I have to think that all this demonizing of people on the right by Obama and Pelosi are sparking this kind of violence against people on the right. I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw — I saw this myself in the late ’60s in Washington DC, this kind of — of rhetoric was very frightening and it gave — it created a climate in which we — violence took place. And so I wish that we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements that are made, understanding that — that some of the people — the ears it is falling on are not as balanced as the person making the statement might assume. But, again, our country is great because people can say what they think and they believe, but I also think that they have to take responsibility for any incitement that they may cause.
It is an odd, and we'd say regrettable, pattern of this White House that it lets itself get dragged down into fights with specific media outlets.
George W. Bush experienced acrimony with the New York Times, but for the most part, other than general frustrations of a conservative administration, complaining about a liberal media, it was no big deal.
But in addition to Fox News, now The White House is going after highly-respected and influential car site Edmunds .com.
They're actually using The White House blog to dispute the site's analysis of Cash-For-Clunkers (via Detroit News).
The post is snarkily titled: "Busy Covering Car Sales on Mars, Edmunds.com Gets It Wrong (Again) on Cash for Clunkers"
Harsh!
Here's the full post:
-----
On the same day that we found out that motor vehicle output added 1.7% to economic growth in the third quarter – the largest contribution to quarterly growth in over a decade – Edmunds.com has released a faulty analysis suggesting that the Cash for Clunkers program had no meaningful impact on our economy or on overall auto sales. This is the latest of several critical “analyses” of the Cash for Clunkers program from Edmunds.com, which appear designed to grab headlines and get coverage on cable TV. Like many of their previous attempts, this latest claim doesn’t withstand even basic scrutiny.
The Edmunds analysis is based on two implausible assumptions:
1. The Edmunds’ analysis rests on the assumption that the market for cars that didn’t qualify for Cash for Clunkers was completely unaffected by this program.
In other words, all the other cars were being sold on Mars, while the rest of the country was caught up in the excitement of the Cash for Clunkers program. This analysis ignores not only the price impacts that a program like Cash for Clunkers has on the rest of the vehicle market, but the reports from across the country that people were drawn into dealerships by the Cash for Clunkers program and ended up buying cars even though their old car was not eligible for the program.
This faulty assumption leads Edmunds to a conclusion that is at odds with many independent analyses: Edmunds assumption that more than 80% of the payback from Cash for Clunkers would occur in 2009 isn't how many mainstream analyses, including Moody's and IHS Global Insight approach the problem (see pages 5 and 15 of this CEA report [PDF]). In fact, Deutsche Bank recently concluded that “The important takeaway from recent sales trends is that it suggests that there has been minimal 'payback' for the U.S. government’s 'cash for clunkers' program.”
2. Edmunds also ignores the beneficial impact that the program will have on 4th Quarter GDP because automakers have ramped up their production to rebuild their depleted inventories.
Major automakers including GM, Ford, Honda and Chrysler all increased their production through the end of the year as a result of this program, which will help boost growth beyond the third quarter. The actions of private market participants, who would not increase production if they didn’t think demand for their product would be there through the end of the year, is a far better indicator of market dynamics – and one that Edmunds.com conveniently ignores.
Most importantly, this program is helping boost our economy and create jobs now when we need it most. In a comprehensive report, the Council of Economic Advisers estimated that the Cash for Clunkers will create 70,000 jobs in the second half of 2009. The strength of recent auto sales data suggest that, if anything, this projection underestimates the actual impact of the program. CEA’s analysis is transparent and comprehensive, laying out all of its assumptions for the public to understand. Edmunds.com, on the other hand, is promoting a bombastic press release without any public access to their underlying analysis.
So put on your space suit and compare the two approaches yourself:
* Edmunds.com * Council of Economic Advisors
Seriously, what's the point of this? Clunkers is over. It just makes The White House look thin-skinned, though it's great publicity for Edmunds. And yes, Clunkers massively distorted this morning's GDP number, as we demonstrated here, but we're with Edmunds that it was a giant waste with little long-term benefit.
At least one Democratic political strategist has gotten a blunt warning from the White House to never appear on Fox News Channel, an outlet that presidential aides have depicted as not so much a news-gathering operation as a political opponent bent on damaging the Obama administration.
The Democratic strategist said that shortly after an appearance on Fox, he got a phone call from a White House official telling him not to be a guest on the show again. The call had an intimidating tone, he said.
The message was, "We better not see you on again," said the strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to run afoul of the White House. An implicit suggestion, he said, was that "clients might stop using you if you continue."
n a case that raises questions about online journalism and privacy rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day.
The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based Indymedia.us Web site "not to disclose the existence of this request" unless authorized by the Justice Department, a gag order that presents an unusual quandary for any news organization.
Kristina Clair, a 34-year old Linux administrator living in Philadelphia who provides free server space for Indymedia.us, said she was shocked to receive the Justice Department's subpoena. (The Independent Media Center is a left-of-center amalgamation of journalists and advocates that – according to their principles of unity and mission statement – work toward "promoting social and economic justice" and "social change.")
The subpoena (PDF) from U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison in Indianapolis demanded "all IP traffic to and from http://www.indymedia.us" on June 25, 2008. It instructed Clair to "include IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information," including e-mail addresses, physical addresses, registered accounts, and Indymedia readers' Social Security Numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and so on.
"I didn't think anything we were doing was worthy of any (federal) attention," Clair said in a telephone interview with CBSNews.com on Monday. After talking to other Indymedia volunteers, Clair ended up calling the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, which represented her at no cost.
Under long-standing Justice Department guidelines, subpoenas to members of the news media are supposed to receive special treatment. One portion of the guidelines, for instance, says that "no subpoena may be issued to any member of the news media" without "the express authorization of the attorney general" – that would be current attorney general Eric Holder – and subpoenas should be "directed at material information regarding a limited subject matter."
Still unclear is what criminal investigation U.S. Attorney Morrison was pursuing. Last Friday, a spokeswoman initially promised a response, but Morrison sent e-mail on Monday evening saying: "We have no comment." The Justice Department in Washington, D.C. also declined to respond.
Kevin Bankston, a senior staff attorney at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, replied to the Justice Department on behalf of his client in a February 2009 letter (PDF) outlining what he described as a series of problems with the subpoena, including that it was not personally served, that a judge-issued court order would be required for the full logs, and that Indymedia did not store logs in the first place.
Morrison replied in a one-sentence letter saying the subpoena had been withdrawn. Around the same time, according to the EFF, the group had a series of discussions with assistant U.S. attorneys in Morrison's office who threatened Clair with possible prosecution for obstruction of justice if she disclosed the existence of the already-withdrawn subpoena -- claiming it "may endanger someone's health" and would have a "human cost."
Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of The Press, said a gag order to a news organization wouldn't stand up in court: "If you get a subpoena and you're a journalist, they can't gag you."
Dalglish said that a subpoena being issued and withdrawn is not unprecedented. "I have seen any number of these things withdrawn when counsel for someone who is claiming a reporter's privilege says, 'Can you tell me the date you got approval from the attorney general's office'... I'm willing to chalk this up to bad lawyering on the part of the DOJ, or just not thinking."
Making this investigation more mysterious is that Indymedia.us is an aggregation site, meaning articles that appear on it were published somewhere else first, and there's no hint about what sparked the criminal probe. Clair, the system administrator, says that no IP (Internet Protocol) addresses are recorded for Indymedia.us, and non-IP address logs are kept for a few weeks and then discarded.
EFF's Bankston wrote a second letter to the government saying that, if it needed to muzzle Indymedia, it should apply for a gag order under the section of federal law that clearly permits such an order to be issued. Bankston's plan: To challenge that law on First Amendment grounds.
But the Justice Department never replied. "This is the first time we've seen them try to get the IP address of everyone who visited a particular site," Bankston said. "That it was a news organization was an additional troubling fact that implicates First Amendment rights."
This is not, however, the first time that the Feds have focused on Indymedia -- a Web site whose authors sometimes blur the line between journalism, advocacy, and on-the-streets activism. In 2004, the Justice Department sent a grand jury subpoena asking for information about who posted lists of Republican delegates while urging they be given an unwelcome reception at the party's convention in New York City that year. A Indymedia hosting service in Texas once received a subpoena asking for server logs in relation to an investigation of an attempted murder in Italy.
Bankston has written a longer description of the exchange of letters with the Justice Department, which he hopes will raise awareness of how others should respond to similar legal demands for Web logs, customer records, and compulsory silence. "Our fear is that this kind of bogus gag order is much more common than one would hope, considering they're legally baseless," Bankston says. "We're telling this story in hopes that more providers will press back and go public when the government demands their silence."
Obama,"Now, I should tell you, I should be honest, as President of the United States, there are times where I wish information didn't flow so freely because then I wouldn't have to listen to people criticizing me all the time."
The owner of a car dealership in Wheat Ridge is defending his new billboard that has drawn large amounts of criticism for its anti-Obama messages.
The large sign outside Wolf Automotive, near Interstate 70 and Kipling, shows two caricatures of President Obama, one in which he's wearing a turban. It reads "President or Jihad?"
The billboard also urges Obama to prove he's an American with the words "Birth Certificate" and "Prove It." At the bottom is the message "Wake up America! Remember Ft. Hood!"
On Saturday Phil Wolf let a CBS4 crew in the business to listen to the plethora of phone calls -- both in support and against -- that they've been getting about the billboard. He said some of the calls have included threats to his employees.
"Our service manager was threatened to put a bullet in his head," said Wolf, who says he has no immediate plans to take the billboard down and claims he has a large amount of support.
Below are a sample of some of the calls that came in while CBS4 was there:
"I think it's the most racist, disgusting thing I've ever seen in my entire life on a billboard. You should be ashamed of yourself," one male caller said.
"I hope you never sell another car and I hope you go bankrupt," a woman said.
"Hey, I just wanted to say thank you for being one heck of an American," a male caller said.
"I just wanted to give you a call and say 'Way to go.' I love it," another man said.
Wolf believes Barack Obama has not proven he was born in the country as is required to become president. Hawaiian officials have said Obama was born there.
A birth certificate, widely posted on the Internet, is what many believe is the proof. But some don't think it's real, and won't until Obama himself holds up his certificate.
"Just show a piece of paper, like the rest of us have to," Wolf said.
Maggie Couch was outside the dealership on Saturday urging a boycott and holding up signs.
"This display of hatred and lies hurts me. It hurts our country," she said.
In explanation of his inclusion of a reference to the Fort Hood shootings and "Jihad," Wolf said he thinks the president is soft on terrorism.
"You've got an enemy within our military ranks. Where else are enemies implanted at?" he said.
Couch said she thinks you can't "blame every lunatic action on our president."
Wolf said he isn't a racist and that callers who are accusing him of it have no grounds.
"My write-in candidate was Alan Keyes, and I married an Hispanic woman, so don't come to me with racism," he said. Keyes is a conservative political activist and African-American.
Police said during the day on Saturday a man threw a wooden pallet at some women who were outside protesting the billboard. He was charged with criminal mischief and disorderly conduct.
The Denver Post reported that Wolf's sign has drawn criticism from the Anti-Defamation League and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Now the loony left is openly threatening to kill opposition to Obama. MEM I suggest you distance yourself from the liberal mob before these associations totally discredit you.
Facing rising unemployment rates and having seen uncertain results from the stimulus bill, President Obama is hosting a "jobs summit" at the White House Thursday that will be packed with business leaders and economists supportive of White House policies but lacks a diversity of opinion, several analysts say.
Missing from a partial list of attendees released by the White House are the self-proclaimed voices of business - the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business - both of which have been critical of Mr. Obama's proposed health care overhaul.
Confirmed attendees include liberal economists credited with shaping the $787 billion stimulus package, union leaders, environmental advocates and executives from Google and other blue-chip firms.
"He's going to get lots of recommendations to spend more money," said Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business. "These are the very same people who gave us the stimulus package. My feeling is we're not going to get what we need, and that's a complete change in direction on economic policy."
A spokeswoman for the White House would not comment for the record on the format or how the list of participants was drawn up.
Democrats Diane Feinstein and Dick “Turban” Durbin – who have long been the Dems’ official trial-balloon-floaters for assaults on free speech like the “Fairness Doctrine” – are proposing an amendment to a Senate bill (S.448) clarifying the press shield law.
And it’s aimed squarely at citizen journalists like you and I. Via RWN, here’s the amendment text, with some emphases added:
AMENDMENTS intended to be proposed by Mrs. FEINSTEIN (for herself and Mr. DURBIN )
Viz:
In section 10(2)(A), strike clause (iii) and insert the following:
[a "journalist" is shielded if he/she] (iii) obtains the information sought while working as a salaried employee of, or independent contractor for, an entity—
(I) that disseminates information by print, broadcast, cable, satellite, mechanical, photographic, electronic, 1or other means; and
(II) that—
(aa) publishes a newspaper, book, magazine, or other periodical;
(bb) operates a radio or television broadcast station, network, cable system, or satellite carrier, or a channel or programming service for any such station, network, system, or carrier;
(cc) operates a programming service; or
(dd) operates a news agency or wire service;
In other words, you need to be an employee of a news business. All of us hobby hacks in our pajamas in our basements are out in the cold.
In section 10(2)(B), strike ‘‘and’’ at the end.
In section 10(2)(C), strike the period at the end and insert ‘‘; and’’.
In section 10(2), add at the end the following:
(D) does not include an individual who gathers or disseminates the protected information sought to be compelled anonymously or under a pseudonym.
This would seem to be aimed at the likes of James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles – provided they’re not employed by a Major News Outlet, of course.
Leaving aside the obvious indication that this is the Democrats’ way of circling their wagons around ACORN – this is a fascinating look into the authoritarianism of the Democrat party at work.
The conservative blogosphere is dominated by independents who cover their fields of expertise, whatever they are (this blog: music, financial planning, wine, tomatos and Minnesota politics) for the pure, unadulterated love of the game. From Power Line (which covers all they survey) to Speed Gibson (who patrols the ramparts of northwest-suburban education), we mostly do it because we want to, money be damned.
The left, on the other hand, has built up a network of “business” entities and non-profits, from the pseudo-newspaper-y “MNPost” to the not-very-covert propagandists at the “Center for Independent Media” (parent of the Minnesoros “Indepdendent”), at exquisite cost; one might now presume that this money was spent to get ahead of the legislative curve that the Feinstein/Durbin proposal represents, as a further attempt to shut down independent, non-government-vetted thought in this country.
FCC "diversity czar" Mark Lloyd wants to shut down conservative free speech by resurrecting a variation of the Fairness Doctrine, where conservative speech is heavily fined, and the money from their fines given to their liberal competitors. Intimidating conservative speech by fining it into bankruptcy.
This is only for radio, where conservative programming dominates.
But print and television, where liberalism are overwhelmingly dominant (with only a few pockets of consrvative thought) are, of course, exempt from any similar "levelling of the playing field".
Mark Lloyd has also praised Hugo Chavez for the effectiveness of how thoroughly Chavez has taken over media control of authoritarian Venezuela, and Lloyd has described this takeover as "a good model to follow" for the Obama administration in the U.S.
BASAMs quoted hotair in the post above mine, and you had nothing to say.
I posted a clip of Glenn Beck about Mark Lloyd (Beck being one of the few sources against the vast ocean of liberal coverage that refuses to report Lloyd's authoritarian craziness) and you snipe at it while making no real point.
Both HotAir and Beck are conservative opinion sources. They are also both sources that present a factual case that liberal sources won't report.
The only difference is you go after me, for posting conservative sources like those, that BASAMS, G-man, Sammitch and many others post as well. But I could shorten that to: you just go after me. Political affiliation has nothing to do with your pathology.
Basically, you have a problem with anything I post. Your obsession with me continues, even to forums that have nothing to do with politics.
i am getting sick and tired of being your fucking obsession around here. i cant post anything without you following me around the board. if you dont have anything constructive to say about my posts i wish you would leave.
You're such an easy target. As long as you keep breaking I'll keep trolling you.
If "breaking" is humiliating you, then you win, I guess.
That's kind of like arguing you're beating the shit out of my knuckles with your face.
Dumbass.
I guess you have a point there. After all I'm the one who shows up every couple weeks, spams other people's opinions then throws a hissy fit when I'm not takes seriously. I should be ashamed of myself.
November 6th, 2012: Americas new Independence Day.
Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue is a wanted man -- at least according to the liberal activist group that's put a de facto bounty on his head.
A network of liberal groups known as Velvet Revolution started an ad campaign offering $200,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the man whose trade organization has become a thorn in the side of the Obama administration and congressional Democrats.
The group is not leveling any specific charges of criminal behavior. Rather, it is casting a wide net, fishing for any whistleblowers from Donohue's past who might come forward with allegations of wrongdoing. The campaign against the Chamber was launched in response to the group's opposition to climate change legislation and health care reform, and its plan to spend $100 million lobbying against these and other initiatives.
"On every issue, the Chamber is kind of the lead corporate advocate for the status quo," said Kevin Zeese, a lawyer who sits on the board for Velvet Revolution, calling Donohue a "knee-jerk reactionary" and the Chamber a "right-wing extremist group."
The Chamber of Commerce, meanwhile, decried the ad campaign and threatened possible legal action.
"The media should be following the money trail behind this scurrilous group instead of giving credence to its outrageous tactics -- and we are considering legal options with the ad," spokesman Eric Wohlschlegel said.
The Chamber has already taken a lot of heat from the White House. Top aides tried to neutralize the group earlier in the year by doing an end-run around the organization and dealing directly with members, as some big companies, like Apple, peeled off from the Chamber due to disagreements over issues like climate change.
The organization was also not invited to Obama's jobs forum in Washington last week.
But Zeese said the White House has nothing to do with the bounty on Donohue.
"It's individual donors. We have no connection to the White House or unions or anything like that," he said.
Velvet Revolution launched the StoptheChamber campaign in October and started offering a bounty for information on Donohue a month later. A $100,000 reward was increased to $200,000 early this month, thanks to what Zeese called a "handful of larger donors" whom he would not identify.
A full-page print ad that looks like a "wanted" poster out of the wild West began to run in the Washington City Paper this week. It features a head shot of Donohue and offers a tip line for "insiders and whistleblowers possessing information not already in the public domain."
The tip line is live. When FoxNews.com called, the operator asked for "criminal" information about Donohue.
Zeese said that a handful of tips have come in which the group is "pursuing."
He said the hope is to forward any damaging information onto the Justice Department or Congress for further investigation.
File this story under the pot calling the kettle black.
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), prone for throwing his own political bombs at Republicans, has threatened a local critic with five years in jail for creating the website “mycongressmanisnuts.com,”
The Orlando Sentinel reports that Grayson wrote a letter this week to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding that the federal government imprison Republican activist Angie Langley for five years because of her website criticizing him.
The website, designed to raise money against Grayson, catalogues videos and news clippings that portray the provocative congressman in an unfavorable light. It courts donors to donate money to help elect his Republican challenger next year – collecting $3,725 to date.
Grayson accuses the activist of misrepresenting the fact that she’s a constituent of his (she lives outside his district).
“Ms. Langley has deliberately masqueraded as a constituent of mine, in order to create the false appearance that she speaks for constituents who don’t support me,” Grayson wrote in the letter.
(You can read Grayson's complete letter to Holder here.)
It’s awfully ironic that Grayson is demanding to silence one of his critics, given his history of red-meat rhetoric against a host of powerful Republicans. Earlier this month, he told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews he wished Dick Cheney would “STFU.”
Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama's closest confidants. Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama's head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for "overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs."
In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-"independent" advocates to "cognitively infiltrate" online groups and websites -- as well as other activist groups -- which advocate views that Sunstein deems "false conspiracy theories" about the Government. This would be designed to increase citizens' faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists. The paper's abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here.
Sunstein advocates that the Government's stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into "chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups." He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called "independent" credible voices to bolster the Government's messaging (on the ground that those who don't believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government).
“Democrats” and “tradition” seldom appear in the same sentence, unless the left is doing something to trash a tradition — such as traditional marriage, prayer in public, strong defense, respect for the military, free speech, etc.
But who knew Democratic presidents would be so good at establishing new traditions?
We can thank Jimmy Carter for the Sore Loser tradition. He was first among modern presidents to publicly attack and second-guess the presidents who followed him. For generations, former presidents showed respect to the office, at least, by biting their tongues. During the Clinton scandals, George Bush Sr. probably bit his in half — but he never criticized Clinton the way Carter has scorched Reagan and both Bushes.
And we can thank Bill Clinton for another tradition — the permanent campaign. He was the one who decided the Shite House is really just a big campaign office, to be used to stroke donors and run a war-room for 24-7, 365 electioneering. He also adopted the Carter tradition of undermining presidents in office — as long as they are Republicans.
And now we have new traditions created by Barack Obama. There’s the one for bowing to tinpot tyrants. One for government takeovers of private industries (which is a revival of an FDR tradition). And the latest is his direct attacks on the Supreme Court (another FDR tradition).
When the Supreme Court ruled that McCain-Feingold campaign finance restrictions were violations of the First Amendment, Obama sounded more outraged than he was by terrorist attacks on Americans.
In fact, he said, “I can’t think of anything more devastating to the public interest.”
Really? Really!?
I can think of many things, starting with terrorism, economic meltdowns, Obamacare and the way he tanked the market by threatening big bank taxes. But it’s not just the intemperate hyperbole — it’s the tone that is disturbing.
Presidents often disagree with Supreme Court decisions. But they traditionally show respect to the court as a co-equal branch of government. And they seldom call out the partisan dogs in Congress to reverse the court’s decision.
Anyone who was an honest observer, who read the campaign finance restrictions could see that they unconstitutionally limited political speech, which is the first purpose for protection of free speech in the First Amendment.
To the same of newspapers everywhere, the media mostly looked the other way, because they got a loophole. Media corporations were given free speech, but other corporations were gagged.
The Supreme Court has corrected that by insisting that the Founders wanted us to err on the side of free speech, and avoid any kind of censorship — like McCain Feingold.
And Obama’s immature, childish response is to harshly attack the court and make reckless threats about what he will do to “fix it.” This is not another new tradition we need. But as usual, Obama thinks everything is about Obama.
He should pay more attention to another message last week — from the voters in Massachusetts. Now that was about Obama.
And maybe he should just grow up and start acting more like a president and less like a state senator.
Speaking in the East Room of the White House, President Obama told the nation’s mayors he understand the difficulty of governing in communities large and small in the wake of the financial crisis.
"It's just not easy being a mayor. But rarely, if ever, has it been more difficult than it is today," he told more than 200 mayors in town for the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting being held in Washington this week, "Your constituents are feeling the pain of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, not to mention an economy that wasn't working for a lot of them long before this particular crisis hit."
He and Vice President Joe Biden engaged in a question and answer session with the mayors, though the press was not allowed to stick around for that.
more information emerges on the Obama Administration's decision to house propagandist "new media specialists" in most major Cabinet-level Offices of Public Affairs. These bloggers, paid with taxpayer funds, routinely pass along "Administration approved" talking points to bloggers and online journalists, monitor conservative or "adversarial" websites, and post comments in support of the Administration on a number of those sites.
In the case of Justice, that "blogger," as reported by the Muffled Oar blog is Tracy Russo, a former Democrat National Committee staffer, with ties to Sen. John Edwards' campaigns. But similar jobs also exist at the Department of Treasury, the Department of State and the Department of Education.
According to a reporter, who has covered the Department of Justice for a major financial wire service during the current administration, a number of daily newspaper reporters were aware of the work Russo was undertaking at DOJ, and yet withheld reporting the situation, "because those reporters were being given access and information from OPA that helped them with their daily news filings."
Meanwhile, according to a career employee in the Department of Justice, both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees sent formal letters of inquiry to the Department of Justice regarding its "blogging" policies, but DOJ officials have yet to even acknowledge the letters.
The Federal Communications Commission has made little effort to hide its goal of ending free television. The recent -- and perhaps most brazen -- act was the appointment by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski of a Duke University Law Professor to serve as the commission's architect to dismantle the nation's 1,600 television stations. Sound like hyperbole? Consider the following.
Last month, Genachowski appointed Stuart Benjamin, who referred to broadcast television as "a powerful source of homogenization and pablum," as a key advisor on spectrum policy and First Amendment matters. Last May, Duke University published a paper by Benjamin titled "Roasting the Pig to Burn Down the House: A Modest Proposal." Benjamin recommends the FCC impose onerous "broadcast regulations that seem undesirable on their own terms but that may result in such harms to broadcasting that broadcasting leaves the [radio-TV] spectrum."
Benjamin argues in favor of "new regulations on broadcasters that will make broadcasting unprofitable." He suggests "some regulations will impose costs on broadcasters and not only have no benefits but also impose additional costs in their effects (e.g., make programming worse)." Benjamin favors regulatory measures that "will reduce the viewership of broadcasting and thus hasten the demise of broadcasting -- what I [Benjamin] would regard as a win-win."
Further, Benjamin notes that "every dollar of additional costs for broadcasters is one less dollar of profit, and thus reduces the attractiveness of over-the-air broadcasting as a business model." He suggests "onerous record-keeping requirements, ascertainment requirements" and other regulations that have no public interest benefit and "will likely be pure cost."
In other words, ChavezObama's people plan to put so many new regulations on "free broadcasters" that they go out of business without a government bailout/takeover.
Apparently to the liberal Thought Police, a man can't sit in an audience and quietly mouth to himself the thoughts he has about Obama's blatant misrepresentation of the truth. Alito didn't heckle or interrupt the speech in any way whatsoever. He just thought it. Apparently that is too much freedom in the age of the Annointed One.
The canyon-like chasm between what Obama said last night, and what he has done --and been thwarted from doing by patriots-- is vast indeed. And yes, at many points Obama's words last night were "not true"
And as Juan Williams pointed out, it was intimidating to the Supreme Court, and to the Court's independent decision-making, for Obama to chastise them from just a few feet away, with hundreds of Democrats applauding his chastising of the Court.
Again, so much for freedom of thought and respecting the separation of powers.
has any other President ever used the State of the Union to pay lip service to the Separation of Powers doctrine and then publically attack the Supreme Court for supporting free speech? Or was that another historic first for this guy?
A new White House policy on permissible lobbying on economic recovery and stimulus projects has taken a decidedly anti-First Amendment turn. It's a classic illustration of Big Government trying to control every aspect of a particular activity and in the process running up against civil liberty.
Check out this passage from a post on the White House blog by Norm Eisen, Special Counsel to the President on Ethics and Government Reform (emphasis added):
"First, we will expand the restriction on oral communications to cover all persons, not just federally registered lobbyists. For the first time, we will reach contacts not only by registered lobbyists but also by unregistered ones, as well as anyone else exerting influence on the process. We concluded this was necessary under the unique circumstances of the stimulus program.
"Second, we will focus the restriction on oral communications to target the scenario where concerns about merit-based decision-making are greatest –after competitive grant applications are submitted and before awards are made. Once such applications are on file, the competition should be strictly on the merits. To that end, comments (unless initiated by an agency official) must be in writing and will be posted on the Internet for every American to see.
"Third, we will continue to require immediate internet disclosure of all other communications with registered lobbyists. If registered lobbyists have conversations or meetings before an application is filed, a form must be completed and posted to each agency’s website documenting the contact."
For the full blog post by Eisen, go here.
The key passage is the reference to expanding regulation from registered lobbyists to "anyone else exerting influence on the process. We concluded this was necessary under the unique circumstances of the stimulus program."
This is the Camel's nose under the tent, being poked because of special circumstances. Let government restrict political expression - i.e. lobbying of government officials regarding policy - in one small, supposedly specialized area and not long after the specialized area starts expanding. Eventually, all political expression regarding all policy will become subject to government regulation.
