http://www.kowabunga.org/2007/06/feinst ... peech.html

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA, my home state) announced on "Fox News Sunday" that she would consider reinstating the Fairness Doctrine on broadcast radio. This move would stifle conservative talk radio. I guess that in Feinstein's world "silence is golden."

Feinstein's reasoning stems from the ongoing debate on Immigration Reform and the current legislation before the Senate: The McKennedy Amnesty Act, or, as it is otherwise known as, The Immigration Reform Act of 2007.

From UPI:

"This is a very complicated bill," said Feinstein. "Most people don't know what's in this bill. Therefore, to just have one or two things dramatized and taken out of context, such as the word amnesty -- we have a silent amnesty right now, but nobody goes into that. Nobody goes into the flaws of our broken system."
In Feinstein's example she sites a few reasons, including that talk radio is inciting Americans to react to this legislation without being fully informed, and referring to it as "amnesty." If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, then it's a duck, and the proposal being floated on immigration reform is amnesty.

If she had pulled out the half-baked notions presented in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth as an example of why the fairness doctrine needs to be returned, I'd say she has a point. I still would not want it brought back.

As for the "flaws in our broken (immigration) system," if it is broke it is because of left-wingnuts refusing to enforce our existing laws and our Federal Government not taking action against communities that declare themselves sanctuaries. Instead of cutting off Federal funding to these "sanctuary" cities, they just let them continue on.

The border fence which was approved last fall is yet to have serious work performed on it.

Meanwhile, with the promise of new amnesty, there is a bigger run for the border to get in to the U.S. while the getting is good.

The bottom line is: enforcement begins at home.

Before any new immigration reform act should be considered, let alone implemented, Congress should first secure our borders (North and South), put in place a serious means to allow employers to filter out illegal aliens based on social security numbers presented (the Feds can implement a database lookup to verify that the name and SSN provided to an employ in fact match, and if they do not, that person is denied a job and reported to the INS).

Before any illegal alien is put on any path of legalization, they must first pass any and all background and health checks that a legal immigrant must pass. (I suspect that with the way things are currently, there will be a lot of "wiggle room" to allow exemptions to the health/security checks.) If they fail, they are denied reentry into the U.S. Further, they should have to prove that they have in fact resided in the U.S. using the same timelines and documentation as was required in the 1986 Amnesty bill.

As for the "Fairness Doctrine," that is nothing more than a Hugo Chavez like tactic to silence opposition, something that is the antithesis of free speech.