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By Amelia Wigton ACLU sides with the enemy...again
December 2, 2005 FCC Endorses Cable Choice
December 2, 2005
By Robert Knight and Lindsey Douthit 'Hate Crime' Laws Threaten Religious Freedom
December 12, 2005
By Julie Foster Bible on trial Rebellion brewing against Canada's pro-'gay' ruling
WorldNetDaily.comWorldNetDaily.com Why all Americans, of all faiths support the Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act. H.R. 235 Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act of 2005
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"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
~ Benjamin Franklin
"our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."
--Thomas Jefferson
"I am for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents."
"Dangerous laws created by well intentioned people today can be used by dangerous people with evil intentions tomorrow."
- Alan Eppers
Why all Americans, of all faiths support the Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act. The Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act introduced by U.S. Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) would do just that. The sole purpose of bill H.R. 235 is to restore First Amendment rights to America 's religious leaders. Presently the bill has been referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means.
Since 1954, the freedom of speech from pulpits across America has been restricted, hampering pastors, priests and rabbis from speaking on issues deemed political. Examples include specific instruction from the pulpit as to whom to vote for, and for what reason. The restriction to speak on such major moral and "political issues," including the banning of partial-birth abortion, has severely limited calls to action from religious leaders within their respective congregations. The present law is a direct result from a seemingly simple insertion by then Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX) into pending legislation for major tax code revisions. Johnson's amendment from the floor passed the Senate on a voice vote. This 1954 amendment has since prevented nonprofit 501(c )( 3) organizations from engaging in political activity. If they do, like some churches have, they risk losing their tax-exempt status.
As it is presently stated, the Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act (H.R. 235) is: "to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to protect the religious free exercise and free speech rights of churches and other houses of worship." The bill also states "that such provision shall not affect campaign finance laws under the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971." H.R. 235 is receiving endorsement from Christian leaders such as Dr. James Dobson, Franklin Graham, Dr. D. James Kennedy, Beverly LaHaye , Dr. Richard Land and many others.
On the establishment of religion: What the Constitution really says. Alan Keyes
Aug. 26, 2003When he ordered the removal of the Ten Commandments monument from the Supreme Court building in Alabama, federal judge Myron Thompson stated that the issue at stake involved the question of whether or not the state has the right to acknowledge God.
Actually, this formulation is a distraction from the real issue, which is whether or not Myron Thompson or any other federal judge has the right to interfere with state actions that may or may not constitute an establishment of religion.
Someone who simply reads the text of the Constitution of the United States would be thoroughly surprised to learn that a federal judge claimed the right to act in this manner. The First Amendment to the Constitution plainly states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . ." Since there can be no federal law on the subject, there appears to be no lawful basis for any element of the federal government-including the courts-to act in this area.
Moreover, the 10th Amendment to the Constitution plainly states that "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." This means that the power to make laws respecting an establishment of religion, having been explicitly withheld from the United States, is reserved to the states or to the people.
Taken together, therefore, the First and 10th Amendments reserve the power to address issues of religious establishment to the different states and their people.
An erroneous premise
Now, Judge Thompson—like many federal judges and justices before him—claims the unlimited prerogative of dictating to the states what they may or may not do with respect to matters of religious expression. Applying this supposed prerogative, he has declared the erection of the Ten Commandments monument by the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the state of Alabama to be an unlawful establishment of religion.
This he has done despite the clear impossibility of any basis for his action in federal law or statute. He relies on the erroneous doctrine, repeatedly affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States, that the First Amendment forbids an establishment of religion, and that the 14th Amendment applies this prohibition to the states. Based on this assertion, he and other federal judges and justices now claim an unlimited right to dictate to the states in these matters.
We have already seen that the actual language of the Constitution does not forbid an establishment of religion. Rather, it forbids Congress to legislate on the subject at all, reserving it entirely to the states. No language in the 14th Amendment deals with this power of government.
Portions of that amendment do indeed restrict the legislative powers of the states, but they refer only to actions that affect the privileges, immunities, legal rights and equal legal status of individual citizens and persons. The first clause of the First Amendment in no way deals with persons, however, but rather—in concert with the 10th Amendment—secures the right of the states and the people to be free from the dictates of federal law respecting an establishment of religion.
Distinguishing rights of the people from individual rights
A right of the people as a whole-not an individual right-is the protected object of the first clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Even if one accepts the doctrine that the Bill of Rights must be taken as the basis for understanding the privileges and immunities of citizenship, the first clause of the First Amendment simply secures this right of the people, giving clear constitutional effect to their immunity from federal dictation in matters of religion.
The practical foundation of all the rights and privileges of the individual citizen is the rights that inhere in the citizen body as a whole, the rights of the people and of the state governments. The latter effectively embody their ability to resist abuses of national power. Such rights include the right to elect representatives, and to be governed by laws made and enforced through them. (The right to vote is an individual right. The right to elect is a right of the people as a whole.) Without these corporate and collective rights, there would be no mechanisms for the concerted action of the people, no institutions for their united defense and,therefore, no materially effective security for their individual persons, property and rights against the organized forces of an abusive national power.
The establishment clause of the First Amendment secures a right of the people. Until now, though, many have treated the first two clauses of the amendment as if they are one ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . ."). This practice ignores both the linguistic and the logical contrast between the two clauses. Where the first clause deals with a right of thepeople (that is, a power of government reserved to the states and to the people), the second clause deals with an action or set of actions (the free exercise of religion) that cannot be free unless they originate in individual choice. The first clause forbids Congress to address a subject at all. The second allows for federal action, but restricts thecharacter of such action.
By virtue of the first clause, the states and the people as such are protected from federal domination; by the second, individuals are protected from coercion in their religious conduct. The first clause allows the states and the people as such to follow their will in matters of religion; the second guarantees the same liberty to individuals and the corporate persons they voluntarily compose. The first has as its object matters that are decided by the will of the people (i.e., by the will of the constitutionally determined majority in the different states). The second involves matters decided by the will of each individual.
Parallel rights and actions
The failure to observe this distinction leads to the absurd presumption that all government action in matters of religion is somehow inherently a contravention of individual freedom. This can be no more or less true in matters of religion than it is in any other area in which both individuals and governments are capable of action and decision.
The government's power to arm soldiers for the community's defense does not inherently contravene the individual's right to arm himself against personal attack. The government's power to establish institutions of higher learning does not inherently contradict the individual's right to educate his young or join with others to start a school. The government's power to engage in economic enterprises (such as the postal service or electric power generation) does not inherently contradict the individual's right to private enterprise. It is possible for government coercively to inhibit or repress any of these individual activities, but it is obvious that government action does not in and of itself constitute such coercion.
As the U.S. Constitution is written, matters of religion fall into this category of parallel individual and governmental possibilities. Federal and state governments, in matters of religion, are forbidden to coerce or prohibit individual choice and action.Within the states, the people are free to decide by constitutional majority the nature and extent of the state's expression of religious belief.
This leaves individuals free to make their own choices with respect to religion, but it also secures the right of the people of the states to live under a government that reflects their religious inclination. As in all matters subject to the decision of the people, the choice of the people is not the choice of all, but of the majority, as constitutionally determined, in conformity with the principles of republican government (which the U.S. Constitution requires the people of each state to respect).
Subverting the wisdom of the Founders
The Constitution reflects the view that the choice with respect to governmental expressions of religious belief must respect the will of the majority. Unless, in matters that should be determined by the people, the will of the majority be consulted, there is no consent and therefore no legitimacy, in government. Though it may be argued that matters of religion ought to be left entirely to individuals for decision, this has the effect of establishing in the public realm a regime of indifference to religion. Thus, a choice of establishment is inevitable, and the only question is whether the choice will be made by the will of the people or not. The U.S. Constitution, being wholly republican, decides this question in favor of the people, but in light of the pluralism of religious opinions among the people, forbids any attempt to discern the will of the people in thenation as a whole.
By leaving the decision to the people in their states, and by permitting a complete freedom of movement and migration among the states, the U.S. Constitution offers scope for the geographic expression of this pluralism while assuring that the absence of a formal and legal expression of religious reverence on a national scale does not inadvertently result in the establishment of a national regime of indifference to religion.
When, by their careless and contradictory abuse of the 14th Amendment, the federal judges and justices arrogate to themselves the power which, by the First and 10th Amendments, the Constitution reserves to the states, they deprive the nation of this prudent and logically balanced approach to the issue of religious establishment.
Whether through carelessness or an artful effort to deceive, they ignore the distinction between the individual right to free exercise of religion and the right of the people to decide their government's religious stance. They have, in consequence, usurped this right of the people, substituting for the republican approach adopted by the Constitution an oligarchic approach that reserves to a handful of un-elected individuals the power to impose on the entire nation a uniform stance on religion at every level of government.
The right to decide the issue of establishment is a fundamental right of the people. It is also among the most likely to cause bitter and passionate dissension when the religious conscience of the people is violated or suppressed. That may explain why it is the very first right secured from federal violation in the Bill of Rights.
When they take this right from the people, the federal judges and justices depart from the republican form of government. They impose, in religious matters, an oligarchic regime upon the states. They therefore violate, in letter and spirit, Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution. This section declares that "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government . . ."
Unlawful usurpation and lawful resistance
In addition to these abuses and violations of the U.S. Constitution, the purblind insistence by these judges and justices on treating religious freedom as a strictly individual right has produced the very consequence that the Constitution's more prudent approach seeks to avoid. They have insisted that government adopt a stance of strict agnosticism, which in effect drives from the public realm all things that smack of religious belief.
This establishes, in the literal sense, a uniform regime of atheism in government affairs. (In the literal sense, atheism simply means the absence of God, and this, in the public realm, is what the federal judges and justices insist upon.) Since, however unjustifiably, they claim for their opinions the force of law, it necessarily follows that they mean to impose this regime by force-that is, by coercion. Thus, in the guise of a judicial effort to protect religious freedom, they destroy it-not for this or that individual, but for the people as a whole.
Naturally, this destruction has aroused anxiety and opposition among the people, who feel and fear the effects of this wholesale suppression of public religious conscience and belief. With each new manifestation of the nature and intent of the federal judiciary's usurpation of their right, the people grow more resistant. Their acts of resistance against this judicial despotism reach higher and more organized levels until they areundertaken in and through the institutions of the state governments.
The state governments are the natural focus and vehicle through which the people organize and declare their opposition to unconstitutional assertions of federal power. Because the federal judiciary cloaks its usurpation in the usual forms and procedures of law, and because Americans are accustomed to taking those forms as evidence of substantive conformity with the law, these manifestations of resistance may be denounced as unlawful.
But in this case, the lack of lawful grounds for the federal judiciary's acts must, in the end, repel these denunciations. The federal judges and justices cannot be acting lawfully when their only claim of lawfulness rests upon the Constitution—since the Constitution's sole pronouncement on the matter of an establishment of religion precludes the possibility of any federal law as a basis for their jurisdiction.
Some may insist that regardless of anyone's opinion of the lawfulness of a court's action, all are duty-bound, in the interest of order and lawenforcement, to obey every court order. This is certainly true of ordinary citizens in most circumstances. Even where ordinary citizens are concerned, however, it is not hard to imagine situations in which they would be morally obliged to refuse a plainly unlawful court order. If, for instance, a judge issues an order requiring that at random an innocent person be shot when entering the courtroom, no person, including any officers of the court, is required to obey this order. In fact, like military personnel, they are duty-bound to refuse.
What is imaginable for ordinary citizens is even more conceivable when dealing with high government officials who are sworn to uphold the constitutions and laws that establish selfgovernment in the states, and that protect the liberties of individuals and of the people. If a federal judge orders the governor of a state to take actions that he conscientiously believes violate the rights of an individual or group of individuals, no one would deny that he is duty-bound to refuse such an order.
If, for example, a Nazi regime somehow came to power at the federal level, and by legislation or executive order initiated an effort to confine Jewish or black Americans to concentration camps, all state officials acting under state constitutions that protected individual rights would be oath-bound to refuse unlawful federal court orders that declared people to be of Jewish or black heritage and thereupon ordered their confinement.
What we clearly acknowledge to be possible and even morally obligatory in case of the violation of individual rights must be even more compelling when the case involves the violation of the rights of the whole people. Thus, when a federal judge issues an unlawful order that a state official conscientiously believes violates a fundamental and constitutionally protected right of the people of his state, that official must refuse the order thatassaults their right just as he would refuse an order that violated the rights of individuals. It is of no consequence whether the unlawful order comes from one judge or many, from a lower court or the Supreme Court-it must be refused.
Note that the wording here implies an obligation, not a choice. This is important—since it makes clear that the court's unlawful order places the state official in a situation where his substantive duty to the law conflicts with his formal obligation to obey a court order. A regime in which slavish observance of the empty forms of law substitutes for substantive respect for the real terms and requirements of the law clearly represents the demise of law as such.
Judge Moore and the people of Alabama
In the state of Alabama, Judge Roy Moore has refused the unlawful order of Judge Myron Thompson, since it represents a destructive violation of the right of the people of Alabama to decide how their government will or will not express their religious beliefs. This right of the people is the first one secured in the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights, and it cannot be compromised without surrendering the moral foundations of republican liberty. Judge Thompson's assault upon this right, and that of the entire federal judiciary for the last several decades, is not, therefore, a trivial threat to the liberty of the people. Judge Moore cannot obey the court's order without surrendering that liberty.
Now, the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as it applies the Bill of Rights to the states, lays an obligation upon state legislatures, officers and officials to refrain from actions that deprive the people of their rights. With respect to the First Amendment, therefore, it becomes their positive obligation to resist federal encroachments that take away the right of the people to decide how their state governments deal with matters of religion. This obviously has a direct bearing on the case of Chief Justice Roy Moore in his confrontation with the abusive order of Judge Myron Thompson.
His refusal of the order is not only consistent with his duty to the Alabama Constitution, it is his duty under the Constitution of the United States. Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor, the eight associate justices of the Alabama Supreme Court, and indeed any other state officials in Alabama who submit to the judge's order are, by contrast, in violation of the federal Constitution, as well as their duty to the constitution and people of Alabama.
As a class, therefore, the citizens of Alabama are justified in bringing suit against them for their dereliction, and in seeking reparation for the damage that has been done to their right under the U.S. Constitution. Unfortunately, since the federal judiciary is the perpetrator of the assault against this right, how can the people of Alabama hope for a fair and unbiased judgment from any of the federal courts, including the Supreme Court?
Judicial self-interest
Lawyers will doubtless object on the grounds that the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed the jurisdiction of the federal courts in this regard. Their partisan reverence for the Supreme Court's opinions on this matter is wholly understandable, since a seat upon the court, or upon the bench of one of the inferior federal courts, usually represents the highest point toward which their ambition aspires. It is quite natural that they should support claims to a power that they may hope someday to wield.
However, lawyers' insistence that others show the same reverence is repugnant to reason and common sense. In the matter of their constitutional jurisdiction, as against the state courts or the other branches of the federal government, the federal courts—including the Supreme Court-have a strong and direct interest. If judgment in these matters is left to them absolutely, it must always lead to a situation in which the judges and justices sit in judgment of their own cause.
Our common sense joins the admonitions of the Founders of our republic in warning us not to rely on such intrinsically biased judgments. The prospect of expanding their power may distract the federal judges from the facts and merits of the case. This is, and ever has been, a weakness of our humanity.
The people and their representatives
This is why the U.S. Constitution, after enumerating certain cases over which the federal judiciary would have original jurisdiction, gave it appellate jurisdiction "with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make." Therefore, the federal courts are not the ultimate judges of the boundaries of their own power. Final responsibility in this respect restswith the Congress.
Once we take note of this fact, it also becomes clear that thinking about matters of jurisdiction at the constitutional level cannot be considered the exclusive province of lawyers and judges. Though Congress has in some historical periods been composed of a plurality, or even a majority of lawyers, lawyers could never have an exclusionary claim to membership in its ranks. The people can send to Congress whom they choose, including people from walks of life in no way related to the legal profession. It follows, therefore, that the Constitution assumes that people who are not lawyers will have to reason and make judgments about the proper scope and limits to be imposed upon the appellate jurisdiction of the federal courts.
The fact that the Supreme Court affirms the federal judiciary's claim to jurisdiction over the state governments in matters pertaining to an establishment of religion does not, therefore, settle the issue. The Congress must review and oversee such a claim. Since the people choose the members of Congress, people at large, as they consider their election, are required to consider this claim as well.
Our analysis thus far demonstrates that the Supreme Court's affirmation of this claim of jurisdiction is contrary to the plain text of the Constitution: It usurps the right of the people in their respective states to decide their government's stance on religion; it violates Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution by subverting the republican form of government with respect to this right; and by aiming coercively to establish an agnostic regime of atheism at all levels of government, it destroys religious freedom for the people as a whole and dangerously subverts the Constitution's prudent handling of matters pertaining to religion.
The right and duty of Congress
The text of the Constitution easily allows us to see and understand the federal judiciary's abuse of power and its usurpation of the right of the people in religious matters. It also provides a remedy for this abuse. The Congress must pass legislation that, in order to assure proper respect for the first clause of the First Amendment, excepts from the appellate jurisdiction of the federal courts those matters which, by the conjoint effect of the First and 10th Amendments, the Constitution reserves to the states respectively and to the people. (This language avoids a semantic difficulty, since congressional legislation that explicitly mentioned matters pertaining to an establishment of religion would serve the intention but violate the terms of the first clause of the First Amendment.)
This legislation would restore observance of the Constitution by preventing the federal courts from addressing any issues related to religious establishment (as the First Amendment requires), while leaving them free to deal with cases involving the free exercise of religion by individuals, since these do not fall under constitutional ban on federal legislation. In this regard, the only state actions that come under federal jurisdiction are those involving coercive interference with individual choice in matters of religion. State action that involves no such individual coercion (such as the placement of a Ten Commandments monument in the rotunda of a state Supreme Court building) is outside the purview of the federal courts.
The consequences of congressional failure to act urgently upon this matter are almost too grave for contemplation. State officials will be continually beset by federal court judgments that demand action the U.S. Constitution forbids. Errors of judgment by federal officials seeking to enforce such orders might lead to confrontations between federal officers determined to do what federal judges order and state officers determined to do what the U.S. Constitution requires.
On one side and the other, claims of lawful justification would contribute to intransigence. Problems like this, left for very long without solution, raise the sombre spectre of national dissolution. This, the Congress has the constitutional means and duty to avoid. They should move to do so without delay.
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For further information please refer to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
The First Amendment and 527s
April 9, 2006
Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), the conservative caucus in the House of Representatives, accused the vast majority of his Republican colleagues and fellow RSC members of going "AWOL" on the First Amendment's provision prohibiting Congress from passing a law "abridging the freedom of speech." What made Mr. Pence's charge so disturbing was its utter accuracy. Moreover, according to Ben Ginsberg, a campaign-finance lawyer involved in Republican politics at the highest levels, the action in the House may have negatively affected GOP electoral prospects this November by sending the wrong signals to prospective Republican contributors.
Mr. Pence's "AWOL" comment referred to the fact that 211 House Republicans voted on Wednesday to drastically curtail the ability of American citizens to exercise their free-speech rights through so-called 527 political committees, whose name derives from the section of the IRS code under which they are organized. By sending the unmistakable signal to Republican donors that 527 organizations are a very big part of America's perceived political problems, Mr. Ginsberg perceptibly noted, House Republicans may be creating the "worst of all worlds" for themselves -- a world in which Democrats continue to energetically contribute to liberal 527s and Republicans remain reluctant to support conservative 527s.
After Congress misguidedly banned national party committees from accepting large, unregulated "soft-money" contributions from wealthy individuals, corporations and labor unions effective after the 2002 election, the money predictably flowed elsewhere. The 527 committees, which are tax-exempt interest groups organized for the purposes of issue advocacy and voter mobilization, became the natural repositories for the soft money that parties were no longer able to accept.
Interestingly, the national political-party committees raised about $500 million in soft money, which was evenly divided between the two parties, during each of the two federal election cycles (1999-2000 and 2001-2002) that preceded the soft-money ban. The Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), a nonpartisan campaign-finance research organization, has calculated that federal-oriented 527 committees spent $479 million during the 2003-2004 cycle, an amount nearly identical to the soft-money totals of the two previous cycles.
In large part because Democratic and other liberal-oriented 527s began their aggressive fund-raising and organizational activities long before Republican-oriented 527s went into serious action during the 2003-2004 period, liberal 527s thoroughly outraised and outspent their conservative counterparts. Nor was Republican fund-raising helped by the fact that the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign was lobbying the Federal Election Commission to radically limit the 527s even as Harold Ickes was raking in seven- and eight-figure contributions to Democratic 527s. CRP data reveal that the net expenditures of 527 interest groups categorized as "Democratic/Liberal" totaled $209 million in the 2003-2004 cycle. That was nearly $100 million more than the $112 million spent by "Republican/Conservative" 527s. The 527s created by labor unions, which customarily direct more than 90 percent of their political spending to Democratic causes and candidates, spent another $105 million, according to the CRP. Other Democratic-leaning 527 categories (environment, human rights and women's issues) spent an additional $35 million. The CRP data closely approximate figures from another watchdog, the Campaign Finance Institute, which has estimated that pro-Democratic 527s spent nearly 80 percent of all 527 money. That was nearly four times what pro-Republican 527s spent.
In their haste to associate themselves with any legislative measure that could be remotely spun to embrace "reform," more than 90 percent of House Republicans, including 85 percent of RSC members, abandoned the same constitutional principles that the vast majority of Republicans had embraced for years in opposing the restrictions on free speech embodied in the various versions of McCain-Feingold campaign-finance legislation. Having been out-hustled by Democrats and other liberals, House Republicans were also undoubtedly motivated by their own perceived financial self-interest, which regrettably trumped their constitutional principles.
Meanwhile, the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign continues to agitate in federal court against the free-speech rights of the administration's opponents and supporters. President Bush could have saved his party a lot of grief by keeping his 2000 campaign promise to veto McCain-Feingold. Fortunately for the principle of free speech, Senate Democrats, who almost certainly will act as hypocritically as their House colleagues, appear poised to pursue their current financial self-interest by blocking similar legislation in the Senate. Besides, as Mr. Ginsberg cogently observed, why would Democratic leaders give Sen. John McCain, the front-runner for the Republican 2008 presidential nomination, the opportunity to shape the financial and political battlefields for the 2008 election?
Government Should Not Police Speech
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
By Mitch McConnell
Every high school student in America knows the book "1984," George Orwell's classic novel about a totalitarian state that controls its people by pounding them with slogans that contradict reality: peace is war, ignorance is strength, freedom is slavery. The phrases have changed, but the effort to control people through manipulative speech hasn't. Recent talk by liberals in Congress about reviving the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" is solid proof of that.
First established by the Federal Communications Commission in 1949, the "Fairness Doctrine" required broadcasters to provide audiences with competing views on controversial issues of public importance. The rule was meant to enliven debate, but it smothered it instead. The Supreme Court noted this in a 1984 case, President Reagan vetoed a Democratic effort to make the rule into law, and the FCC finally abolished it in 1987.
The consequences of the repeal were astonishing. Undeterred by the speech police, public discourse flourished over talk radio. The rise of cable television and, more recently, the Internet, amplified the discussion even more. All of which has been very good for speech, but bad for liberals who want to control it. Liberals are clearly frustrated by the fact that their programs don't command the audiences that conservative programs do. Hence their interest in reviving the old restrictions. Like a zombie in a B-Hollywood movie, the "Fairness Doctrine," just won't stay dead.
Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) have all said in recent weeks that they intend to revisit the "Fairness Doctrine". These and other proponents of this legislation say government intervention would ensure that Americans have access to multiple points of view on controversial political issues - a truly bizarre proposition in an age when Americans have access to more news outlets and political perspectives than at any other time in history.
By reviving the Fairness Doctrine, Congress would be empowering the U.S. Congress to silence the constituents its members are elected to represent, all in the name of open debate. The Founding Fathers understood that freedom of speech is a fundamental right of all free people, a right that enables them to help protect all other rights and to defend against the overreaching powers of government. It was for this reason that they enshrined free speech in the First Amendment, protecting speech even from the lawmaking powers of Congress.
While this protection remains strong today, from time to time Congress and other parts of the federal government still attempt - and sometimes succeed - in limiting speech. Political debate is among the most important democratic traditions of our nation and a hallmark of any free society. We must continue to preserve the right of all Americans to express their views.
I will not support efforts to restrict free speech, silence political voices, and limit the free flow of information through legislative "fixes" like the so-called 'Fairness Doctrine." Unlike the totalitarian state depicted in Orwell's 1984, ours is not a state controlled by a Ministry of Truth with a speech police telling our citizens what we can and cannot say and hear. Let's keep it that way.
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For further information please refer to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
