By Mark Hyman
Any doubts about the administration's designs on reducing First Amendment opportunities may no longer exist due to officials' remarks and government actions including a recent decision by President Barack Obama. The administration's resolve to tamp down dissent was signaled in a June 28th presidential memorandum that would lead to the end of all free, over-the-air television.
Fortunately for Obama he has various federal agencies, the Democrat-controlled Congress, a judiciary hostile to the Constitution, and a compliant liberal media at his disposal to help him usher in speech controls.
Obama's disdain of political dissent is well documented. He has differentiated himself from all other modern presidents by publicly calling out by name the handful of journalists that have criticized his presidency. Senior White House staff have served as his Praetorian Guard against media critics.
While presidential name-calling is indeed troublesome, it does not rise to the level of the concern created by the administration's plans to control the nation's telecommunications platforms.
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from hopenchangecartoons :
Elena Kagan, Obama's nominee for lifetime Supreme Court Justice, doesn't have much of a track record to show where she stands on important issues. But a notable exception exists in the case of Freedom of Speech...specifically, political speech...which she believes should be regulated and controlled by the government.
Acting as Obama's Solicitor General, Kagan argued this point before the Supreme Court, prompting Chief Justice Roberts to say that she "asks us to embrace a theory of the First Amendment that would allow censorship not only of television and radio broadcasts, but of pamphlets, posters, and the Internet."
Justice Kennedy said that Kagan's legal argument amounted to an illegitmate attempt to use "censorship as thought control."
Fortunately, Kagan failed to convince the Supreme Court of the merits of her argument and it was voted down...causing a belligerent Barack Obama to criticize the members of the court (and mischaracterize the findings of the court) during his State of the Union address.
We hope that Kagan's anti-free speech views, and the danger of losing freedom of political speech, will be thoroughly discussed on "television and radio broadcasts, pamphlets, posters, and the Internet"...while they still can be.
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