state attorneys general, billing itself “AGs United for Clean Power.” CEI and other climate-change agenda skeptics have pushed back.

The senators and their free-speech-for-me-but-not-for-thee allies, perhaps fearing they can’t prosecute their political enemies into silence, now are hoping once more to shame them – from the Senate floor.

As the Washington Free Beacon first reported Monday, 19 Democratic senators were tapped to call out the conservative nonprofit groups by name in speeches blasting corporations and advocacy groups for challenging leftist climate policies.

Internal emails obtained by the publication noted a “highly coordinated plan between members of Congress and environmental activist groups to fuel a public relations and legal offensive against fossil fuel companies and groups they support.”

The pols certainly got plenty of love from enviro website Ecowatch.com.

“Nineteen U.S. Senators who understand the need to clear the PR pollution that continues to block overdue climate policy spoke out on the Senate floor Monday in support of the Senate Web of Denial Resolution calling out the destructive forces of fossil fuel industry-funded climate denial,” the website stated.

Read more at Watchdog.org.

More:

• Uncle Sam Continues To Waste Your Tax Money On Frivolous ‘Research,’ Such As Paying A ‘Scientist’ To Have A Bee Sting His Genitals
• Waste Not, Want Not: Report Exposes Hundreds Of BILLIONS Every Year In Duplicate Govt. Spending
• Spendthrift EPA Is Now Paying Contractors To Do Nothing

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