Posted on 02/10/2009 6:29:07 PM PST by Kaslin
First Amendment: Beyond the various threats that President Obama has said require confrontation — financial, military, nuclear, climate — another danger looms large: Those in his party who want government to muzzle dissent.
Talk radio, for instance, has become a counterweight to the liberal establishment media. Blogs have allowed anyone and everyone to become a pundit with no limit to the number of readers who can be reached. And Fox News has overwhelmed CNN and the Big Three networks on American TV screens.
Liberal politicians see it all — rightly — as a threat to their power. And so the scheming for a new "Fairness Doctrine" on steroids has begun in earnest.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., in an interview last week with liberal radio host and former CNN "Crossfire" co-host Bill Press, said: "I absolutely think it's time to be bringing accountability to the airwaves."
When Press asked if he could depend on the senator to push for hearings on the issue, Stabenow indicated that she had already discussed the matter with fellow senators "and, you know, I feel like that's gonna happen. Yep."
Is it an exaggeration to say that mulling the notion of restricting political speech is a practice more suited to the Reich stag of Nazi Berlin than the Congress of Barack Obama's Washington?
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
Many on the left scolded us that dissent was the highest form of patriotism. At least that was the meme during the term of presidents they didn’t approve of.
There ... fixed it ...
Our Founders and fore-fathers are all spinning in their graves right now ... /sigh
The founding fathers would have raised an army of militia and shot every damned one of the bastards.
I'm not so sure, conservatives greatest triumph came thirty years ago, back when the liberal media was the only media. Yet today, despite all the conservative outlets that we can put out; we couldn't stop the election of the most liberal president since minimally Carter (and perhaps ever). It seems that having a friendly media source is of but limited value anyway.
If the 'rats do try and abrogate the 1st amendment at this juncture it would very likely end in disaster - for them. Are they really that foolish? Maybe they are, perhaps they believe that now's the perfect time to make their march toward Moscow. We'll see.
The Fairness doctrine, if enacted, will make satellite radio a staple in every house and car.
I don't know what YOU've been smoking, but libertarians have ALWAYS been on the "let it be said" side of this debate.
It's ALWAYS been the self-declared conservatives (who seem to have a LOT in common with the petty little hyper-controlling freakazoids of the left) that thought that certain ideas were not permissible.
Libertarians have always thought that the individual was sovereign, the state subservient.
What Kool-Aid have YOU been drinking? McLame, or Dole flavoured ?
Obama is proving very thin skinned and is taking a beating from talk radio and conservative media on Porkulus. His lashing out at Limbaugh is a harbinger of things to come and expect that when the dust of Porkulus settles, Obama and Congressional liberals will be targeting talk radio. If they succeed in muzzling local talk radio, the now bankrupt Sirius-XM satellite radio might be bought up by conservative groups and add 20 million new subscribers who will have to get their uncensored news from over the Obama Curtain.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.