Posted on 09/15/2013 7:53:03 AM PDT by yoe
A media shield law approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee defines a “real reporter” deserving of extra protection. Bloggers, "citizen journalists," and others cry "foul!"
[snip]The first version of a media shield law that handily made it through the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday defined for the first time what constitutes a “real reporter” deserving of extra protection versus what Sen. Dianne Feinstein called a “17-year-old blogger” who doesn’t deserve a legal shield.
[snip] That Congress is attempting to define “journalist” at all in order to expand protections after a number of high-profile leak cases and ensuing Justice Department prosecutions caused blog impresario Matt Drudge to call Ms. Feinstein a “fascist” on Twitter, suggesting that the law would subvert a free press by giving institutional advantage to government-approved media outlets.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
Diane Feinstein is not even proceeding in orderly fashion. First she assaults the Second Amendment and then she goes back to attack the first.
Sorry, nathanbedford, but as happens once in a great while, I've got to disagree with you.
As far as Marxists are concerned, any assault against the old constitutional America is a good and worthy assault, and the greater the number of seemingly unrelated assaults, the better.
Oh, by the way, the First Amendment doesn't apply to journalists, but all of us. How hard is that to figure out?
Maybe it is time the Senate define for Feinsein what a ‘REAL’ SENATOR is suppose to be according to our Constitution.
I scored perfectly. . .all I did (seriously) was identify the right answer and THEN choose the left-wing misinformation/statement and that choice was the “correct” one.
Much like when in college, write/answer that the prof wants to hear regardless of the facts.
Relax. This is all done for our own good. We will be protected from irresponsible 17-year-old gossip mongerers. If all journalists are certified by the Ministry of Truth there will be much less disinformation on the net.
“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 sounds like a “quaint notion of men who died 200 years ago,” to quote Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) who swore to uphold this “ancient screed.”
Relax. This is all done for our own good. We will be protected from irresponsible 17-year-old gossip mongerers. If all journalists are certified by the Ministry of Truth there will be much less disinformation on the net.
“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 sounds like a “quaint notion of men who died 200 years ago,” to quote Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) who swore to uphold this “ancient screed.”
That’s what I was trying to do but I got tricked on three of ‘em.
Freedom of the press does extend to all of us.
Of course the game here is to play off the Supreme Court decision which limits the liability of journalists for the release of classified information by defining journalist to someone other than Drudge who reaches millions of people every day but including in the definition some establishment figure who writes for an audience of a fraction of the size inside the Beltway.
the freedom of expression is a G-d given right for all people, not some govt designated group of high priests
if govt can designate which people have first amendment rights... then they can designate who has second amendment rights as well.
and last I checked, the Creator didn’t appoint congress to oversee our rights
The arrogant, condescending, egotistical Judiciary have nothing more than their vast clique of lawyers who prey upon people, to maintain the semblance of “settled law” that the judges-and-lawyers are “experts with ‘expertise’” in their field ...
which, by the way, is how academics get “tenure” - which is a mutual admiration society grant by the judges vis-a-vis “well back your arrogance, if you’ll back ours”
... allowing by raw fiat that is LOST IN EXTRA-CONSTITUTIONAL SPACE, such claims and grants ...
that are not “settled” at all.
They forget, that our Constitution is a peace treaty.
At any rate, does anyone actually want Dianne Feinstein deciding this question?
Perhaps it is time that an official series is done on the biographies of all of our elected officials. It would be depressing I am sure as well as maddening. Especially for those that have been in office forever. . .like Feinstein.
There has been so much degreed journalist fraud and collusion with the DNC in recent years, that their efforts to protect “The Guild” should be responded to with a loud and resounding “HELL NO!”
The essence of this is that there can be two people doing the same thing. One goes to prison and the other doesn’t.
Pamphleteers were the scourge of governments when the Constitution was written. As you said, Franklin was, among other things, one of these as was Thomas Paine. The classic examples include Paine, abolitionist literature, union pamphlets, and the political postings on the walls of Beijing. In America, they have most often been tools of the left and those wishing to overthrow our governing system.
Now, the pamphlet is the web site. The printing press is obsolete. Whoever controls the Internet controls the dialogue. Since the left is in control of the government, they must control the dialogue.
Right, Di! damn alternatives....can’t get a darn thing done with them snooping around...
She wouldn’t have liked any of the pamphleteers, like Thos. Paine, or even, B. Franklin, either.
Giving the government the power to define anything is to give the government the power to control everything with very often disastrous results.
A quick walk through the history of the 20th Century provides many examples of this in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the US. Europe from the mid 1920’s through the end of World War II some 20 years later provides a well documented example. The use of psychiatric hospitals in Russia for 40 years is another. The population purges in Cambodia and Communist China are yet another. And don’t forget the unconstitutional imprisonment of Americans with Japanese bloodlines in the early 1940smuch less the decades of the Jim Crow laws through out the Republic.
Unfortunately the list gets even larger as you walk back through the 19th, 18th, and 17th Centuries.
The Founding Fathers knew their history and that is why the Constitution was developed the way it was. Any attempt to by-pass or rewrite it to make it more contemporary ignores the history of mankind for the last 400 years.
BTW can anyone name any improvements breed into the human animal in the last 400 years?
There is no reason why “journalists” need “extra protection.”
Nice work.
Yes.
In the earliest days of the Republic, anyone who would afford a printing press was a journalist.
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