Free Republic

Free Speech: President Obama, while addressing college graduates, condemns our access to new media as a subversion of democracy. Is the iPad a threat to democracy or exactly what Thomas Jefferson had in mind? At Hampton University in Virginia on Sunday, the president lamented that in an age of text messaging, the Internet and the iPad, information and its unfettered exchange had become a diversion that was putting a strain on democracy. We are not making this up. The "24/7 media environment," he told the students, "bombards us with all kinds of comments and exposes us to all kinds of...

First Amendment: Diversity czar Mark Lloyd's FCC votes Thursday on the issue of net neutrality. Advertised as providing access to all, it will do to the information superhighway what Lloyd proposed for talk radio. Not much was said when $7.2 billion was included in the stimulus bill "to accelerate broadband deployment in unserved and underserved areas and to strategic institutions that are likely to create jobs or provide significant public benefits." The administration has big plans for the Internet — like controlling it. Susan Crawford, the so-called Internet czar, told the Wall Street Journal in April that the broadband billions...

Media Bias: Not long after pro football welcomed a convicted felon back on the playing field, Rush Limbaugh is dropped for his opinions from a group seeking to buy an NFL franchise. Won't someone throw a flag? When even Keith Olbermann says back off, you know the politically correct critics of the conservative icon and megaradio talk host's proposed part ownership of the St. Louis Rams are guilty of piling on. The prospect of the leading conservative voice in America participating in the purchase of a football team sent the liberal elites into cardiac arrest and into a frenzied campaign...

Security: A Senate bill lets the president "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "nongovernmental" computer networks and do what's needed to respond to the threat. Didn't they just collect our e-mail addresses?We wish this was just a piece of the fictional "Dr. Strangelove" that fell to the cutting-room floor, but it's not. It is a real piece of disturbingly vague legislation sponsored by Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. Senate Bill 773 would grant the administration emergency powers (where have we heard that before?) in the event of a cyberemergency that the president would have...

1st Amendment: Mark Lloyd, a disciple of Saul Alinsky and fan of Hugo Chavez, wants to destroy talk radio and says free speech is a distraction. The new FCC diversity "czar" says Venezuela is an example we should follow.When Mark Lloyd was appointed July 29 as the chief diversity officer at the Federal Communications Commission, a nation focused on ObamaCare and a deteriorating economy took little notice. But as angry constituents flood town hall meetings and call in to talk radio, a man dedicated to silencing them sits at the right hand of the president. They share a common hero...

There goes Nancy Pelosi again. First she wanted bail-out money to save some mice in the San Francisco wetlands. Now she wants bail-out money to save some rats in the San Francisco media. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Duh) asked Attorney General Eric Holder “to weigh the public benefit of saving The Chronicle and other papers from closure against the agency’s anti-trust mission to guard against anti-competitive behavior.” She neglected to mention anti-competitive behavior by the government. .......