[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Let those who challenge the right of the people to use technology to promote their opinions admit that they themselves dearly hold on to their right to use the telegraph to pool their reporting. And let them admit that the framers unambiguously did provide for the case of technology which could not be safely used by the people, even if constitutionally protected. It is called Article V, and it provides for the amendment of the Constitution - by a process, unfortunately for the opponents of equal rights, which is not easy to get unjust and therefore controversial proposals through.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

“We hope. They did allow Campaign Finance Reform to stand.”

You are talking about McConnell v. FEC right? That was pre-Scalia and Roberts. But yes, a lot of hope is involved.

It was pre-Alito and Roberts (and, concommitantly, post O'Connor and Rhenquist). The loss of Rhenquist was the loss of a good vote on McConnell v. FEC, but the retirement of O'Connor eliminated a bad vote on it. Assuming that Roberts and Alito will be good on the issue and Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy go as they did before, that would be enough for a favorable 5-4 split to overturn the unfavorable 5-4 ruling in McConnell v. FEC.

I would have a case brought against the FEC and the FCC along the following lines:

• The First Amendment cannot be read narrowly because the framers of the unamended Constitution argued against the Bill of Rights only on the basis that future opponents of liberty (read, "liberals" and "objective journalists") would work to make a bill of rights a ceiling rather than a floor on our liberties. So the rights stipulated in the First Amendment are mere examples of our freedoms rather than an exhaustive list of our rights to public expression of our opinions. The fact that the First Amendment does not - as it could not have - mention the Internet and the radio is therefore of no import. The body of the Constitution must be interpreted as including the First Amendment, and that cannot be done in a way which excludes equality of the rights of the people to express opinions on the radio and the internet. No price, and no membership in a private organization, touches the rights of the people. Those rights pertain to each person whether or not he/she has as of yet purchased a printing press, and whether or not he or she has joined the Associated Press (an organization whose founding was two generations in the future when Washington was first elected POTUS).

• The plaints of the opponents of liberty are not directed at the radio as such but only at a particular programming format, "talk radio." That format has proven to have the virtue of being congenial to the arguments of philosophers and not to the blandishments of sophists. Philosophers, in the original (etymological) sense, are people who do not argue from any assumption of their own superior virtue but restrict their arguments to facts and logic. Sophists, OTOH, argue from the assumption of their own superior wisdom (in the literal meaning of "soph") - or, in the case of journalists styling themselves "the press," from the assumption of their own objectivity. And politicians who call themselves "liberal" or "progressive," agreeing perfectly with "objective journalists" and therefore sharing the vice inherent in journalists' presumptuous assumption of their own objectivity. And such politicians also argue from the assumption of their own superior compassion as well. It is not necessary for SCOTUS to agree with this point, only to agree that it would be wrong to reject it as a possibility - and wrong for SCOTUS to allow those who might be sophists to censor those who might be philosophers.

• Any rationale to exclude the radio and the Internet from the First Amendment on grounds of novelty would reach the telegraph, and certainly the TV. It is patently false to claim that the framers did not anticipate the radio and the internet, or any other technology. Article 1 Section 8 explicitly gives Congress the right "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries" - and also the Article V right to propose constitutional amendments if developments (not excluding technological ones) reveal the necessity thereof.

• Any claim of a lack of diversity of radio programming can be answered by expanding the spectrum allocated to that function without reducing the ability of existing stations to air existing programming. Reducing the ability of existing stations to air existing programming is censorship, and requires amendment not only of the First Amendment but also of the body of the Constitution.

• Any restriction on the right of the people to spend their own money to promote their own political, or other, opinions requires a constitutional amendment. The FEC has no rightful authority, and such authority as it has wielded has been asymmetrically applied.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2188532/posts?page=16