With the act rendered inoperative by the end of hostilities, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer waged a public campaign, not unrelated to his own campaign for the Democratic nomination for president, in favor of a peacetime version of the Sedition Act. He sent a circular outlining his rationale to newspaper editors in January 1919, citing the dangerous foreign-language press and radical attempts to create unrest in African American communities. He testified in favor of such a law in early June 1920. At one point Congress had more than 70 versions of proposed language and amendments for such a bill, but it took no action on the controversial proposal during the campaign year of 1920. After a court decision later in June cited Palmer's anti-radical campaign for its abuse of power, the conservative "Christian Science Monitor" found itself unable to support him any more, writing on June 25, 1920: "What appeared to be an excess of radicalism...was certainly met with...an excess of suppression." The Alien Registration Act of 1940 was the first American peacetime sedition act.