Your assignment today is to discover just where the writer goes wrong.(hint: After)
Hugh & Series, Critical & Pulled by JimRob
Special to FreeRepublic | 17 December 2003 | John Armor (Congressman Billybob)
This is nothing like the usual whine by someone whose post was pulled. JimRob pulled my previous thread for a good reason. "If direct fund-raising were permitted on FR, it would soon be wall-to-wall fund-raising."
So, let's start again correctly. This is about civil disobedience to support the First Amendment and challenge the TERRIBLE CFR decision of the Supreme Court to uphold a terrible law passed by Congress and signed by President Bush.
All who are interested in an in-your-face challenge to the 30- and 60-day ad ban in the Campaign Finance "Reform" Act, please join in. The pattern is this: I'm looking for at least 1,000 people to help the effort. I will run the ad, and risk fines or jail time to make it work -- AND get national support.
But there should be NO mentions of money in this thread, and not in Freepmail either. This is JimRob's electronic home, and we should all abide his concerns.
Put your comments here. Click on the link above, and send me your e-mail addresses. I will get back to you by regular e-mail with the practical details.
This CAN be done. This SHOULD be done. But it MUST be done in accord with JimRob's guidelines.
Fair enough?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1042394/posts Update
I've already tested the idea of my in-your-face challenge ads, first in the print media and then deliberately illegal on TV, with certain editors I have a long relationship with. I could trust these two gentlemen, one in the print media and the other in the broadcast media, with a "heads up" on what I am planning. Both said they wanted to know, in advance, when I am about to do this.
The bottom line is clear. If I am willing to put my neck on the line, with the possibilities of a fine and jail time, THAT effort will put CFR back on the front page in all media. And that is part of the point. There's not much value of going in-your-face against the enemies of the First Amendment unless the press takes up the story and spreads the word. It is now clear they will do exactly that.
Update 2
QUICK PROGRESS REPORT, ANSWERING A SUPPORTER'S QUESTION:
We have about 15% of the needed 1,000 sign-ups.
Spread the word, direct folks to the front page link on my website.
Google-bomb the phrase "anti-CFR" directing readers to that page and link. (We're already #2 and #4 on Google.)
Target date is now August, since the NC primary looks to be put back to September. (Remember, the ad isn't illegal until the 29th day before the election.)
Cordially,
John / Billybob
Note if you are interested in more on this please contact myself or Congressman Billybob
Mr. Mann doesn't understand the concept of "free speech", and how CFR limits/restricts the same. From his opening sentence he is hopelessly misguided.
Mr. Mann writes "Recall that a fundamental objective of campaign finance regulation is to ensure that the inequalities generated by the market economy do not undermine the political equality that is a central feature of our democracy."
I'll be a monkey's uncle if I ever find that in our Constitution.
Oh, let me play the game. Right at the beginning the writer refers to "unrefuted findings" concerning corruption in politics. As the dissenting Justices pointed out, there were ample statements from various politicians that politicians are being bought, or at least rented. But in each case the person asserting that was quick to deny that he, or anyone he knows personally, is corrupt.
Every legitimate decision, note the use of the word "legitimate," rests on two bases: facts and law. In the McConnell decision, five Justices first faked the facts, and having done that, faked the law to applu those "facts." Other than those two minor defects, the Court's decision in the CFR case is a fine example of judicial craftsmanship.
Do I win the prize for analyzing the decision and the article? LOL.
John / Billybob
He goes wrong after the first sentence:
Their decision will confront our democracy with one of two futures: a continuing, necessarily imperfect effort to limit the troublesome ways in which money distorts elections and public policy making or a return to a 19th-century state of nature in which anything short of bribery or extortion goes.
Our government is a constitutional republic, not a democracy. I like how the name of this forum attests to this fact.