1st Amendment Resuscitated (but still in critical condition)
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court loosened restrictions Monday on corporate- and union-funded television ads that air close to elections, weakening a key provision of a landmark campaign finance law.
The court, split 5-4, upheld an appeals court ruling that an anti-abortion group should have been allowed to air ads during the final two months before the 2004 elections. The law unreasonably limits speech and violates the group's First Amendment rights, the court said.
The decision could lead to a bigger role for corporations, unions and other interest groups in the 2008 presidential and congressional elections.
The case involved advertisements that Wisconsin Right to Life was prevented from broadcasting. The ads asked voters to contact the state's two senators, Democrats Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl, and urge them not to filibuster President Bush's judicial nominees.
Feingold, a co-author of the campaign finance law, was up for re-election in 2004.
The provision in question was aimed at preventing the airing of issue ads that cast candidates in positive or negative lights while stopping short of explicitly calling for their election or defeat. Sponsors of such ads have contended they are exempt from certain limits on contributions in federal elections.
Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by his conservative allies, wrote a majority opinion upholding the appeals court ruling.
The majority itself was divided in how far justices were willing to go in allowing issue ads.
Three justices, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, would have overruled the court's 2003 decision upholding the constitutionality of the provision. (Yep... SCOTUS appointments do make a difference, do they not?--ed)
Although today's decision breathes a little bit more life into a dying Amendment, that, after all, was only first on a list of priorities granted our citizenry by our Founding Fathers (and incidentally by our Creator), Diane Feinstein and other democrats (and possibly RINOs) are still trying their damnedest to murder that pesky Amendment once and for all:
WASHINGTON, June 24 (UPI) -- U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., said Sunday she is "looking at" the possibility of reviving the fairness doctrine for U.S. broadcasters.
Feinstein, speaking on "Fox News Sunday" with Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., said talk radio in particular has presented a one-sided view of immigration reform legislation being considered by the Senate.
U.S. talk radio is dominated by conservative voices.
"This is a very complicated bill," said Feinstein. "Most people don't know what's in this bill. Therefore, to just have one or two things dramatized and taken out of context, such as the word amnesty -- we have a silent amnesty right now, but nobody goes into that. Nobody goes into the flaws of our broken system."
Feinstein said the measure before the Senate "fixes those flaws" but that doesn't get presented on talk radio, which she said "pushes people to ... extreme views without a lot of information."
Asked if she would revive the fairness doctrine, which used to require broadcasters to present competing sides of controversial issues, Feinstein said she was "looking at it."
"I remember when there was a fairness doctrine," she said, "and I think there was much more serious correct reporting to people."
You mean much more unquestioned reporting to people, Ms. Feinstein.
Yes, I know you pine for the glory days of Uncle Walter spoon feeding events so that they are palatable to the left-leaning palate, and you'd do anything to get those days back.
Right now, left-leaning folks have had (and continue to have) every bit of opportunity to have their voices heard in talk radio. They can, and have accessed deep pockets. They, like the dinosaurs, have had their moment in the talk radio sphere, and have been found wanting:
Not to mention the liberal monopoly found here, here, here or here, or of course here.
The "Fairness Doctrine" has nothing to do with fairness at all. The current market is a more than fair arbiter of what the people want to listen to or for that matter will listen to. The Fairness Doctrine is nothing more than a government coup on one of our most basic rights as United States Citizens--that is our right to freedom of political speech. However, equally important as the right to freedom of political speech is the concomitant right for citizens to listen to what they want, and to not have the type of information that they are privy to dictated by government mandate. Such an intrusion into the marketplace of ideas by default stifles the very freedom of political speech that the First Amendment demands, and renders a new, even more nefarious meaning to the term "excessive entaglement."
Yes, the Supreme Court today gave half a breath back to our First Amendment, but there continue to be (and probably always will be) those who would see our most important Freedom we can have as citizens become null and void.
When our very government stifles our freedom of political debate (which, incidentally, serves as its citizens' primary check and balance against tyranny), look for the remainder of our Constitutionally- "guaranteed" Freedoms to become nothing more than a meaningless quaint sidebar in what will certainly be the downward march of what was the Great American Experiment.
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