FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Richard Land, host of Richard Land Live! and president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, will meet with other Salem Radio Network hosts in Washington, DC, tomorrow to deliver SRN’s “Free Our Health Care Now” petition, opposing the health care reform legislation now before Congress. He will be joined by prominent radio hosts Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager, Janet Parshall, Michael Medved and Hugh Hewitt.
p=. Coverage of press conference to be carried on
“CSPAN-3”:http://www.c-span.org/Watch/C-SPAN3_wm.aspx at 2:00 pm Eastern.
The “petition,”:http://www.freeourhealthcarenow.com sponsored by the National Center for Policy Analysis and SRN, has gained over 1.2 million signatures since its launch May 25. Printed copies of the petition will be transported to the U.S. Capitol in an ambulance and delivered to congressional lawmakers on gurneys.
“This petition is indicative of a spontaneous grass roots eruption of protest against a government takeover of the American health care system,” said Land. “Anyone who doubts the strength and vitality of this movement needs only have attended one of the thousands of town hall meetings to know that this is real.”
Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) have agreed to accept the boxes of petitions at a news conference set for 2 p.m. and will take the boxes to the office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid following the conference. The conference will take place at the Upper Senate Park, adjacent to the Russell Senate Office Building. NCPA Chairman and former Delaware Governor Pete DuPont will lead the news conference, which will take place just hours before President Obama’s health care address to a joint session of Congress.
In addition, House GOP leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) will deliver copies of the signatures to the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Other lawmakers to appear at the conference will be announced later.
“We obviously will be in the right place at the right time,” SRN VP/News & Talk Programming Tom Tradup said. “This petition drive represents an unprecedented melding of terrestrial radio, new media including the Internet, and traditional retail politics as our hosts deliver to Congress over 1.2 million signatures on the hottest political and moral issue of 2009.”
The petition can be found at http://www.freeourhealthcarenow.com/.
_The Southern Baptist Convention is America’s largest non-Catholic denomination with more than 16.2 million members in over 44,000 churches nationwide. The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission is the SBC’s ethics, religious liberty and public policy agency with offices in Nashville, Tenn., and Washington, D.C._
_Salem Radio Network is a division of “Salem Communications”:http://salem.cc/ a leading U.S. radio broadcaster, Internet content provider, and magazine and book publisher targeting audiences interested in Christian and family-themed content and conservative values._
_The “National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA)”:http://ncpa.org/ is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization, established in 1983._
