This is the blooming fruit that will sprout from McCain-Feingold and its being upheld by the Supremes...

...war is coming at home...

/sarcasm on again

Geeze.. and all this time I kinda thought this whole Freedom of Political Speech thing was a guarantee of the First amendment to the Bill of Rights...

Sheesh.. what was I thinking?

Yet another reason to (a) doubt Bush's commitment to liberties (he signed McCain-Feingold!) and (b) hold his nominees to a more rigid investigation. Anybody who would allow political activities by individuals to be monitored and regulated in this way certainly isn't reading the Constitution in the way that the Founders intended, nor in a way that will promote citizen involvement in government. Our Founders were reveling in free political speech and played pretty rough, much rougher than we do now. The first really big Supreme Court case on liberties came down on the side of freedom of politcal dissent in the press. We've certainly gotten away from that line of thought with the current crop of robed masters.

First Mitch, there was never a time you felt liberal meant "supported freedom." I base this on your refuting this time and again as the basis of liberalism..

Second, how does this curtail freedom? They can speak their minds, they can say anything they want.. the issue is that advocating, by a station, constitutes support for one position, and candidacy.

As I stated about a month ago, the primary thing that the ultra-right such as yourself, need to be afraid of is a determination that this organized, well funded by the wealthy, use of their corporations, is in fact improper if not defined as support. To say that it is just the opinion of the speaker is so specious that it falls on it's face. The Patriot, Air America, KSTP, Rush Limbaugh's network, all, consistently advocate for one side or the other. ALL represent support, political contribution, in-kind action on behalf of their candidate.

This conclusion is probably inescabable. Activist RIGHT WING judges may overturn this, but in-kind law says that if you advocate for political views you are providing support no differently than if you allow the candidate to setup a stand in your store, in your parking lot, or if you right them a check.

Writing them a check is perfectly legal, there are simply limits on how much you can influence an election because the view is that no one, no matter their economic advantages, should unduly influence an election. This will be a dark omen for Right wing media that refuses to provide offsetting information (and yes, in that it differs GREATLY from the left wing propoganda). The lefty radio can at least claim it provides some (albeit inadequate) time to the views of the other side, but the Right wingnuts cannot so claim, they have disdain for the concept of equality, claiming innacurately that public radio is the offset, even though public radio both offers both sides, and in recent review has been found to present more conservative guests and opinions than it does liberal. It is deemed liberal because the inescapable conclusion of it's news stories is that the pure conservative position is not the "wholly" correct one (of course it doesn't say the liberal one is either, but conservatives don't care about that).

I applaud this decision. I believe fully in freedom of speech, but I also believe that if you are going to use your corporation/organization for the advancement of a political agenda, it should be called the spade that it is. Do it all you want, that is free speech, just do it openly and within the law and defined as political advocacy rather than "independent opinion" of the host. Or Mitch, are you saying that the Patriot is about to put Wendy Wilde on the air?

PB

PB you are a totalitarian c*nt. This law and decisions are an abridgement of the first amendment and buying time, making a speech on radio or voicing your opinions on a weblog are first amendment rights.

Guess like you would abridge this right also but sucking hind tit of any judge that sees fit to take away political speech in any forum be them right, left or center.

what you want is a Handicapper General like out of a Kurt Vonnegut novel...

PB, you're out of line here, totally. Do you want all those newspaper editorials and articles to be suddenly found to be campaign contributions? How about all the biased reporting on network television? The exemptions that those particular media have could easily be removed: what's good for the goose is good for the gander. If they're going to start regulating one they ought to regulate all those media that are liberally biased, too. Can you imagine what will happen when the liberals suddenly have to declare help from dailykos? Heck, the NYT alone would shove the DNC to the spending maximums -- they'd have to start giving money back!

As to contributions by corporations and rich folk, I believe that when you combine the two the Democrats far exceed the Republicans; corporate contributions were pretty close to neutral in the last few cycles since they want to buy influence with whomever is in power. In fact, today it's the Democrats who are the party of the rich and well-heeled. There's a reason Republicans raise more "hard" money from small contributions and the Democrats raise more "soft" money in large contributions (and why the Dems wanted the exemptions for 501's in McCain-Feingold).

This whole regulation of political speach is noxious, dangerous, and contrary to the principles of freedom of speech and freedom of association.