Posted on 12/26/2003 4:16:50 AM PST by rhema
The First Amendment died earlier this month.
And if the First Amendment is dead, can we honestly claim to be a democratic republic any more?
This is not hyperbole. Imagine you’re at a meeting of civically minded folks and it’s nearly Election Day. Your Congressman is just about to vote on an issue of great concern to your group. You suggest that it’s time to pass around a hat, collect some money, and buy an add alerting your neighbors – urging them to call the Congressman. You collect the money, and the next morning you go to buy your ad.
You think you’re being a good American – getting involved in the democratic process. After all, the First Amendment said you have the freedom to associate – which you did, with other civically-minded people. That same amendment also said you have a right to petition for redress of grievances, and that you have free speech and press rights – so you can make a commercial that might reflect poorly on your Congressman.
After all, this is America.
But if you haven’t filed for your “license,” you’d be wrong. You need to become familiar with a complex web of laws, or you need to hire the consultants, lawyers, and accountants who already are familiar with those decrees – before you GO to your local station, even before you collect the proverbial $200. Because if you don’t, then you’ll go directly to jail.
Who came up with such an idea? Why, incumbent politicians of course. It bothers them to be criticized. They’ll grudgingly put up with it from their opponents because challengers usually can’t raise sufficient money to publicly and effectively broadcast similar criticism, and they haven’t (yet) found a “Supreme Court-sanctioned” method for suppressing their opponents.
But if you and your neighbors discuss an incumbent’s record in a paid commercial, those are now called “sham issue ads.” According to the majority of the Supreme Court, you need government approval to criticize a politician.
However, Justices Thomas, Scalia, and Kennedy were a bit old-fashioned. They said this new law, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), better known as McCain-Feingold, violated free speech and free press rights.
Just in case you think I’m full of hyperbole, or something worse – that I’ve overstated the damage done to the First Amendment or that the members of Congress who supported this bill had good intentions – consider these quotes that Justice Scalia cut and pasted into his judicial opinion:
“This bill is about slowing the ad war… making sure the flow of negative ads by outside interest groups does not continue to permeate the airwaves” - Senator Maria Cantwell, D-WA
“These so-called issues ads... directly attack candidates without any accountability. It is brutal… We have an opportunity in the McCain-Feingold bill to stop that…” - Senator Barbara Boxer, D-CA
“I think these issue advocacy ads are a nightmare. I think all of us should hate them… [By passing the legislation], we could get some of this poison politics off television.” - The late Senator Paul Wellstone, D-MN
Justice Thomas closed his opinion by predicting that the institutional press had seen their rights downgraded to a privilege, granted by the good graces of Congress. He wrote,
Media corporations are influential…What is to stop a future Congress from determining that the press is “too influential,” and that the “appearance of corruption” is significant when media organizations endorse candidates or run “slanted” or “biased” news stories…? …what is to stop a future Congress from concluding that the availability of unregulated media corporations creates a loophole that allows for easy circumvention of the limitations of the current campaign finance laws?
Indeed, I believe that longstanding and heretofore unchallenged opinions such as Miami Herald v. Tornillo, are in peril… Now, supporters… need only argue that the press capacity to manipulate popular opinion, gives rise to an “appearance of corruption”… After drumming up some evidence, laws regulating media outlets in their issuance of editorials would be upheld under the [Majority’s] reasoning.
“…Although today’s opinion does not expressly strip the press of First Amendment protection, there is no principle of law or logic that would prevent the application of the Court’s reasoning in that setting. The press now operates at the whim of Congress.”
Days before McCain-Feingold was to be debated in the US Senate, columnist George Will called an old colleague, Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation. He got right to the point, “I hope you and yours are doing everything you can to defeat McCain-Feingold in the House.” Weyrich said his troops were gearing up as they spoke. To which Will replied, “I assumed that was the case, but I wanted to be sure. This is the end of the world, you know.”
It may not be the Apocalypse, but the enactment of McCain-Feingold signals the death of an already bruised and battered 1st Amendment. And the destruction of the First Amendment means an apocalypse for democracy.
American Democracy, R.I.P.
Jim Babka is President of the American Liberty Foundation and RealCampaignReform.org, Inc.
If "activism" means reining in the benighted, self-serving excesses of a body who's just circumscribed our First Amendment liberties with a clearly unconstitutional legislative constraint, so be it.
So who are YOU gonna vote for, the Democrats who we KNOW will push into law homosexual marriage, partial birth abortion, 'hate crimes' legislation, etc.? The Republicans may not have done what we like, but I KNOW htey've stemmed the tide of some of the more egregious legislation. They're being stymied in the Senate by the RINOs who need to be defeated, and replaced by more conservative Senators. Now that we have our rallying points, we are responsible for making sure that there are conservative candidates who will run against Democrats and their RINO conterparts. Only by doing that will we ever have the hope of defeating the liberal slant of the courts by putting in place conservative legislators who will allow truly conservative justices to be appointed, and who will pass new laws which will buttress our points of view.
Maybe it's a good sign that I can't think of an example of such a nonpartisan broadcast ad that would have been mistakenly proscribed by this law?
Yes, perhaps it can be revisited before any great damage is down.
It's covered by the 1st amendment, which enumerates the Right of the people to petition the government.
Anyway, the Constitution doesn't have to say it.
This is covered by the 9th amendment which states that if the Constitution doesn't delegate a power to the federal government, that power belongs to the people.
Very insightful.. thanks for posting it!
I hope you decide to stick around here, and don't get run off by the bootlicking contigent.
Aside from the tax breaks and our aggressive miltary action against enemies that plan to destroy us, it's pretty much nowhere to be found.
BUT...flyover country is a lot smarter than your average ad exec, and I'm convinced that while Joe 6 pack watches the country dip into the sh-tter, he is also going to get it out.
In the meantime you're STILL wasting your time on this forum...they all WANT to be lead to the slaughter.
You have the gall to consider yourselves patriots, when all you do is NIT-PICK and whine, yet I doubt you have made very little actual effort to contribute anything else to our cause but rhetoric! In fact, I can't tell the difference between you or the anti-war weenies over at DU.
Where I come from, we take jerks like yourselves and give them article 15s, section 8s or Dishonorable Discharges for insubordination.
Let me remind you, we are at WAR. In a time of war we support our Commander in Chief, we do not ridicule him or disrespect him. Because when we do, we threaten to defeat ourselves from within.
Before you advertise what is wrong with this great country, try living some where else instead. You really do not understand just how good you really have it here.
Or, perhaps you should join up with me and my Brothers and help fight for this country! But by listening to your sickening attitudes and the crap you spew, I would have second thoughts about trusting any one of you to cover my perimeter.
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