Thread: Enjoy this website while you still can...

http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/vernon/060326

The enemies of free speech are on the march--Part 3


Wes Vernon
Wes Vernon
March 26, 2006


Enjoy this website while you can. The enemies of free speech — ever ready to shut up anyone with whom they disagree — are out to terminate free-swinging commentary encouraged by this and other web pages.

The Federal Election Commission has been grappling with the issue as to whether and how free political speech on the Internet should be "regulated [read muzzled]."

The issue goes back to the anti-free speech McCain-Feingold campaign alleged "reform" law that passed in 2002. The idea of writing legislation to shut up opponents who dare to challenge the perceived wisdom of incumbent office-holders seems so absurd on its face that it says something about the dark era in which we live that such legislation became law — all because one politician Senator John McCain was ticked off at the Club for Growth, which ran ads opposing his 2000 bid to become President of the United States.

The Arizona senator and his Democrat colleague from Wisconsin — Russ Feingold — wrote their ill-advised incumbent protection racket legislation in 2001. It was passed in 2002 by a Congress that had been cowed by the mainstream media. The big newspapers and broadcast networks editorialized and/or otherwise favorably covered the anti-free speech bill without telling their readers and viewers that they had a vested interest. The law exempted a "broadcast station, newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication." The liberal establishment mouthpieces were only too happy to say, "Freedom of speech for me, but not for thee."

President Bush signed the bill in the dark of night, making it clear that he didn't like it, but confident the courts would throw it out. He should have known better. Why did he think the Senate liberals were unconstitutionally filibustering his court nominees? He must have known the courts are filled with political hacks who interpret the Constitution according to their socialist precepts. The conventional wisdom is Mr. Bush did not want to get the volatile McCain riled up again just when he needed the senator's backing for the Iraq war. The Supreme Court later rubber-stamped the McCain-Feingold Law.

The FEC ruled in 2002 that the Internet was exempt from the McCain-Feingold anti-free speech law. Senators McCain and Feingold disagreed, sued in court, and won. In effect, they got another politician in black robes to rule that the New York Times was free to say whatever it wanted, but for the upstart Internet media news outlets who want similarly to exercise their own First Amendment rights, no way. Many bloggers, who sass back liberals on a daily basis, were thereby told to shut up.

Though both conservative and liberal blogs are up in arms over the ruling, the judges have effectively tilted the public square in a leftward direction. If the liberal blogs go, the big liberal newspapers and networks remain. If the conservative blogs go, there will still be talk radio and Fox News — all important and gaining huge audiences, but still no match for the old-line media.

Following the court ruling, the Federal Election Commission has been working on outlining rules that could limit political Web logs and e-mail. Before Congress took a week off March 17, the House had come close to voting on the Online Freedom of Speech Act. That measure — as described by the Washington Times — would allow "political blogs, e-mails and other types of individual online communication to continue operating free from FEC regulation."

The vote was abruptly postponed. It appears that Congress and the FEC may be engaged in an "After you, my dear Alphonse" kabuki dance.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, the sponsor of the legislation, is frustrated that the measure has been yanked. It was indefinitely postponed notwithstanding the support it has from House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. Were lawmakers waiting for the FEC to weigh in? If so, it would be ironic because Hensnarling thinks the FEC wants Congress to act first, according to the Texas congressman's spokesman Ken Walz in a Times interview. "I don't think the FEC is all that keen on this [government web regulation]," he said. In fact, FEC Chairman Michael E. Toner has endorsed Congressman Hensnarling's bill.

Last year, then-outgoing FEC Chairman Bradley Smith — a champion of free speech rights — told CNET that the judge's ruling against the Internet "is in no way limited to ads. She [U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly] says that any activity over the Internet would need to be regulated as a minimum. The problem with coordinated activity over the Internet is that it will strike, as a minimum, Internet reporting activities."

There you have the problem right there, because as Smith says, "Certainly a lot of bloggers are out front."

It is important that all freedom-loving Americans let their congressmen and senators know — now-preferably by phone — that they will not tolerate a vote against free speech on the Internet. The First Amendment means something. Hopefully it is not a scrap of paper, to be twisted by any black-robed politician who doesn't like the idea that the great unwashed get to speak out on current issues.

Senator McCain refused to meet with Bradley Smith all during his five years on the FEC. At one time, the senator told the then-Commission chairman to his face that he was "a bully and a coward."

Ponder that phraseology. Let's say an incumbent senator with a hot temper decides he's going to use his power of incumbency and high-profile name recognition to write a law that would put his challenger in the next election at a distinct disadvantage. Let's say this senator knew how to cultivate the powerful mainstream media so that they eat up his Madison Avenue-like slogan: "Straight Talk Express," and treat the man as if he could do no wrong.

Then let's say that the bill written by the incumbent senator puts equal advertising restrictions on both him and his much lesser-known opponent. While the senator can get by with fawning media coverage — all free of charge, of course — the other guy would need to spend big bucks just to gain the name recognition equal to that of the incumbent. But he can't because Senator Whoever has written a bill that could impose a prohibitive fine or perhaps a jail sentence if the challenger tries for a level playing field in his campaign.

Would that senator qualify as "a bully" and "a coward?"

Think about that. And let the lawmakers whose salaries you pay understand you're watching them on this one, and you'll accept no excuses for curbing your right of free speech on the Internet.


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Wes Vernon is a Washington-based writer and veteran broadcast journalist.

he issue goes back to the anti-free speech McCain-Feingold campaign alleged "reform" law that passed in 2002. The idea of writing legislation to shut up opponents who dare to challenge the perceived wisdom of incumbent office-holders seems so absurd on its face that it says something about the dark era in which we live that such legislation became law � all because one politician Senator John McCain was ticked off at the Club for Growth, which ran ads opposing his 2000 bid to become President of the United States.

The Arizona senator and his Democrat colleague from Wisconsin � Russ Feingold � wrote their ill-advised incumbent protection racket legislation in 2001. It was passed in 2002 by a Congress that had been cowed by the mainstream media. The big newspapers and broadcast networks editorialized and/or otherwise favorably covered the anti-free speech bill without telling their readers and viewers that they had a vested interest. The law exempted a "broadcast station, newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication." The liberal establishment mouthpieces were only too happy to say, "Freedom of speech for me, but not for thee."

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