first amendment

The heck with Obamacare—there’s an even more unconstitutional law that Congress should repeal, if Republicans recapture the House and Senate in numbers large enough to override a veto.

It’s long past time for the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act, passed by Congress in 1970 and signed into law by President Nixon, to be dispensed with. The Act, which banned tobacco advertising on television and radio in the United States, was a blatant violation of the First Amendment and should never have been enacted. The law represented political correctness even before political correctness had an official name. A conservative Congress should send it to the ashtray of history.

If America can tolerate alcohol and fast food ads on television, why can’t the country tolerate tobacco advertising? If more Americans start smoking because tobacco ads return to the airwaves, where’s the tragedy? Only the gullible will fall for such marketing.

If you have a moment, go to Youtube and take a look at some of the old commercials for Winston, Tareyton, Salem and Kool. Those commercials were innovative, funny, witty, creative gems from the Mad Men era. Why not bring those commercials back? Who would be harmed by such advertising?

What gave the government the right to say tobacco commercials could not be aired? What gave Congress and President Nixon the authority to suppress the liberties of tobacco companies? Why can’t those companies advertise where they see fit?

Repealing the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act is about freedom. I don’t like the tobacco companies, and I’ve never used any of their products; when I was a child, and I saw “Newport—Alive with Pleasure!” ads around my neighborhood, I knew that using too many Newports would leave me dead with pain. However, discomfort with Big Tobacco cannot justify an assault upon corporate rights.

Republicans, you know what to do. The Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act was fundamentally flawed. The GOP must get rid of this profoundly bad law.

There were fifty seven Democrat Senators who would have stolen your right to free speech. Senator Upchucky Schumer, one of the more detestable examples of a stinking, slimy breed, conspired with the equally onerous and creepy Russ Feingold to craft the Disclose Act, which has been inspired and supported by that sterling personality, Barack Hussein Obama.

L-R: Schumer, Obama, Feingold.

This piece of legislative legerdemain was purposely crafted to protect Democrat incumbents. The same DeMarxist cretins who are selling you, your country and your freedom down the road. Among other sleazy provisions, it was intended to muzzle the voice of the Conservative Patriot movement and the individual voices of free Americans, while allowing unions, political action groups and slush funds of money stolen from their members to function along with the ‘special exemption’ issued to the National Rifle Association, The Sierra Club and the AARP (I went into this at some length in my article of July 6, 2010. For those of you interested, it can be accessed through my domain archives at skipmaclure.us). I haven’t changed my mind about the NRA one iota and they will not receive one dime from me or my friends.

We defeated this fifth column DeMarxist assault on our freedoms. We defeated it by the narrowest of margins. It just illustrates how very dangerous the communists will be until we can defeat them in November, and somehow repel the kamikaze attacks of the lame duck Demarxist Congress.

Remember when then candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton screamed, “We reserve the right to criticize anyone” (she shrieked!)? I didn’t see her voicing her indignation to this bill. I guess it’s ok with her as long as it’s the voice of Patriots that are being silenced. We must redouble our efforts to defeat this dark, monstrous conspiracy against our country.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

From Obama's May 2nd Michigan Graduation Speech:

Today's twenty-four seven echo chamber amplifies the most inflammatory soundbites louder and faster than ever before. It has also, however, given us unprecedented choice. ...we now have the option to get our information from any number of blogs or websites or cable news shows.

This development can be both good and bad for democracy. .. if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and our beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.

This of course requires that we all agree on a certain set of facts to debate from, and that is why we need a vibrant and thriving news business that is separate from opinion makers and talking heads.

The White House's "I Love you back!/(Laughter)/(Applause)" version of this speech is also available. H/T to the hubby.

Happy 4th of July.

President Obama has taken complete control of the First Amendment in an around the Gulf of Mexico region; the physical breadth of the BP oil spill will now work as a map, where 65 feet beyond the borders of this oily map, America's freedom as we know it has ceased to exist.

Not even the President's media lapdogs can tell the Truth if they want to.

With this latest development, the Obama Administration has effectively given us a clue of what's in store for America: we don't need a free press when the government can supply all the information we need, via whatever medium is available. As you read this, realize that this is a pre-cursor to Obama's plans to equalize the internet -- where complete government control of the internet will guarantee that content will be regulated and restricted, and we can anticipate he will pipe unfettered, "unbiased" government information into homes across America. Something like what Neil says has been enacted in Finland.

He's fulfilling his campaign promises to "connect and empower all Americans through technology and innovation" .. and "to help unprecedented numbers of citizens take back the political process" like he did with his use of the internet "to transform presidential politics."

What we are seeing is Obama's "Journalism Re-invention" in action -- his piping a speech to kids without parental permission during classtime is pigeon compared to what he's trying to pull now.

We already know the White House controls the media. Now the Obama Administration is using the BP oil spill to restrict access and information to completely control the message that is broadcast to the public.

This is NOT THE FIRST TIME he has shut out the media's access to a news event.. First he excludes and evades -- repeatedly, then he shuts out media access, and now he's passed enforceable law.

Under threat of being charged with a Class D Felony and a $40,000 fine, journalists, bloggers, and photographers cannot come within 65 feet of response vessels working the BP spill or booms floating in the Gulf or laying on beaches.

This 65 foot "exclusion zone" had been reduced from 300 feet and is yet another restriction placed on photographers and reporters. At the end of May, the FAA and Coast Guard would not allow private charter planes carrying media to fly below 3,000 feet to better document the BP disaster.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported Thursday that ["the [65 foot "exclusion zone"] order was a Coast Guard-wide directive from the top."

CNN's Anderson Cooper reports on the impact this will have on holding the federal government accountable -- by documenting and ensuring timely responses to boom removal, animal rescue and just getting the local's version of the BP story out:

*See the VID at Redstate

Locals in the Times-Picayunne also reported that the 65-foot restriction could "block photographers and reporters from accessing some waterways altogether."

So, absolutely no one would have access to anywhere the federal government deemed it necessary to lay a boom. Too many snoopy photographers? Lay a boom. Too many journalists accessing a waterway? Lay another boom.

What an effective "corralling" of the BP narrative without public oversight.

The Obama Administration will be whitewashing bad PR-damaging images like this that read "Look, a poor bird near the boom those government crews haven't cleaned up yet! They are so damn slow and inefficient!" --

with sanitized pics like this that scream "Not a moment to lose! Your Taxdollars hard at work!!" directly from their "Been There Since Day 1" Official Deepwater Horizon Joint Command Site:

The Obama Administration is well-aware of the power of the internet. Without reporters and bloggers providing clear pictures and descriptions of the events as they happen, where they happen, when they happen, readers and the rest of the media will flock to the information that is readily accessible.

The Obama Administration is ready.

Taking the lead from the Obama's massive BarackObama.com site that still stands at the ready, the DNC's populist-persuasion website and other propagandist sites the left has used to swindle the American people, Federal Deepwater, Inc. has some very cool apps that will help conceal, cover up and camouflage the federal government's lackadaisical response to the nation's worst environmental disaster that hit the Gulf on Obama's watch. It includes:

• A Flickr link
• a YouTube Channel
• a Twitter feed
• a Facebook page
• SMS alerts
• live webcam feeds
• an RSS feed, complete with email subscripts that will pipe photos and media blips directly to your browser and mailbox

• oh -- and a cool widget for your blog, website or page so you can be linked to THE primary source of news and information coming out of the area via a permanent Twitter, News and Links update (complete with ShareThis plugin).

Remember, this 65-foot restriction under pain of felony charges and $40K in fines, will black out media giants CNN, MSNBC, ABC, FOX, CBS -- everyone. Where will America get our our news about BP now? How long before America becomes bored of hearing regurgitated press releases and sanitized photos taken by a federal employee?

I'd rather have the candids of the Free Press than staged pics ("Wait! Go back and do that again!") that would rival the boredom generated from watching Obama's useless flickr photostream.

Obama knows that we will tire with whatever comes from the official federal government newsfeed, because he'll be using the same drone-inducing spell progressives have used for generations: it's fake. Fraudulent. People can only take so much lying to before they turn away and tune out in disgust.

And now, it's a federal crime to tell the Truth.

Sometime in the future, the only "truth" America may "officially" know will be what the government tells the public through the internet; nationalizing parts of the media will not be the only way for the federal government to indoctrinate, spread propaganda, and garner votes.

What the Obama Administration proves with this 65-foot restriction is that "transparency" is a gimmick, a buzzword as useless as Obama's "hope" -- but as lethal to America as his radical, socialist sort of "change," because he's used the word "transparency" to create a false sense of security and reframe the public's image of the quintessential corrupt, calculating politician.

Transparent.

This fraud is killing Free Speech and Freedom of the Press.

How long will you and I have a right to say that?

"Wherever despotism abounds, the sources of public information are the first to be brought under its control." ~Calvin Coolidge

Or Free Republic, for that matter?  Well, Linda Sanchez (D) thinks it might be a good idea.

(a) Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

So, let me see if I understand this.  If I go onto Daily Kos and start accusing the posters of being godless communists bent on destroying the USA, using withering inflammatory insults ("severe" and "hostile"), and I do so in a "repeated" manner, then according to Sanchez I should be thrown in jail.

Of course the intention is to stop 'cyber-bullying' among kids.  But here is a pretty obvious case where the proposed action upon the intention will have significant unintended consequences that threaten everyone's liberty.

H/T: Corner, Volokh

I head about this case on the radio today and couldn't find any news stories on it in Google News. This story should be headline news, and among other things it demonstrates why the right needs to develop our own online news outlets (like Huffington Post) and not just opinion outlets.

http://www.alliancedefensefund.org/news/story.aspx?cid=4899

excerpts:

 DETROIT — Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund Center for Academic Freedom filed a lawsuit against Eastern Michigan University Thursday after school officials dismissed a student from the school’s counseling program for not affirming homosexual behavior as morally acceptable.  The school dismissed Julea Ward from the program because she would not agree prior to a counseling session to affirm a client’s homosexual behavior and would not retract her stance in subsequent disciplinary proceedings

..."When a public university has a prerequisite of affirming homosexual behavior as morally good in order to obtain a degree, the school is stepping over the legal line.  Julea did the responsible thing and followed her supervising professor’s advice to have the client referred to a counselor who did not have a conscience issue with the very matter to be discussed in counseling.  She would have gladly counseled the client if the subject had been nearly any other matter."

...EMU initiated its disciplinary process against Ward and informed her that the only way she could stay in the graduate school counseling program would be if she agreed to undergo a "remediation" program.  Its purpose would be to help Ward "see the error of her ways" and change her "belief system" as it relates to counseling about homosexual relationships, conforming her beliefs to be consistent with the university’s views.  When Ward did not agree with the conditions, she was given the options of either voluntarily leaving the program or asking for a formal review hearing.Ward chose the hearing, during which EMU faculty denigrated her Christian views and asked several inappropriate and intrusive questions about her religious beliefs.  The hearing committee dismissed her from the counseling program on March 12.  Ward appealed the decision to the dean of the College of Education, who upheld the dismissal on March 26.

You can tell when a liberal politician is in deep sushi by two things:

a) The MSM starts buying into the criticism that conservatives and libertarians made for months prior to their discovery

b) The wounded target's political allies "circle the wagons" and start returning fire against the officeholder's critics

We are witnessing this scenario today unfolding in Connecticut

Led by intrepid columnist Kevin Rennie, the Hartford Courant has raised the decible level of dissatisfaction with Dodd, culminating with calling his AIG bonus blunder a "flip-flop" in a front page headline and having a liberal writer urge Dodd not to see re-election.

Since the Courant's reversal of fortune on a CT political icon whom they have supported for decades, the CT Democratic establishment did what it does best. Circle the wagons around their wounded leader.  They've been doing a "dog and pony" show around the state where all the leading Democrats stand behind the embattled Dodd.

Including Attorney General Dick Blumenthal

Remember him. Once he was very upset with Countrywide Lending's predatory practices.

But when it came to Chris Dodd's deal with Countrywide, he gave the Senator a clean bill of health.

"We subpoena documents. We don't voluntarily necessarily accept representations made to us by companies like Countrywide," Blumenthal responded. "Chris Dodd has disclosed those documents, he has disclosed those facts and I believe the people of Connecticut will accept his explanation and elect him in 2010." 

Hmm, Dick, I know I went to some jock colleges unlike you and your  Harvard+ Yale pedigree. But, hmmm. a) you never subpoenaed Dodd's documents.  and b) Dodd didn;t really disclose them--unless one hour of letting handpicked reporters view documents constitutes "disclosure" (Hmm...I'll try that next time I have a discovery dispute with the AG's office).

Here's what the Wall Street Journal had to say about Blumenthal's defense of Dodd.  

Inappropriate doesn't begin to describe Mr. Blumenthal's appearance this week on Hartford's WFSB-TV. The AG compared Mr. Dodd, who was due to receive an estimated savings of $75,000 over the life of his two VIP mortgage loans, to borrowers allegedly duped by unscrupulous lenders. Mr. Blumenthal claimed that "there's no evidence of wrongdoing on [Mr. Dodd's] part any more than victims who were misled or deceived by Countrywide."

But I merely set the table here. What just happened really shows to what lengths the Democrats will use their levers of power to protect their own.

As we all well know, the Tribune Company is in bankruptcy.  The Tribune owns the Courant and the Fox TV affiliate in Hartford, Channel 61. To survive the recession, the Tribune proposes to combine the news staff of the Courant and Fox 61.  

And who's against this. Chris Dodd's loyal lackey Dick Blumenthal

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal wrote the owner of Tribune Wednesday saying that the merger of the Hartford Courant, WTIC-TV, and WTXX-TV may violate the Federal Communications Commissions ban on a company owning a television station and newspaper in the same market.

“I am concerned that allowing these entities to fully merge into one news and information operation goes well beyond what the FCC intended when it granted Tribune a two-year limited waiver,” Blumenthal wrote in this letter to Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell.

Hmm, Dick, in case you haven;t noticed the newspaper business is not. hmm, in the best of health these days. Maybe saving the Courant might be...a good thing.

So what to make of AG Blumenthal's sudden concern over media consolidation?   

Could this be an effort to suggest that fewer problems for Senator Dodd might mean fewer problems for the Courant's business plan?

We've never seen Democratic politicians manipulate the regulatory process to benefit their interests, now have we?

Perhaps Ivy League lawyer Blumenthal ought to reacquaint himself with this concept I learned at my non-elite law school

Think there's been a "chilling effect'" placed on the Courant's future coverage of Senator Dodd ?

I do.  We'll see how interested the Left is in the First Amendment once liberals decide to chill conservatives. My guess. Not a peep. 

 ====UPDATE====

A good night's sleep caused me to remember this prior incident when a media person got a little too hostile at Senator Dodd, and his corporate masters decided to "self-sanction" themselves --no doubt so as not to draw attention to folks who might bring in the FCC to scour their affairs.I wrote about it at the time.   Here's some FoxNews coverage at the time

Adam Theirer, a scholar at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, notes that the Fairness Doctrine was part of a regulatory paradigm being pushed by the left and, in particular, the group Free Press. This fight is not over. Adam's piece is worth reading:

Of course, the radicals at the (Un)Free Press weren’t about to let one of the Left’s old favorite regulations go so away without asking for something in return.  One of the reasons that Silver and Ammori are suddenly willing to give their blessing to the Doctrine’s burial is because they want to get on with the more far-reaching agenda of micro-managing media markets using a variety of less visible regulations.

Indeed, in their paper, Silver and Ammori go to great pains to try to show that the Fairness Doctrine supposedly has nothing to do with all the other regulations that they want Congress and the FCC to continue to enforce, or even expand.  These goals include media ownership restrictions, diversity mandates, local programming regulation, and so on.  Recognizing that the Fairness Doctrine was not only ineffective but also a useful tool for many on the political Right to whip their base into action, the Free Press moved to preemptively divorce their other pet projects from the Fairness Doctrine.

It’s a brilliant tactical move by Free Press; lull Limbaugh and other conservatives into a deep sleep by throwing them the bone of a Fairness Doctrine win, and then push a far more radical regulatory agenda through the back-door once they’ve stopped paying attention.  Of course, these things cannot be as easily divorced as the Free Press radicals want us to believe.  The Fairness Doctrine was just one part of a much grander regulatory paradigm that so-called progressives have pushed for under the banner of “public interest regulation.”