Originally Posted By: the G-man on 10/08/08
I figure we'll need a separate thread to discuss all the efforts of Glorious Leader Obama to prosecute and silence his critics in the coming years...at least until this site gets shut down.


Obama's First-Amendment Scandals Were Predicted
  • The Obama administration’s free-speech scandals of today were repeatedly and accurately predicted by conservative pundits during the 2008 election. Obama’s first presidential campaign launched a series of novel and troubling assaults on its critics, leading many conservatives to warn that both the press and political speech would come under attack should Obama be elected president. Some of the predictions about Obama made by conservative writers in 2008 seem uncannily on-the-mark today.

    The first incident to spur warnings was the Obama campaign’s move in late August of 2008 to prevent the American Issues Project from airing an ad exploring Obama’s ties to former terrorist Bill Ayers. Rather than simply answering the ad, the Obama campaign threatened economic boycotts, federal investigations of the group’s officers and anonymous donors, and criminal prosecutions. Although the ad ran locally, Fox News and CNN were apparently discouraged by these threats from accepting the ad. Kimberley Strassel wrote in the Wall Street Journal last week about the precedent this controversy set for today’s scandals. Yet the dust-up over the Ayers ad was merely the first of several such incidents.

    I know, because I was incident number two. On August 28, just days after the controversy over the Ayers ad, the Obama campaign pressured WGN Radio in Chicago to bar my scheduled appearance on the Milt Rosenberg show to discuss my research into Obama’s ties to Ayers. When the station refused to cancel my appearance, it was deluged with calls from Obama supporters acting on instructions from his campaign. They demanded that I be kept off the air.

    A few weeks later, on September 15, a flood of callers, again egged on by the Obama campaign, demanded that David Freddoso, then my colleague at NATIONAL REVIEW, be barred from discussing his just-published biography of Obama on the Rosenberg show.

    In late September, a team of prosecutors and sheriffs in Missouri (perhaps not coincidentally, the home state of the group that produced the Ayers ad) was formed to act as an “Obama Truth Squad.” The Truth Squad, said a report, would “target anyone who lies or runs a misleading television ad during the presidential campaign.” The group was to respond “immediately to any ads and statements that might violate Missouri ethics laws.” This apparent threat to prosecute critics of Obama set off a firestorm of outrage, which the local press and the Obama campaign later claimed was all based on a misunderstanding.

    Also in late September of 2008, the Obama camp attempted to force yet another negative ad off the air, this one the National Rifle Association’s take on Obama’s gun policy. A letter to television stations effectively threatened to have their broadcast licences yanked should they air what the Obama camp claimed was a knowingly false and misleading ad.

    Again and again, conservatives cited these incidents as evidence that something new and dangerous was at work: disregard of the fundamental principles of free expression, a willingness to resort to intimidation tactics, and abuse of the law to stifle criticism. The national press on the other hand, either ignored these incidents, or treated them as evidence of the Obama campaign’s effectiveness, and its sophisticated use of social media....

    By refusing to complain, or even report on, what conservatives were up in arms about in 2008, the national media bears some share of responsibility for the troubles it faces today.