Thursday, May 13, 2010

Protecting freedom of speech through censorship?



"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

This is one of the most fundamental of our freedoms. The right of the "People" to have unlimited freedom of political speech. It is true I cannot stand in a theater and shout fire. We don't have the freedom to slander a person, or make false allegations, but, when it comes to political speech the Constitution is quite clear there are to be NO limits.

Enter McCain Fiengold. The odious so called campaign finance law. This peice of crap law should never have been ratified. I remember Bush signing it and thought how could he? I know Bush thought it would be struck down immediately, but, alas it was not. Thankfully it has since been put to rest thanks to a lawsuit by a group called "Citizens United".

In this watershed case for first amendment rights Obama's new pick for the Supreme Court argued against allowing corporations to publish books or pamphlets advocating the election or defeat of a political candidate,and, whats more, Mr. Obama thinks this protects the rights of citizens. I beg to differ. In the case of Citizens United this was a non profit that wanted to release a documentary critical of Hillary Clinton. the government said no!

Now Barack wants the women who fought to uphold this censorship law appointed to the Supreme court and even says ...
"Last year, in the Citizens United case, she defended bipartisan campaign finance reform against special interests seeking to spend unlimited money to influence our elections. Despite long odds of success, with most legal analysts believing the government was unlikely to prevail in this case, Elena still chose it as her very first case to argue before the Court. I think that says a great deal not just about Elena’s tenacity, but about her commitment to serving the American people. I think it says a great deal about her commitment to protect our fundamental rights."


Supposedly this law was supposed to stop for profit corporations and labor unions from unduly influencing elections. But I ask the question why can't these groups be allowed to have political opinons? This was a red herring from the get go! What is truly disturbing is the prohibitions against corporations from exercising their first amenment rights is that it was possible tha news papers, radio broadcasts, and other form of speech produced by "corporations" could be restricted!. My golly almost everything we see, read or hear is is produced by a "corporation".

This sort of thing is very dangerous. If the government can shut up corporations then they can shut you and I up too. They already drool at the thought of silencing talk radio and conservative bloggers. Now comes Barack wanting this woman on the Supreme Court, a person who see's nothing wrong with censorship.

Folks the Supreme court has already ruled against personal freedom enough. In the last several years their have been a lot of cases that have eroded our freedom, and ,one in particular, that basically wiped out personal property rights.

We don't need Barack Obama's version of protecting our rights we need justices who will uphold the Constituion as it was written by the founders. We don't have too much freedom, rather, more and more, we have too little. We sure as heck don't need our "rights" protected by censorship!