I agree. Additionally, 'journalism' has attracted the largest concentration of Marxists - outside academia - that can be found today. Reading all the comments and blogs and such from those laid off is instructive. Most of them haven't a clue as to how wealth is created. Nor do they care. They've been indoctrinated into believing what they do is a calling and their existence should be guaranteed by the Collective.
And every one of them are union types.
The DukeLax Frame exposed how the Durham Power Structure and the local media partnered to obtain a political outcome. Their "legal system" was not sufficiently sturdy to withstand the strain. It is on a smaller scale what is ongoing nationally with the Media as an active partner with the Collective.
With respect to the SCOTUS, I ask why must we go hat in hand to them to ratify a right which we were born with? Do we not empower them to control us when we ask their permission to do something we already can do? I say we just speak out as we please and defy them to come after us.
It's similar to the Heller case. I'm glad we won it, but what if we hadn't? Why give them the power, I ask?
Perhaps I'm too belligerent, but I think it worth noting.
With respect to the SCOTUS, I ask why must we go hat in hand to them to ratify a right which we were born with? Do we not empower them to control us when we ask their permission to do something we already can do? I say we just speak out as we please and defy them to come after us.
It's similar to the Heller case. I'm glad we won it, but what if we hadn't? Why give them the power, I ask?
Perhaps I'm too belligerent, but I think it worth noting.
It is a question to be respected. But the Heller case did succeed (tho some would argue for the flat-out abolition of gun registration, rather than merely "shall issue").And in any event we do not face the same risk in seeking a rehearing of McConnell v. FEC for the simple reason that we already bear the burden of the adverse result of McConnell. And, whether you think it prudent or not, the Republican Party (or some subset thereof) is even now bringing the issue raised by McConnell v. FEC back into the courts. So in that sense the issue is out of our hands anyway, and the question is now whether the courts will burden us with yet another rebuff to our peading for relief from McCain-Feingold.
And as SCOTUS is constituted following the resignation of O'Connor, Justice Kennedy - in the minority in the court's erroneous 5-4 holding against McConnell in McConnell v. FEC - is now dominant. So there is lively hope of success in that suit. But even if SCOTUS were to overturn McConnell, that would hardly guarantee that SCOTUS would issue a broad enough ruling to protect the people's "freedom of the press" rights to FReep and to have Talk Radio be on an equal footing before the law with "objective journalism." So I suggest a "friend of the court" filing along the lines of my #54 which would suggest to the Court (i.e., to Justice Kennedy) a rationale by which the Court could settle the issue in a way which is readily defensible (far more so than Heller, which required a patient Justice Scalia to give the country a history lesson on the meaning of the language used in the Second Amendment) and congenial to the majority now sitting on the Court (again, essentially Justice Kennedy).
In summary, that rationale is that:
Accordingly any law (and McCain-Feingold in particular) which purports to restrict the right of the people, or any one of them, to spend money to propagate opinions (and most unambiguously, political or religious opinions explicitly mentioned in clauses of the First Amendment) is no law enforceable under constitutional government. Or else, the exceptions in McCain-Feingold for "the press" apply to all the people and not to a privileged subset of them.
- "freedom of the press" is a right of all the people, and each of them individually - and not limited to a subset thereof as yet unborn in the framing era.
- "freedom of the press" is not limited to the technology of printing circa 1792. It includes the high speed printing press developed since the 1830s - and it includes telegraphy, telephony, movies, radio, Xerography and television developed much later, the PC Internet today, and whatever communication technology may extend those capabilities in as yet unexplored ways in the future. If anyone can use the Internet and put up web sites, everyone (who can afford it) can put up web sites.
- The government does not get to elevate some people to privileged status officially recognized as "objective" or any other title of nobility. Anyone can claim to be objective - but no one may be obliged to defer to any such claim. People who make such claim do not, no matter what the weight of their purses or the printing presses or other communications equipment they may own or even the number of others similarly situated who may be in concert with them in making such claim, thereby attain even to the credibility of witnesses under oath. Let alone to that of the verdict of a jury. They are still only people with no authority over their fellow citizens, and no part of the government.
That would be the limit the holding which the case brought against the FEC by the Republican Party would immediately reach - but it would be a shot across the bow from SCOTUS delegitimating any threat to Talk Radio or Free Republic. I think it could be worth serious investigation as to the possibility of using the Republican Party's suit to ask SCOTUS for just such a ruling.