Barbara Boxer And Hillary Clinton Will Target Talk Radio: Inhofe

Senator James Inhofe told talk-radio host John Ziegler that Barbara Boxer and Hillary Clinton want to introduce legislation aiming to control talk radio. This sounds like the story he told on CQ Radio yesterday, describing a conversation he overheard in an elevator about two “very liberal” Senators complaining about the effect talk radio has in organizing oppositon to their policies. The Senator wouldn’t name the names at the time, but Ziegler got him to cough them up later.
It’s an interesting story, and in both tellings, Inhofe reminded them that the success of conservative talk-radio shows comes from its market attractiveness. This is, of course, something that drives people like Boxer and Clinton up the wall. They know that audiences flock to conservative talk shows, but with a few exceptions, liberal talk shows don’t get those kinds of numbers. Air America has gone bankrupt trying to lease air time for their hosts in the major markets, and no one’s listening to them.
If Hillary gets elected President and the Democrats gain a few more seats in Congress, the Fairness Doctrine will return — and that will end political talk radio. Broadcasters will not risk their licenses in the hoop-jumping that will be required to demonstrate “balance” and “fairness” in political rhetoric, where every interest group will file complaint after complaint in an attempt to harass hosts with whom they disagree off the air. The AM band will revert to self-help shows and promotional broadcasts, or perhaps sports radio will expand even further, but political talk will disappear.
However, we have less to fear from Boxer and Clinton than we do from Trent Lott and others on the center-right who use talk radio as scapegoats for their own failures and frustrations. Lott said much the same thing as Boxer and Clinton did to Inhofe about the effect talk radio has had on the immigration debate. I reminded Inhofe of this, and Inhofe told me that Lott was “wrong” — and that Lott needed to rethink his criticism. (That comes at around the 50-minute mark of the show.) If the center-right starts attacking talk radio, they will give momentum to the Fairness Doctrine’s return.

Blair: The Internet’s Too Mean For Me

British Prime Minister Tony Blair will leave office soon — and in one respect, perhaps not soon enough. Blair’s valediction to the press revealed a bitterness that his ten years in power hid behind politically-correct comity, and an endorsement for speech policing that will shock some of his ardent admirers:

Tony Blair hinted today at new restrictions on internet journalism, saying online news coverage had become “more pernicious and less balanced” than traditional political reporting.
In a farewell lecture on public life, he said that much of the British media behaved like a “feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits”.
But he had particularly harsh words for non-traditional media outlets, particularly the internet. … “In fact, the new forms can be even more pernicious, less balanced, more intent on the latest conspiracy theory multiplied by five.”

British journalism has more bite to it than its American counterpart. For the most part, American journalists at least act as though they want to cover a story rather than become a part of it. In Britain, thanks to the refreshingly honest manner in which publications approach their biases, reporters feel more free to use acerbic commentary and to act with less politesse when interacting with public officials.
Think of a press conference with three dozen David Gregorys and Keith Olbermanns, and you get the picture.
Blair has a point when he complains about the sometimes-savage nature of media coverage. The “feral beast” quote will live for a very long time, not just because of Blair’s delicious enunciation but also because it’s quite apt. As bad as it gets for politicians, it’s exponentially worse for celebrities. However, because both court the coverage, complaining about the “feral beast” becoming unleashed seems just a tad … whiney.
And if complaining is whiney, then imposing a “regulatory system” to intimidate journalists is very worrisome. Here is the part of the speech in which he talks about expanding regulatory activity:

It used to be thought – and I include myself in this – that help was on the horizon. New forms of communication would provide new outlets to by-pass the increasingly shrill tenor of the traditional media. In fact, the new forms can be even more pernicious, less balanced, more intent on the latest conspiracy theory multiplied by five. But here is also the opportunity. At present, we are all being dragged down by the way media and public life interact.
Trust in journalists is not much above that in politicians. There is a market in providing serious, balanced news. There is a desire for impartiality. The way that people get their news may be changing; but the thirst for the news being real news is not. The media will fear any retreat from impact will mean diminishing sales. But the opposite is the case. They need to re-assert their own selling point: the distinction between news and comment. And there is inevitably change on its way. The regulatory framework at some point will need revision.
The PCC is for traditional newspaper publishing. OFCOM regulate broadcasting, except for the BBC, which has its own system of regulation. But under the new European regulations all television streamed over the internet may be covered by OFCOM. As the technology blurs the distinction between papers and television, it becomes increasingly irrational to have different systems of accountability based on technology that no longer can be differentiated in the old way.

Perhaps the first step could be to end the state-run media in Britain, and end the tax that Briton pay for the privilege of one-sided BBC reporting. If the public hungers for unbiased reporting, then the government should quit distorting the market and allow entrepeneurs to compete openly with that kind of product. If the BBC is part of the problem — and Blair doesn’t differentiate — then ending its subsidy would force it to respond to those market conditions.
But here’s the rub. Everyone knows about the bias of the Independent, which Blair named specifically in his complaint. The same can be said about the Guardian and the Telegraph. As Americans can explain to Blair in great detail, the problem is that it’s much more difficult to tell when media organizations attempt objectivity — and especially when they make a pretense of it.
Here in the US, we just learn to be discerning consumers of the news. Too bad Blair can’t trust Britons to do the same. I’m sorry to see a staunch ally of the US like Blair retiring, but it’s disappointing that he doesn’t grasp the fundamental role that free speech plays in human liberty.

Another University Exception To Free Speech

If Hamline University used the Soviet method to silence conservative Troy Scheffler last month, Tufts University must have decided to use a softer means to squelch dissent on its campus. Instead of declaring the editors of a conservative newspaper insane, they declared their criticism of Islam “harassment” and treated them like criminals. And as in the Scheffler case, the university apparently didn’t like criticism of diversity programs, either:

Showing profound disregard for free speech and freedom of the press, Tufts University has found a conservative student publication guilty of harassment and creating a hostile environment for publishing political satire. Despite explicitly promising to protect controversial and offensive expression in its policies, the Tufts Committee on Student Life decided yesterday to punish the student publication The Primary Source (TPS) for printing two articles that offended African-American and Muslim students on campus. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which has spearheaded the defense of TPS, is now launching a public campaign to oppose Tufts’ outrageous actions.
“We now know that Tufts’ promises of free expression are hollow,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “By punishing political expression—the type of expression at the very core of the right to free speech—Tufts has shown that, in spite of its promises, it has no regard for its students’ fundamental rights. Such hypocrisy must not go unchallenged.”
Last December, TPS published a satirical Christmas carol entitled “Oh Come All Ye Black Folk.” Although TPS runs a Christmas carol parody every year, December’s carol sparked controversy on campus because it harshly lampooned race-based admissions. Realizing that the carol offended large portions of the Tufts community, TPS published an apology on December 6, 2006. Four months later, however, a student filed charges alleging that the carol constituted “harassment” and created a “hostile environment.” Other students filed similar charges in response to TPS’ April 11, 2007 piece entitled “Islam—Arabic Translation: Submission,” a satirical advertisement that ridiculed Tufts’ “Islamic Awareness Week” by highlighting militant Islamic terrorism.
The two complaints were consolidated for a hearing before the university’s Committee on Student Life on April 30, 2007. Yesterday, the Committee issued a decision holding that TPS had violated the university’s harassment policy by publishing the two pieces. The Committee found that the carol “targeted [black students] on the basis of their race, subjected them to ridicule and embarrassment, intimidated them, and had a deleterious impact on their growth and well-being on campus.” The Committee also held that the parody of Islamic Awareness Week “targeted members of the Tufts Muslim community for harassment and embarrassment, and that Muslim students felt psychologically intimidated by the piece.”

What the two universities have discovered is a couple of handy strategies for dealing with dissent on campus. Instead of encouraging debate and free speech, they now can stick any speech which offends their sensibilities in two categories: psychosis or harassment. Neither leaves dissenters and critics with any good defense, since in both cases, the determination is necessarily subjective — and the universities are the final judge on both.
It’s almost passé to remind people that universities exist for the purpose of considering different points of view in order to challenge assumptions and expand human knowledge. Cracking down on dissent harms that process. It tells students that they cannot question authority nor challenge any assumptions without fear of reprisal. Even in a newspaper, editorial opinions had better adhere to the administration’s wisdom, or else.
Tufts’ case is even more ludicrous than Hamline’s. Tufts staged an “Islamic Awareness Week”, the purpose of which one might suppose would be to educate people about Islam. The newspaper responded to what sounds like an administration-sponsored PR blitz on behalf of Islam, and it pointed out factual, historical data which expanded the awareness of Islam. The reaction of Tufts to this shows that they had no interest in making students aware of Islam, but to force students to support Islam.
By the way, when was the last time Tufts had a Catholic Awareness Week, or a Methodist Awareness Week? How about a Mormon Awareness Week?
I’ve reprinted the actual ad text in the extended entry below. You can see that, with the possible exception of the last entry about one particular Muslim, the ad made Tufts students “aware” of historical Islam. Tufts, however, does not want to educate its students, but indoctrinate them.

Continue reading “Another University Exception To Free Speech”

ACLU To Defend Nazis Again

The ACLU lost a number of members in 1977 when they defended the American Nazi Party when they wanted to stage a demonstration in the town of Skokie, Illinois — a city where a number of Holocaust victims and their families had settled. Over 30,000 ACLU members staged a demonstration of their own when they marched out of the organization, even after the ACLU won the case, and even though the Nazis never did march in Skokie.
Thirty years later, the ACLU proves that they have not learned their lesson. The Ohio chapter has agreed to represent the American Nazi Party again in a conflict over a demonstration permit, this time in a predominantly black neighborhood in Cincinnati. Holly at The Moderate Voice shares the e-mail:

On April 20, 2007, the American National Socialist Workers Party of Roanoke, VA—a neo-Nazi group—plans to march through the predominantly African-American neighborhood of Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati. The city initially issued a permit to the group for its march, but the permit was soon revoked and prohibitions were added by city officials limiting the group’s demonstration to a three-block area. Believing their constitutional rights to free speech and free assembly have been violated, the ACLU of Ohio will be defending the demonstrators.
The ACLU condemns violent action and supports its prevention. Yet we also believe that our government must allow citizens their unhindered right to free speech. The City of Cincinnati should stand behind this basic freedom while taking steps to ensure a peaceful demonstration.
As in previous cases where the ACLU has come to the defense of people or groups with whom we disagree, our position is rooted in certain fundamental principles. While we in no way endorse the views of the American National Socialist Workers Party, we believe that the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and press would be meaningless if the government could pick and choose the persons to whom they apply.

I agree that the government should not be in the business of determining the acceptability of political speech. I would not want to have to get permission to hold a public assembly that hinges on the political content of the speech for myself, and I would want government have the same approach for others as well.
However, that isn’t what has happened in Over-The-Rhine, at least judging by the ACLU’s description. The city did revoke their permit, but then apparently issued another that gives them three blocks in which to demonstrate. That does not sound like an overwhelming burden for the Nazis to meet, and it does not keep them from conducting their protest. They’re not being stopped from demonstrating; they want to complain because of the boundaries placed on their protest, even though such permits routinely impose boundaries on demonstrations.
The ACLU will put themselves in the position of arguing that the city of Cincinnati has no authority to determine the geographical boundaries for a protest — on behalf of a group that would, if given the chance, strip everyone of the right to demonstrate in any form at all. They do so even though they have no requirement to represent Nazis; the Nazis could hire their own lawyers to handle this case, and unfortunately they can probably afford it, too. The ACLU has determined that they can get a lot of publicity for their flacking on behalf of Nazis, and have climbed into bed with racists as a result. They’re doing nothing more than unnecessarily enabling the Nazis.
Indiana Jones once said, “I hate these guys.” In this context, it would be difficult to determine which group he would have meant.

And Five Years Later …

Despite its insistence on curtailing political speech five years ago yesterday by passing the McCain-Feingold bill to remove corruption from politics, the Senate has never forced itself to adopt more effective measures to expose venality by its own members. While the House adopted electronic filing measures to disclose campaign contributions on an ongoing basis, the Senate has preferred the slow and impenetrable process of quarterly written statements — which curious investigators see far too late to expose any shenanigans. Thad Cochran and Russ Feingold want to change that, and the Washington Post agrees that the effort comes late in the game:

TODAY AT 10 a.m., the U.S. Senate could take its first step into the 21st century when the Rules and Administration Committee meets to vote on a measure that would require candidates for the Senate to file their campaign finance reports electronically. That’s great news for a voting public that ought to be able to see immediately who’s giving to whom and how the money is being spent. Of course, this issue being at the crossroads of politics and money, the prospects of something so simple being passed today are anything but simple.
All that sponsors Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) wanted to do was bring to the Senate the common-sense advance that for years has been standard operating procedure for candidates for the House of Representatives and the White House and for political parties, “527” groups and PACs. Electronic filing for Senate candidates would eliminate the so-last-century practice of filing papers with the Senate Office of Public Records, which then scans and sends them to the Federal Election Commission, which then sends them out to a vendor, which keys the information into an electronic database and sends it back to the FEC in its new form.

Sounds great, huh? The Senate, five years after passing the most cynical incumbent-protection legislation ever, will finally get around to allowing timely exposure of who contributes to the incumbent campaigns. Except that they may not; as the Post notes, the vote requires a quorum of the Rules and Administration Committee, which has 19 members. If they don’t get 10 of the members to show up for the vote, the proposal will wither on the vine.
Also, the committee has to deal with an amendment by Bob Bennett (R-UT) that will also prove controversial. Bennett wants to remove the limitations on party spending in coordination with candidates. That would put a hole in the BCRA wall against the use of soft money, a Byzantine structure that still enjoys some support as a bulwark against corruption — for reasons no one can explain rationally. Bennett may have a good idea, but it doesn’t really help to attach it to this legislation. We need this bill to pass on its own and make its way to a floor vote. It’s five years overdue already.
If you want to make sure that the committee has its quorum, be sure to make wake-up calls to these R&A panel members. Note, please, the number of party leaders who sit on this committee:
Dianne Feinstein
Bob Bennett
Robert Byrd
Daniel Inouye
Ted Stevens
Mitch McConnell
Christopher Dodd
Thad Cochran
Chuck Schumer
Trent Lott
Dick Durbin
Kay Bailey Hutchinson
Ben Nelson
Saxby Chambliss
Harry Reid
Chuck Hagel
Patty Murray
Lamar Alexander
Mark Pryor
You can reach the Senate switchboard at 202-224-3121, and ask for the Senator whom you wish to contact.

An Anniversary To Remember (Updated)

Traditionally, fifth anniversary gifts come in wood, although more modern givers select silver. That seems appropriate as the nation celebrates the fifth anniversary of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, otherwise known as McCain-Feingold (Senate version) or Shays-Meehan (House version). Five years ago, wooden-headed politicians sold out the First Amendment for thirty pieces of silver in order to enact the first restrictions on political speech since the Sedition Act of the early 20th century.
Mark Tapscott celebrates the anniversary in his own way:

Five years ago today President Bush signed into law the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, the main sponsors of which were Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, and Sen. Russ Feingold, D-WI. Bush signed the bill despite having publicly expressed doubt that it was constitutional.
The law banned certain forms of political speech about incumbent congressmen for 30 days prior to a primary election and 60 days prior to a general election. Not since President Lincoln suspended habeus corpus and jailed prominent Copperhead newspaper editors during the Civil War has such a frontal assault been mounted against the First Amendment’s guarantee of every American’s right to express political opinion without official restraint. …
And five years later, none of the promises of the McCain-Feingold advocates has been fulfilled. The “corrupting influence of money in politics” is as strong as ever and there is no evidence that the law has had one iota of influence on the degree of citizen participation in politics.
If anything, earmarks financed with tax dollars – the real corrupting influence of money in politics – is at an all-time high. Several congressmen have been convicted of crimes related to earmarks and the Republicans lost their congressional majority last November largely because they couldn’t resist this genuine form of the corrupting influence of money in politics.

Ryan Sager also marks the event for the New York Sun in a column titled “Five Years of Failure”:

Putting aside the ludicrous notion that 535 incumbent politicians sat down and tried to write a piece of legislation that would make it harder to get reelected, five years later there’s no evidence electoral competition has increased. Sure, control of Congress turned over. But anyone who attributes the 2006 election to McCain-Feingold, as opposed to Bush-Cheney-Hastert-Frist, is delusional.
Some McCain-Feingold supporters promised that the bill would reduce the amount of money being raised and spent in elections. “This bill forces all of us,” Senator Cantwell of Washington said during the debate, “to play by the same rules and raise and spend money in lower amounts.” As the Sun’s Josh Gerstein reports today, that certainly hasn’t been the result. Candidates for both parties’ nominations will surely be shattering first-quarter fundraising records next month.
Then there was the claim that McCain-Feingold could restore trust in government. On this score, Mr. Thompson declared that “we are making headway to do something that will reduce the cynicism in this country and that will help this body, that will help us individually.” While, plenty of congressmen have helped themselves individually over the past five years (see: indictments and convictions and plea agreements, above), there is still enough cynicism around for Senator Obama of Illinois to make defeating it the main rationale for his presidential campaign.

Let’s make this plain: even if the BCRA had managed to lower the amount of money spent in campaigns and reduce the cynicism that politicians from both parties created in spades, it still would be wrong. Our founders knew full well what happens when government becomes the arbiter of politically acceptable speech; it tends to allow only that speech which perpetuates its power.
For this, one need look no further than the BCRA itself. What did it restrict? It forbade the airing of campaign ads from special-interest groups that criticized incumbent members of Congress within a certain number of days before an election, supposedly to discourage unfair attacks by challengers. This was necessitated by the underperformance of incumbents in elections, where they typically had anemic re-election rates of around 96%.
Let’s emphasize this once again — the BCRA made it illegal to air criticisms of incumbent politicians. In America. Even if one can forgive the Byzantine and artificial categorization of cash that the BCRA extended, we simply cannot forgive this, even had it proven effective at cleaning up politics. And it hasn’t.
So let’s raise a toast to the fifth anniversary of our elected leaders selling out our American birthright. Five years from now, let’s hope we’re celebrating its repeal.
UPDATE: John McCain responds to critics in this statement, videotaped and published by the bloggers riding the Straight Talk Express:

This is ludicrous. McCain is correct that we have more avenues for free speech, but that has nothing to do with the BCRA. “Twenty years ago,” McCain lectures, “Americans only had three sources for news — ABC, CBS, and NBC.” Aside from his faulty chronology (by 1987, we had CNN and C-SPAN), it’s a complete non-sequitur. No one argues that we have a lot more options for information now, but those came well before the BCRA, and the BCRA has been used to interfere with at least some of them, including the blogosphere for a short time.
The BCRA has done nothing to restrain so-called checkbook politics, corruption still abounds, and people are less free to enter the debate than they were before the passage of the BCRA. The only thing the BCRA has done is to protect incumbents and to employ legions of lawyers and accountants. That’s the legacy McCain avoids in this little bit of misdirection.

Scoop Or Sham? (Update: Satire)

Has Kent State defended a history professor with ties to the Klan and a website calling for the murder of African-Americans? Mike Adams, a conservative college professor who defends free-speech rights for conservatives on college campuses, takes Kent State to task for continuing to employ a professor who allegedly ran a Klan website called Kill The Negroes:

Kent State University now has another problem on its hands. A member of the Ku Klux Klan who just recently was found operating a hate website has now been identified as a history professor at Kent State. The site has been closed but the controversy still looms because of some comments the professor has posted on blogs under the name “Lover of Anglos” while using his Kent State email address. …
And, finally, here is what a Kent State spokesperson had to say about Piner:
“Julius Piner was not actually linked to the site, ‘Kill the Negroes,’ nor did he use any university resources when he was not operating it. Furthermore, there is no evidence that he ever advocated killing Negroes in his class lectures. We all have to remember that academic freedom is an important part of university life, even when we disagree with the views being expressed.”
Of course, many disagree with Kent State’s defense of Piner. Some of the most compelling reasons follow:
1. The “Kill the Negroes” site contained essays calling for the cleansing and purification of society via the mass murder of blacks.
2. Piner distributed videos on the website showing the actual lynching of blacks.
3. Piner circulated instructions on how to bomb black churches in the South.
4. Piner circulated a “battle dispatch” to give people specific information on America’s most “notorious” black churches.

Adams does not include links to media reports on Piner’s involvement in the Klan or with the website, which could be helpful for people trying to get to the bottom of the story. If Piner did what Adams alleges, then Kent State — a univerity run by the state of Ohio — has some explaining to do. From the scant evidence supplied by Adams, I’m not even sure the situation exists.
The government should not be in the business of oppressing speech. However, incitement to murder does not have First Amendment protection — and besides, that has no bearing on employment decisions. If Piner did what Adams alleges, then he has little credibility as a history professor. As Betsy Newmark asks, what kind of history would Piner teach his students about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow?
However, that’s a big if until Adams can come up with more independent evidence than he gives in his column. A Google on “Julius Piner” comes up completely empty. It comes up with nothing at the Cleveland Plain Dealer too, which makes me very suspicious about the controversy. A Klansman teaching history at Kent State while operating a website called Kill The Negroes would, I’m certain, garner just a little media attention in Ohio and elsewhere. Either Adams has the scoop of the month, or this story is extremely suspect. (via Memeorandum)
UPDATE: Or, possibly, a satire? That makes more sense, and it references Julio Pino, which Adams has covered in the past. I missed that.
UPDATE II: I updated the title of the post to answer my own question. Once you read Adams’ posts on Pino, it makes this a pretty good satire, and highly effective.

Another Pandora’s Box On Political Speech

Charles Schumer and Barack Obama plan to introduce a bill today in the Senate that will impose more regulation on political speech during campaigns in order to end “deceptive” practices. The New York Times editorial board enthusiastically supports this new bill, even though it admits that the one abuse most often associated with this effort can be prosecuted under existing law:

Dirty tricks like these turn up every election season, in large part because they are so rarely punished. But two Democratic senators, Barack Obama of Illinois and Charles Schumer of New York, are introducing a bill today that would make deceiving or intimidating voters a federal crime with substantial penalties.
The bill aims at some of the most commonly used deceptive political tactics. It makes it a crime to knowingly tell voters the wrong day for an election. There have been numerous reports of organized efforts to use telephones, leaflets or posters to tell voters, especially in minority areas, not to vote on Election Day because voting has been postponed.
The bill would also criminalize making false claims to voters about who has endorsed a candidate, or wrongly telling people — like immigrants who are registered voters in Orange County — that they cannot vote. …
The bill is careful to avoid infringing on First Amendment rights, and that is the right course. But in steering clear of regulating speech, it is not clear how effective the measure would be in addressing one of the worst dirty tricks of last fall’s election: a particular kind of deceptive “robocall” that was used against Democratic Congressional candidates. These calls, paid for by the Republicans, sounded as if they had come from the Democrat; when a recipient hung up, the call was repeated over and over. The intent was clearly to annoy the recipients so they would not vote for the Democrat.
While there are already laws that can be used against this sort of deceptive telephone harassment, a more specific bill aimed directly at these calls is needed.

Why? If the law already covers this abuse, then passing another law is not only superfluous, it creates a danger of government regulation of political speech that should be avoided, not embraced. The impulse to pass laws to punish the worst of the deceivers is understandable, but it will open a Pandora’s Box of litigation that will get used to initimidate smaller grass-roots organizations into silence.
The bill allows “individuals”, according to the NYT, to file lawsuits against anyone promoting what the plaintiff sees as “deceptive” public argument. While Schumer and Obama may have a high-minded opinion of the average American and his/her eschewing of courts for nefarious uses, the rest of us who live in the real world understands exactly what this will mean. Any campaign advertising or position paper will become fair game for all sorts of lawsuits, and more than likely multiple suits in courts all over the country.
And what will be considered “deceptive”? I’m certain that this law would have resulted in an avalanche of lawsuits against the Swift Boat veterans in 2004. They would have had to sink their funds into courtrooms and lawyers across the nation, defending their right to speak out by offering the considerable testimony and documentation they collected — but that effort would have stopped them from participating in the election. The same can be said for groups like United for Peace and Justice and MoveOn on the Left. The latter briefly featured an ad equating George Bush to Adolf Hitler, which would have prompted an avalanche of lawsuits from the Right.
All of these suits probably would have resulted in dismissals, but that’s not the point. A law like this eliminates all but the deepest-pocketed organizations from participating due to the sudden liabilities involved in political speech. It also sets up the government as the arbiter of acceptable and “truthful” political speech, rather than the American electorate — a dangerous position for everyone.
Like so many reformists, Schumer and Obama want to have federal intervention to protect people from their own naiveté. That’s not the proper role of the government, and especially when it comes to political speech. The best defense against deception is education and research, and the responsibility for that lies with the voters themselves.
UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds says that this is about protecting incumbents, as all such legislation is. He’s right, but I think this is also about squelching the kind of grassroots organizations like the Swift Vets that can spring up to address one particular issue for a short period of time. Broad, multi-issue organizations can afford to answer mulitiple lawsuits across several jurisdictions, but smaller groups would be forced to fold the tent.

The Point Of No Return (Update and Bump)

With all of the assaults on free political speech that have come as a result of the McCain-Feingold Act (or the BCRA), one has to wonder how much farther we can go before reversing the damage becomes impossible. Mark Tapscott shows us just how far this law reaches by relating how the BCRA affected a NASCAR racing team. No, I’m not kidding:

How does one know when the critical point in a Republic’s loss of its basic liberties like freedom of speech has been passed? A Dec. 22 notice from the Federal Election Commission looks very much like that point for America.
The notice concerned a complaint the FEC received from one Sydnor Thompson that Kirk Shelmerdine had improperly committed an independent expenditure on behalf of the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign during the 2004 race.

Do you want to know what that “independent expenditure” was? Shelmerdine put a Bush-Cheney bumper sticker on his racing car. It stood out because Shelmerdine had no significant sponsorship, not even the President’s re-election campaign. He put the bumper sticker on his car just to generate a little publicity for himself. Instead, Sydnor Thompson filed an FEC complaint against him.
Guess who Sydnor likes to support? John Edwards, Erskine Bowles, and other Democrats. Sydnor may have wanted to generate a little of his own publicity, as he apparently has a book to flog. The North Carolina attorney apparently takes great delight in telling anecdotes where colleagues compare him to Jesus, among other incidents related to this “pilgrim”.
The FEC, in its infinite wisdom, decided to take pity on Shlemerdine and only drop an “admonishment” on his head for the dastardly violation of attaching a bumper sticker to his car. Given Shelmerdine’s ranking in NASCAR, more people would have seen it on the 494 during a Minnesota rush hour, but the FEC decided that he had given Bush free advertising and therefore made some sort of in-kind contribution that required regulation.
As Tapscott notes, how long before all drivers who slap a bumper sticker on their car are determined to have given an in-kind contribution? In fact, how long before all political speech is regulated for its monetary value to a campaign? For me and other bloggers, this is no academic point. When we exercise our First Amendment rights and thousands of people read or hear our speech, it becomes a focus for the “reformers” who insist that the government set limits on campaigns and political speech.
When a bumper sticker inspires the federal government to admonish a private citizen for their political speech, that point of no return appears a hell of a lot closer than ever before.
UPDATE and BUMP, 1/3: CQ reader Mr. Michael has a link to the complaint, which has a low-quality reproduction of the car. The ad in question is obviously much larger than a traditional bumper sticker, which shows that Shelmerdine indeed did not have much credibility as a racer for attracting advertisers. It also, according to Mr. Michael, makes a difference regarding the regulation of speech.
Does the size of the ad make a difference? Not to me. I have a “Blogs for Bush” graphic on my sidebar, and I wouldn’t want to get in a tussle over its size to determine the FEC’s authority to regulate my speech. Once again, if we start making those distinctions about speech, then we leave it to the federal government to enforce them — which eventually makes them the approving agency for all of our political speech.
If Shelmerdine wanted to use up prime advertising space on his vehicle to support Bush or Kerry, that’s his right. It only makes a difference in our current system because we’ve created a behemoth of an oversight system that forces a series of artificial categories for contributions and spending, all of it hypocritical and most of it an offense to the notion of free speech and free political activity. What’s next — do we start figuring out the value of celebrities endorsing their candidates on talk shows as in-kind contributions, too? I guarantee that the value will be higher than the ad on Shelmerdine’s vehicle. It’s not just a slippery slope we’re on here, but an abrupt drop towards government-regulated politics, and in many ways we’re already falling.

Can We Endure Free Speech?

George Will lends his considerable talent for derision to the effort to “reform” political speech, which met its latest setback in federal court two weeks ago. He notes that the effort to reform political speech has finally received recognition — albeit small — that it tends to violate the First Amendment:

A three-judge federal court recently tugged a thread that may begin the unraveling of the fabric of murky laws and regulations that traduce the First Amendment by suppressing political speech. Divided 2 to 1, the court held — unremarkably, you might think — that issue advocacy ads can run during an election campaign, when they matter most. This decision will strike zealous (there is no other kind) advocates of ever-tighter regulation of political speech (campaign finance “reformers”) as ominous. Why? Because it partially emancipates millions of Americans who incorporate thousands of groups to advocate their causes, groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association.
And Wisconsin Right to Life. It is another organization by which people assemble (see the First Amendment) to speak (see it again) in order to seek redress of grievances (the amendment, one more time). In 2004 Wisconsin Right to Life was distressed because Wisconsin’s senators, Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl, were helping to block confirmation votes on some of President Bush’s judicial nominees. It wanted to run ads urging people to “contact Senators Feingold and Kohl and tell them to oppose the filibuster.”
But Feingold was running for reelection, and the McCain-Feingold “reform” makes it a crime for entities such as Wisconsin Right to Life to use their corporate funds to broadcast an “electioneering communication” within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. An “electioneering communication” is one that “refers to” a candidate for federal office.

As Will notes, this reversal runs more tepid than hot, as it hinges more on technical applications of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), better known as McCain-Feingold. It also produced a split decision. The dissenting jurist in this case wanted to establish a series of tests for political speech that should shock Americans; he wanted to allow evaluation of ads for intent and context, both of which would open the door to inspection of e-mails and other private correspondence before an ad could find approval to air.
Imagine, if you will, the Founding Fathers who wrote and established this amendment. The young Republic had failed in its first incarnation under the Articles of Confederation and had just created a Constitution that gave far greater powers to the federal government. The Bill of Rights came in reaction to that increase in power, and first and foremost came the protection for speech and religion in order to counter the power of federal officials. Do you suppose for a moment that they intended the federal government to act as an approving agent for political speech — or do you think they intended free speech to check federal power?
The fact that a sitting jurist could calculate such a reversal of the intent and meaning of the First Amendment should shake Americans to their core, if we hadn’t already been inured to the sight of judges arrogating powers to themselves and the bureaucracy. However, it does point out the erosive effect of the BCRA and how the “reformers” would eventually send us into an autocracy where the very act of writing this blog could be construed as illegal.
The zeal of reformers has proven uniquely dangerous throughout history. All one has to do is turn the pages through the various reform movements to see the abuses that inevitably come. Think Robespierre in the French Revolution, or Oliver Cromwell in England. Consider our own Prohibition, which had a fatally flawed concept of reform from the beginning. Free political speech does not require reform, and it is not incumbent on the citizenry of the United States to bind its freedoms simply because some politicians engage in corruption.
The only problem with campaign finances is a lack of disclosure. We have to eliminate the false categories of money by removing the limits of contributions and the dodges that have to be created to accommodate them. Make politicians for federal office declare all campaign contributions electronically within 72 hours, and force the parties to do the same for soft money. Eliminate the tax-exempt status of the 527s and they will disappear, which will allow the monies to flow to the candidates and the parties, for which they will bear the responsibility and accountability.