Assault on the First Amendment, Part II

I heard Rush Limbaugh on the radio yesterday talking about this article. The Washington Prowler in the American Spectator reports that the Democrats want to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. Well, that much we already knew. What's shocking about this is the quotations he's gotten from Democratic staffers:

The decision to press for re-establishment of the Fairness Doctrine now seems to have developed for two reasons. "First, [Democrats] failed on the radio airwaves with Air America, no one wanted to listen," says a senior adviser to Pelosi. "Conservative radio is a huge threat and political advantage for Republicans and we have had to find a way to limit it. Second, it looks like the Republicans are going to have someone in the presidential race who has access to media in ways our folks don't want, so we want to make sure the GOP has no advantages going into 2008."

That last comment appeared to be a veiled reference to former Sen. Fred Thompson, who appears to be gearing up for a presidential run.

Oh, yes. Political idealism at its finest! The other guys' speech is hurting us politically, and we aren't as successful at it, so we're going to regulate their speech away. And this is from a senior advisor to the Speaker of the House! That makes this a real threat in a way that Kucinich's fringe blustering wasn't.

"They are identifying senior employees, their political activities and their political giving," says a Government Reform committee staffer. "Salem is a big target, but the big one is going to be Limbaugh. We know we can't shut him up, but we want to make life a bit more difficult for him."

My goodness, the blantant abuse of power this guy admits to! Salem is Salem Radio Network, which syndicates some conservative talk shows. But read how this is all intended: to make life difficult for conservative political commentary. They can't get people to listen to Air America and other liberal talk radio, so they decide the next best thing is to regulate the conservatives' speech away.

Absolutely outrageous.

Assault on the First Amendment, Part I

Retiring Rep. Marty Meehan (D, Mass.) is trying to push through an amedment to a lobbying bill to regulate groups that encourage the public to contact Congress on issues. Seeing as how petitioning the government for a redress of grievances is explicitly protected by the First Amendment, he and his supporters are going about this in a sly way, "regulating" these groups as "lobbyists." Disclosure forms, quarterly reports, tell us who donated your money, etc.

It's harder to stir up a fight against this kind of restriction, when it is a creeping regulation, rather than a clear, outright ban on the activity. You'll get some otherwise sensible people who think, "Sure, we ought to regulate lobbying groups...," without reflecting on the protected right that's being regulated.

Well, John Fund's article ought to be a good step in exposing this.