Posted on 12/10/2003 7:09:03 AM PST by July 4th
Reports that main portions of McCain-Feingold are now being upheld! People currently wading through a decision of over 300 pages.
Driving to the polls is part of an election. The roads used to travel to the polling place is part of an election. The building in which the voting booths are set up or which may one day be set up are part of an election.
The speeches the candidates give are part of an election. The introductory comments made by by the hosts of the candidates are part of an election. The literature distributed at a campaign appearance are part of an election. The signs held up are part of an election. The signs posted on street corners and such are part of an election. The candidate's bumper stickers are part of an election. The punch served at campaign events are part of an election. The confetti and balloons dropped at the party conventions are part of an election.
Private discussion between you and your family, neighbors, and acquaintances about the candidates are part of an election. The medium you use to communicate your thoughts about the candidate (letters, telephone, internet, email, verbalization) are part of an election.
Give it a rest. You are wrong. Your position is absurd. Limiting speech at 30-days or 60-days means that speech can be limited at 160-days, 365-days, or 2-years. Limiting the political speech of people peacably assembled and organized (ie. incorporated) means that political speech of any group, however organized or unorganized, can be limited - and eventually individual political speech. Just by claiming something is "part of an election" does not give the Congress unlimited power to limit or regulate it - as you imply.
If you continue in your idiotic assertion, please show me the equally idiotic similar assertion made by the majority of the Supreme Court in this decision. Show me that they cite the manner of elections, times, and places in the Constitution as the grant of power authorizing this limitation upon political speech.
LOL, and you were living here in NC were you? She was handpicked by national committees, flown in to see the citizens of this state, did a bit of campaigning, and a debate or two where she agreed with her opponent more often than not. While the men who lived here during the time she was up in Washington helping to centralize more power in that godforsaken city, namely in the Transportation Department, were thrown aside. We've got Giddy. Heck she hasn't lived here in over a quarter of a century but she knows what we need!! Dragging her 100 year old mother up on the screen to tell us how we need nationalized healthcare, a walk through a textile plant telling us how she 'understood', and direct attacks on the manufacturing side of the tobacco industry is not representing this state.
Just because you don't like her doesn't mean she was not highly qualified, she obviously was and had been involved in National politics for decades. In fact, she was one of the MOST qualified candidates for the Senate who ran that year.
Interesting you should say that. Where do you live again? North Carolina? Thought not. The woman had not lived here for over 30 years. She was no more qualified to represent the people of North Carolina than a Clinton was qualified to represent the state of New York. However, unlike Clinton, when one scratches a little deeper than the surface of Mrs. Dole it's quite easy to see her politics don't match well with many native North Carolinians Contrary to popular belief by some, Senatorial representation is not some game of musical chairs to be played by national parties who are more interested in their own national agenda over the concerns of the people of the respective state
Plus she has an engaging personality and people like her.
Well that's the most important thing in Republican politics isn't it now? To heck with limited government, social and fiscal conservatism, they like her, they really like her. Ask the 2700 people at RJR that are going to be laid off in part because of her tobacco 'buyout' or the 6000+ workers from Pillowtex. Before you start talking about what North Carolinians like, come down here and visit with some of them. This woman is a detriment to this state and she couldn't be voted out of office quickly enough
Today you can say those things as long as you're not specifically using something defined somewhere a "soft money" on "broadcast media" to say it. That you fail to see the camel's nose under the tent, or perceive that our freedom of political speech is dangling on the precipice of a very slippery slope, doesn't mean that the danger of further, unfettered usurpation is not real. The die has been cast. The line has been crossed. What is left to restrain the Congress from further usurpation? I say the only thing left is a lack of current election-related crises upon which to base further usurping legislation. It is only a matter of time and effort until a new crisis appears which will demand more, similar legislation.
And I will remember you as the one single poster on Free Republic who was most vehemently defending this tragic decision.
And I notice too that in your comments you said that the alien and sedition acts were never constitutionally challenged.
I take it then it is constitutional for some goofball to knock on my door and lock me away in handcuffs if i so much as call an elected official to the carpet on a policy I know is malicious and harmful to my constitutional rights. That somehow the sensibillities of the poltical class or the concerns thereof trumps my first amendment rights of free speech.
I don't know where you get this kind of midset but something tells me you haven't been readin all of the analysis or looked through any of the stuff as much as I have. Might I suggest you and your fellow John McCain types go back to the documents and read them again so that you would understand better than you do now what the founding fathers meant when they said "Congress shall no law abridging the freedom of speech.
"We'll just see what happens when the Democrats take both houses of Congress and we hhave a Democrat in the White House and this nation ends up like a thrid world country similar to Zimbabwe. Maybe then you and your fellow John McCain types will take a much different and more dignified atitude towards those who do have concerns about this law.
Regards.
Oh, btw, you handle is rotten, imo. Sick. Try another one. Just MY OPINION!
Handpicked and all other candidates pushed aside long before the state primaries. Only then were North Carolinians given the "priviledge" to pick between Bowels or Giddy or refuse voting for either.
The "R" behind the name is about an equally truthful representation as is the "NC".
There's yet another example of your pig-headedness. That is simply, not completely true. It is true that the USSCT claims that it is the final arbitrator, and that most judicial and policing authorities act upon a general acceptance of that claim, yet not everyone does nor should accept that completely.
In the not-so-distant past -- as many have attempted to have your tin-ears hear -- that claim of sovereignity over the Constitution by the US Supreme Court was not so generally accepted, it was rejected, counter-claims of authority are made, have been made.
The very first words of the Constitution say WHO owns the charter! Who is sovereign over the Constitution. And those are not "The Supreme Court, in order to ...", they are "We, the People, in order to ..."
From a practical view of good order and clear judgement in the Courts it is not clear at all as to why a SOLE, unchallengeable, arbitrator of Constitutional authority is needed.
Trivial? Have you read Scalia's dissent (to which I flagged you)? He does not consider the matter trivial, not at all.
Apparently you believe in judicial tyranny.
Nice. We've reduced a sovereign people and their governing process down to the tribunal decisions of a Senile Seven.
Wow, you get all that from those two words in the 1st Amendment: "the press." Amazing what you can get supposedly without any interpretation.
Your arguement is as vacant as claiming that somehow only black powder muskets are covered by the SEcond Amendment.
If the 2nd Amendment had said "the right of the people to bear muskets shall not be infringed," then it would be a similar argument. Instead it uses the general term "arms." The 1st Amendment does not use a general term, like journalists, or communicaiton. It refers to a specific piece of equipment. It is only by extrapolation that we arrive at the common formulation: press = media and journalists.
Likewise, the freedom of speech has required vast amounts of judicial effort to interpret for modern society. The commonly agreed upon exception agsint incitement, against enemy propaganda, against "yelling fire in a crowded theater," are all redefinitions of freedom of speech. Even the regulation of the radio waves required a reinterpretation of the 1st Amendment.
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