Who Is Really Attacking Free Speech?

I remember a day, not all that long ago, when certain folks on the left (and the right) were bemoaning the loss of Constitutional rights under a certain former president due to the Patriot Act. No one has yet to PROVE one single case where an American citizen lost any rights due to the Patriot Act, but that didn't stop the chorus of complaints. Yet today, these same champions of "civil liberties" are eerily silent - especially in light of a case that was before the Supreme Court last week - a cast that has far greater implications on your free speech rights than anything the Patriot Act could ever dream of. The case is Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission and it is about the constitutionality of McCain Feingold BCFRA as it applies to documentaries and films. In oral arguments before the court last week a government lawyer defending the FEC said this, in answer to a question from the Justices.....

Several justices asked the deputy solicitor general, Malcolm Stewart, if there would be any constitutional reason why the ban on documentaries and ads couldn't be extended to books carrying similar messages. Stewart, speaking for a president who once taught constitutional law, said Congress can ban books "if the book contained the functional equivalent of express advocacy" for a candidate and was supported, even slightly, with corporate money. Such advocacy, Stewart conceded, could amount to negatively mentioning a politician just once in a 500-page book put out by a mainstream publisher.

Now in all fairness to the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. this case started long before his inauguration. This case has been in the works for almost a year. If you are going to blame President Obama for this career bureaucrat's remarks, then you also have to blame President Bush and every Congresscritter (hello Senator McCain) that ever voted for this horrible piece of legislation. For they are equally responsible for this travesty!

However, Mr. Goldberg does have a good larger point. The same people who demand that pornography be protected "speech" are the same ones that have no problems trying to silence opposing speech through legislative fiat like the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" and are the same people who accuse anyone who disagrees with the policies of the first African American President of being a racist. They say that they need to "protect unpopular speech" so that all speech can be protected - but their actions show that the only "unpopular speech" that they are willing to protect is speech that is "unpopular" with conservative Americans. If you are a conservative and you speech is "unpopular" with liberal Americans....well you must be silenced then!

The good news for ALL Americans is that as soon as Deputy Solicitor General Stewart made his argument for government censorship of free speech, the Justices reacted viscerally.....

Because a government lawyer pushed his argument as far as logic would carry it, an alarmed Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed poised to create a new exception to federal power to regulate what advocacy groups can say during national political campaigns. At a minimum, a 90-minute documentary, even though a bitingly critical attack on a specific candidate, leaving little doubt of what it wanted voters to do, may wind up with constitutional protection, it appeared after the Court had heard Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (08-205). But, if that is the outcome, federal regulation of other forms of campaign expression may be put in doubt anew.

When the argument turned to such First Amendment horrors as banning books, banning Internet expression, and banning even Amazon’s book-downloading technology, “Kindle,” the members of the Court seemed instantly to recoil from the sweep of arguments made by Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm L. Stewart.

Even Justice David H. Souter, who tends to support government regulation of campaign spending, looked and sounded stunned when Stewart argued that the government would have power to forbid a labor union to use its own funds to pay an author to write a campaign biography that would later be published in book form by Random House. And, across the bench, incredulity showed when Stewart said the government could ban an advocacy group from using its own funds to pay for a 90-minute documentary if only the first minute was devoted to urging voters whom to choose, and the rest was a recital of information about the candidate without further direct advocacy.

If the Court does rule in favor of Citizens United, it will be a victory for all Americans free speech. For that our friends on the left will owe a debt of gratitude to their favorit President to hate. For he put in place two Justices that are without a doubt the most Constitutionally Conservative justices on the bench - jurists who will protect the rights of all Americans to agree and disagree with politicians as loudly and obnoxiously as they want with out fear of government interference.