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March 9, 2005
McCain-Supported Political Speech


(from Chris Muir’s Day By Day for March 5, 2005)

News.com notes (and Little Green Footballs forwards — see InstaPundit, as well) that

In 2002, the FEC [the Federal Election Commission] exempted the Internet by a 4-2 vote, but U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly last fall overturned that decision. “The commission’s exclusion of Internet communications from the coordinated communications regulation severely undermines” the campaign finance law’s purposes, Kollar-Kotelly wrote.
The FEC’s Democrats blocked all attempts to appeal this ruling.

The thing is, the judge is right: Exempting the Internet from FEC regulation is inconsistent with the purposes of the campaign finance “reform” law, which are to limit political speech all the time and to severely limit political speech during the approach to any election. The problem (for the law) is that these purposes are unconstitutional.

The First Amendment to the Constitution, the first article in the Bill of Rights, begins

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging freedom of speech, or of the press; ....
The history of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights makes clear that the speech the Framers believed it most important to protect was the speech that is most vulnerable to suppression — political speech. And the most vulnerable political speech is individual political speech. That is why the Constitution’s Framers put into the Bill of Rights an absolute prohibition on any law limiting individual freedom of speech. It is this prohibition McCain et cie. are ignoring. (I wonder what part of “no law” Senator McCain and his friends do not comprehend.)

The Senator and his friends put a “media exemption” into their bill, apparently because such an “exemption” was important to those they cared about and whose assistance they needed to get the bill passed. Their bill gives media organizations (and themselves, of course) rights it explicitly denies to other organizations and individuals. This “media exemption” was really intended only to quiet the press (and was effective in doing so) whose voices should have been among the loudest in insisting on the protection of individual rights. (But at least one broadcaster is willing to perform this service.) But the real issue is not about a “media exemption” or a “broadcast exemption” — the real issue is that any limitation of political speech, even if it is less far-reaching than banning all ads and commentary for two months before a general election as McCain-Feingold does, is expressly prohibited by the Constitution.

I am angry that anyone in a position of trust with the United States Government would care so little about basic individual and Constitutional rights. (And I am also unhappy that the current Supreme Court has been working so hard to avoid saying so plainly.) It seems to me that to characterize suppression of free speech — particularly suppression of free political speech — as “Campaign Finance Reform” is disingenuous at best. I’d characterize it, more accurately, as a major fraud.

Congress does not have the right to pass a speech suppression bill like McCain-Feingold. In addition, that law as written has ended up embodying all the bad effects charged by its opponents and none of the good effects claimed for it by its supporters. (We all remember George Soros’ many millions of dollars in contributions to John Kerry’s campaign just last fall, don’t we? So much for ending the influence of “big money” in political campaigns! And so much, too, for the decades old lie that the political “fat cats” are/were Republicans.) But the argument against McCain-Feingold is not that it doesn’t work. The argument against McCain-Feingold is that it is improper from its initial concept. Indeed, it can be argued that every Senator and Congressman who voted for this bill either was negligent or violated his/her oath of office and responsibilities to country and constituents. (As a non-lawyer, I wonder if that might not allow one to “pierce the corporate veil” and hold these individuals — especially the bill’s sponsors — personally liable for so violating their oaths and responsibilities.)

Captain’s Quarters opines that

McCain and Feingold have managed to foster real bipartisanship -- they've gotten liberal and conservative bloggers alike to detest them. Jerome Armstrong at MyDD, Atrios, and DailyKos all agree -- this legislation has become a serious threat to political speech, and John McCain and Russ Feingold have become two of the most dangerous politicians to American liberty since Huey Long. Jerome makes the point that the problem at the moment are the three Democratic FEC commissioners who appear intent on enforcing the law as McCain and Feingold insist, but both parties had a hand in creating this fiasco. Both should work to eliminate it and tell John McCain and Russ Feingold to shut the hell up -- and see how they like it.
Earlier in the same entry, Captain Ed makes a couple of other statements I completely agree with:
John McCain and Russ Feingold have effectively created an American bureaucracy dedicated to stamping out independent political speech, and the courts have abdicated all reason in declaring it constitutional. ... When the American government threatens to prosecute people for simply speaking their minds, we have truly lost our way.
A far better approach — and one that’s actually constitutional — would be to repeal McCain-Feingold and all other speech-limiting laws and regulations, and to put into place a serious “sunshine law” that requires attributability and provides serious jail time and other penalties for actual and attempted deception. Despite what Senator McCain appears to believe, society does not benefit from restrictions on political speech — society always benefits from more open political (and other) speech (with some protection against deception, which is why Internet links to allow for and support verification are so important). That’s why society at large (but not its old power centers) has benefited so much from the rise of the Internet — and why all the totalitarian powers are trying to regulate and suppress it.

It seems unlikely the FEC will impose political regulation on the Internet — at this time — if only because FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith’s public statements, in effect, “blew the whistle” on his fellow commissioners and caused them to backtrack (though a lot of that “backtracking” seems to me — and to others like PowerLine and Little Green Footballs, as well as multiple Captain’s Quarters postings including this one and this one — to be deceptive and possibly part of a deliberate campaign of deception). We can only hope the furor Smith has already caused and the bipartisanship Captain Ed talks about can help deter these people from further violating our rights. Longer term, McCain-Feingold, and the other similar “reform” laws must be repealed.
 


March 20, 2005
Easy As 1-2-3


(from Chris Muir’s Day By Day for Friday, March 18, 2005)

See Ryan Sager’s piece in the New York Post, following up on his article at Tech Central Station. See also Scott Johnson’s dissection of the true intent of the BCRA (the “Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act”) and its carefully selected targets — in its sponsors’ own words from the Congressional Record, collected in Justice Scalia’s dissent — in the Daily Standard. Ed Morrissey notes that “Johnson’s article points out the hypocrisy of sanitizing political speech in an era where the courts have permitted all kinds of activity to act as speech, therefore granting them the protection of the First Amendment umbrella” in his summary of Johnson’s article at Captain’s Quarters.

A recap: The Supreme Court has said various activities are speech (and therefore protected), and speech is not (and therefore not protected). (Speech isn’t speech! What a concept!)

I will make a prediction: The Supreme Court majority’s pretense that McCain-Feingold (the BCRA) is constitutional will be seen in the not-too-distant future as more egregious than the Dred Scott decision, which at least had the benefit of not having the actual words of the Constitution saying it was wrong. (“Congress shall make no law . . . abridging freedom of speech . . . .”)

Update: I’d failed to include the link to the Weekly Standard article. The link has now been inserted.
 


September 7, 2006
Unfree Speech


(from Chris Muir’s Day By Day for Friday, September 8, 2006)

We are now 60 days from the midterm elections, a key date for anyone hoping to exercise free political speech in the world's first free and democratic republic. America has entered the John McCain-Russ Feingold blackout period, where the federal government must enforce a ban on any third-party political advertising that has the temerity to mention incumbent politicians by name
That’s how Captain Ed describes where we now are.

The Left pretends we’re losing our rights, while exercising the rights we’ve supposedly already lost. While they’re doing that, though, they are ignoring a real suppression issue — one that is effective today. What is it? Here’s The Examiner:

Something almost without precedent in America will happen Thursday. That’s the day when McCain-Feingold — aka the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 — will officially silence broadcast advertising that contains criticism of members of Congress seeking re-election in November.
Naturally, the politicians that wrote and passed this “Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act” (known to many as the Incumbents’ Protection Act) put exemptions in it for themselves and their friends, including the media and people like George Soros.

No, this is not really a left-right political issue. Both parties and much of the Washington political establishment are complicit in the assault on freedom of political speech for the rest of us. And, apparently, depriving us of our right to free speech — the variety most important to the Constitution’s framers — was bought by the campaign finance lobby for just $140 million.

I wrote about this issue last year (in McCain-Supported Political Speech and Easy As 1-2-3). In the latter, I wrote

I will make a prediction: The Supreme Court majority’s pretense that McCain-Feingold (the BCRA) is constitutional will be seen in the not-too-distant future as more egregious than the Dred Scott decision, which at least had the benefit of not having the actual words of the Constitution saying it was wrong. (“Congress shall make no law . . . abridging freedom of speech . . . .”)
Or, as The Examiner says,
McCain-Feingold should not simply be repealed; it ought to be replaced with a new law that uses transparency in campaign finance rather than censorship in political expression.

 

January 3, 2007
John Conyers’ H.Res.288

Baron Bodissey has posted a particularly important piece at the Gates of Vienna today. The topic is Free Speech, and some of the ways this Constitutionally guaranteed freedom is being whittled away.

The most dangerous current attack is by a senior member of the new Democrat majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, John Conyers of Michigan. It is embodied in the resolution he introduced (H.Res.288) which, literally applied, would make it illegal to “insult” Islam. While it would not establish Islam as the U.S.’ state religion — yet — it would place it in a preferred position over all other religions and non-religions. Worse, it panders to the most intolerant and xenophobic form of Islam, that of the terrorists that have attacked us all around the world.

Yes, H.Res.288 was introduced in the outgoing Congress, and will have to be reintroduced for consideration by the new Democrat-controlled 110th Congress. But does anyone really think John Conyers won’t reintroduce it? Only the number will change, to protect the guilty.

Please, read Baron Bodissey’s piece, and let your Congressional representatives hear from you.
 


January 20, 2007
Another Attack on Political Free Speech

The leadership of the nation’s Democrats clearly does not believe in democracy. That is the only conclusion that can possibly be drawn. They are among those who attack President Bush for (supposedly) damaging our Constitutional rights while, in fact, they are the ones who are attacking those rights. (I’m hearing the Church Lady’s voice: Can you say projection?)

In the latest example, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had come up with a small grenade which Reid slipped into Senate Bill 1 (S.1), the lobbying and earmark reform bill. Under it (Section 220), bloggers read by 500 or more people — paid or not, as well as community and other groups, would have to register as lobbyists with the Federal Elections Commission or face a $100,000 fine and/or prison time. (!!) It would also make failure to register a criminal rather than a civil offense.

The bill would require reporting of “paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying,” but defines “paid” merely as communicating one’s views to 500 or more members of the public, with no other qualifiers. Thus, a blogger who has never gotten any money from anyone but who has been read by 500 people becomes a paid lobbyist, along with a citizen who speaks on a street corner or at community meetings and is heard by 500 people. (And to how many people have your e-mails been forwarded?) With Section 220, the Senate sought to make the exercise of First Amendment rights a criminal offense. That would make us a totalitarian state, not a democracy.

Is this really an attempt by the Democrat Congressional leadership to scare citizens into silence and blame its critics for its own corruption, or is it simply extreme incompetence in the drafting of the proposed legislation? If the former, they have clearly crossed the line. If the latter, they may have crossed the line in another way and “jumped the shark.” (Heck, even the ACLU opposes this one, though apparently only because it would require them to report their activities, too.)

This has led to a “good news/bad news” moment: The good news is that an amendment has been passed (by a 55-43 vote) to strike Section 220 from the bill. The bad news is that 43 senators (all Democrats, including my state’s own Senator Jeff Bingaman) voted to gut the Constitution’s First Amendment (Bill of Rights, Article 1). And, unfortunately, I’m sure Reid and Pelosi will continue to try to kill democracy and silence dissent.

Nor is this the only current threat to our freedoms. Congressman (and, thanks to Nancy Pelosi, committee chairman) Maurice Hinchey of New York — who believes, with no evidence, that Karl Rove conned CBS and Dan Rather into committing hara-kiri (seppuku) with the forged National Guard memos — is attempting to re-establish the horribly misnamed “fairness doctrine”, which would effectively require broadcast stations to balance commercially successful shows with unsuccessful ones. (The problem with the “fairness doctrine”, in practice, it that it requires balancing conservative views with “liberal” ones, but never requires balancing “liberal” views with conservative ones.) There are other threats, too, like that sponsored by John Conyers, which I’ve written about before.

And so the threats to our rights and liberties continue. I suppose it must always be thus: “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

Update: Captain Ed isn’t worried. He says this bill only “applies to anyone who communicates on behalf of a paid client and earns $25,000 or more in a quarter, or firm spending $25,000 or more in a quarter on grassroots lobbying efforts.” I have not read the complete bill, but I have read the section in question, which says “The term `paid attempt to influence the general public or segments thereof' does not include an attempt to influence directed at less than 500 members of the general public.” (This is part of the reason for my query as to whether this amendment was just incompetently written.) The question is this: Would the courts emphasize the exclusion in Section 220 or the alternate definition Captain Ed relies on? And do you really want to leave your rights up to some judge’s finding on that question?

Category: Individual Rights
 

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