Free Republic

Supreme Court Curbs Arizona Public Funding In Elections The emergency order, coming in the midst of the state primary campaign, prevents Arizona from giving additional funds to candidates who forgo private financing and are vastly outspent by rivals. David G. Savage and Jennifer Martinez, Los Angeles Times June 8, 2010 Reporting from Washington — The Supreme Court, in an unusual move, came to the aid Tuesday of well-funded candidates in Arizona and blocked the state from giving extra public money to those candidates who had agreed to forgo private financing. The court's emergency order throws a wrench into the state's...

The Federal Communications Commission's unanimous support yesterday for a rule that would open the door to government regulation of the Internet has raised the concern of free speech advocates, but there are other members of the Obama administration who support similar measures. The president's newly confirmed regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, drew up a "First Amendment New Deal," a new "fairness doctrine" that would include the establishment of a panel of "nonpartisan experts" to ensure "diversity of view" on the airwaves. Sunstein compared the need for the government to regulate broadcasting to the moral obligation of the U.S. to impose new...

Although president-elect Barack Obama has stated that he is opposed to the reimposition of the so-called Fairness Doctrine, it remains to be seen if he can resist the pressure of Congress to bring back a measure that many on the left favor because they claim it will "Hush Rush." Leading the charge for bringing back the Fairness Doctrine is Congresswoman Anna Eshoo of California. According to this report, Eshoo not only wants to bring it back but to extend it to absurdly include cable and satellite where public airwaves are not even involved: Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, said Monday...

Attention bloggers, please file your lobbyist forms... I just got out of the Public Disclosure Commission's stakeholder meeting regarding Internet lobbying. As I blogged yesterday, the PDC is asking whether Internet activities such as email or blogging qualify as lobbying. Goldy has this succinct reply: "Um ... hell, no." The purpose of today's meeting was to solicit public comment. Nancy Krier, the PDC's general counsel, ran the meeting and about a dozen folks showed up. I shared EFF's concern: that the Internet, which has become the new town square, is a forum where many citizens voice opinions about legislation and...

The DC Examiner has a troubling editorial today on a new rule being proposed by Bush's FCC that would represent a threat to the unfettered marketplace of ideas on talk radio while in practice, giving power to anti-free speech elements to dictate what can be broadcast. As free speech advocates gear up to oppose revival of the so-called “Fairness Doctrine,” another Orwellian-named government effort to dictate the content of radio and TV news and opinion has been hatched by the Bush administration’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC). So far, there’s been much less focus on the “localism rule” – even though...

NOTE: this is info from a previous thread, but I thought the phone call to the prosecutor's office was important enough for its own thread. KMOV VIDEO - THREAT OF PROSECUTION FOR TELLING "LIES" ABOUT OBAMA PROSECUTOR McCULLOCH's OFFICE POST 74 FROM PREVIOUS THREAD YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS! I just called county prosecutor Bob McCulloch's office. I spoke with his secretary Cindy. DFU: I saw the KMOV piece last night regarding the lies being told about Barack Obama. It is about time someone is doing something about this. Last night I saw a bumper sticker that said...

WATCH THIS FRIGHTENING VIDEO FROM KMOV This video should shake you to your core. Obama supporters in Missouri are blatantly announcing that law enforcement will be used to prosecute you if you are part of campaign ads that tell, in their opinion, "lies" about Barack Obama. And we thought the Clinton machine was bad? This is frightening. When will the lies be prosecuted about Palin, McCain, and Limbaugh? The answer is, they won't. This is how a free republic is taken down. When will freerepublic be taken down?

The Barack Obama campaign is asking Missouri law enforcement to target anyone who lies or runs a misleading TV ad during the presidential campaign.video

Despite the fact that the film Obsession contains no political content and was made well before the 2008 election cycle began, CAIR, those paragons of Islamic moderation and honesty, would now have you believe that the national distribution of the DVD was an Israeli plot to elect John McCain. This is a very revealing action for CAIR to take. It reveals in particular two key aspects of CAIR's mindset: 1. It shows that CAIR is fully aware that the jihad against Israel is an integral part of the global jihad, and is not just a struggle to recover Palestinian "stolen...

CAIR Files FEC Complaint over Obsession   By Robert SpencerFrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, September 25, 2008 Despite the fact that the film Obsession contains no political content and was made well before the 2008 election cycle began, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, those paragons of Islamic moderation and honesty, would now have you believe that the national distribution of the DVD was an Israeli plot to elect John McCain. And they’ve filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging just that. According to MarketWire, “the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is urging the FEC to investigate whether the Clarion...

The wholesale descent into Swift Boat campaigning has been blocked — for now — by a federal judge in Virginia. But voters should not rest easy. A group calling itself The Real Truth About Obama is appealing the ruling. The group aims to block federal regulations so it can spend unlimited money on a commercial smearing the Democratic nominee as a zealous proponent of any and all abortion on demand — “at any time during pregnancy, as many times as a woman wants one.” If the group were to win on appeal, it would signal open season for countless stealth...

Where are all the free-speech absolutists when you need them? Over the past month, left-wing partisans and Democrat lawyers have waged a brass-knuckled intimidation campaign against GOP donors, TV and radio stations, and even an investigative journalist because they have all dared to question the radical cult of Barack Obama. A chilly wind blows, but where the valiant protectors of political dissent are, nobody knows. On Aug. 11, I called the American Civil Liberties Union national headquarters in New York for comment about the Chicago gangland tactics of one of these groups -- a nonprofit called Accountable America that is...

A federal appeals court on Friday invalidated campaign finance rules that give wealthy donors broad latitude in underwriting expensive political ads. Limits on coordinated campaign spending apply too narrowly to time frames just before elections and should be expanded, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said in the decision. Judge David Tatel said in the ruling that interest groups often engage in early advertising, in some cases more than a year before an election. The restrictions the Federal Election Commission imposed apply only to spending within 90 days of a congressional election and 120 days...

DENVER (AP) -- Focus on the Family chairman James Dobson has been cleared of accusations that he endangered his organization's nonprofit status by endorsing Republican candidates in 2004, an Internal Revenue Service audit found. The IRS said Dobson, who backed President Bush's re-election bid, was acting as an individual and not on behalf of the conservative Christian ministry. The influential child psychologist announced the findings Monday on his national radio show. At least two liberal watchdog groups — Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and Colorado Springs-based Citizens Project — filed complaints with the IRS in 2005 against Dobson....

The Supreme Court rocked the 2008 presidential race by upsetting, in late June, a provision of the McCain-Feingold speech-regulation law that banned any radio or TV ad mentioning the name of a candidate for federal office in the 30 days before a primary election and the 60 days before a general election. In particular, the case at hand — FEC vs. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. — dealt with so-called "sham" issue ads. These ads lobby federal officeholders to vote one way or the other on issues before them; however, such ads were banned on the grounds that... --snip-- The...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- Unions and corporations would be allowed to pay for ads that mention political candidates in the weeks just before an election under rule options under consideration by the Federal Election Commission. The two proposals, announced Thursday, are in response to a Supreme Court ruling in June and would provide a broad exception to advertising limits contained in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. The FEC has asked interested parties to comment on the options and says it plans to issue a final rule by the end of November. In a 5-4 decision on June 25 that permitted some...

Campaign Finance Reform’s War on Political Freedom An ongoing danger, despite two recent court victories 1 July 2007 In February 2006, Norm Feck learned that the city of Parker, Colorado was thinking about annexing his neighborhood, Parker North. Feck attended a meeting on the annexation, realized that it would mean more bureaucracy, and concluded that it wouldn’t be in Parker North residents’ interest. Together with five other Parker North locals, he wrote letters to the editor, handed out information sheets, formed an Internet discussion group, and printed up anti-annexation yard signs, which soon began sprouting throughout the neighborhood. That’s when...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Federal Communications Commission has no intention of reinstating the Fairness Doctrine imposing a requirement of balanced coverage of issues on public airwaves, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said. Martin, in a letter written this week to Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., and made public Thursday, said the agency found no compelling reason to revisit its 1987 decision that enforcing the federal rule was not in the public interest. Several Democratic lawmakers suggested that Congress take another look at the doctrine after conservative radio talk show hosts aggressively attacked an immigration reform bill when it was on the Senate...

Our massive strategy was to use the Fairness Doctrine to challenge and harass right-wing broadcasters and hope the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue." - William Ruder, former Assistant Secretary of Commerce Now that liberals have seized control of the U.S. Congress, they are trying to shut down talk radio so the American people can no longer hear the truth from Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and a host of other conservatives. But isn't that what liberals always do... silence the opposition? When Lenin seized...

JEFFERSON CITY | The Missouri Supreme Court reinstated campaign contribution limits Thursday, but it’s unclear whether politicians will be forced to return millions of dollars collected since the limits were lifted in January.The court, in a unanimous decision, overturned a lower judge who had thrown out a fundraising ban for elected officials and challengers during the legislative session but kept intact the overall repeal of Missouri’s individual contribution limits.The Supreme Court said the legislative history of the bill indicated lawmakers would not have repealed contribution limits if the donation blackout period was not in effect.The court noted that when the...