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Politics : Bush Administration's Media Manipulation--MediaGate? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: steve harris who wrote (4505)	8/2/2005 9:26:26 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 9838

LOL! If the french get upset enough, they may very well surrender.

To: steve harris who wrote (4505)	8/2/2005 9:43:23 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9838

RADIO MAN CATCHES $TATIC (con man blamed for Air America $500K snafu) NY POST ^ \| August 2, 2005 \| TOM TOPOUSIS nypost.com A top staffer at the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club in The Bronx "conned" the organization into lending nearly $500,000 to the left-wing radio network Air America — a move that eventually doomed the youth group, a board member charged yesterday. The accused staffer, Evan Montvel-Cohen, wore two hats, as development director at Gloria Wise and as founder of Air America, a start-up national radio network based in Manhattan, where he was trying to raise $30 million. "I say he's a con man," fumed Hillel Valentine, a longtime member of the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club's executive committee and a former assistant chief in the New York Transit Police Department. Cohen never raised the $30 million — and the company he formed to start up Air America, home to Al Franken's radio show, never paid back the money to Gloria Wise, which serves 20,000 kids. Most of Gloria Wise's programs, based at Co-Op City, were shut last week as the city's Department of Investigation probed the not-for-profit's finances. "He not only conned us, he conned Air America," Valentine said, recalling how Montvel-Cohen landed at the Bronx youth center in 2003 with a bang. In just six days, he was organizing a major Manhattan fund-raiser at Pier 61. Montvel-Cohen, who is from Guam, could not be reached. He was fired from his $74,000-a-year post......... (Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...

To: steve harris who wrote (4505)	8/2/2005 9:47:34 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 9838

This would be a tax on a big constituency of theirs: Senators seek Web porn tax Published: August 1, 2005, 4:51 PM PDT By Declan McCullagh Staff Writer, CNET News.com news.com.com A new federal proposal that would levy stiff taxes on Internet pornographers violates constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression, legal scholars say. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, an Arkansas Democrat, characterized her bill introduced last week as a way to make the Internet a "safer place" for children. The bill would impose a 25 percent tax on the revenue of most adult-themed Web sites. "Many adult-oriented Web sites in today's online world are not only failing to keep products unsuitable for children from view, but are also pushing those products in children's faces," Lincoln said. "And it's time that we stand up and say, 'enough is enough.'" But legal scholars who specialize in the First Amendment say courts have rejected similar taxes in the past--and are likely to do so again, if Lincoln's proposal becomes law. "The general principle is that if you can't ban a certain category of expression, then you cannot selectively impose a tax on it," said Jamin Raskin, a professor of constitutional law at American University. "So if the speech that the senator is targeting is protected by the First Amendment, it may not be selectively taxed." "The bottom line is, if it were constitutional to tax a disfavored category of speaker, then there would be 99 percent taxes on pornography and hate speakers and Howard Stern and so on," Raskin said. "But the courts understand that the power to tax ultimately is the power to destroy." Jerome Barron, a former dean of George Washington University Law School who teaches First Amendment law, noted that the Supreme Court in 1936 rejected a 2 percent tax on newspapers with circulations of more than 20,000 copies a week. Previous Next "You can't use the taxation power as a weapon of censorship," Barron said. A more recent Supreme Court case, Minneapolis Star v. Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue, tossed out a Minnesota law taxing paper and ink products used by newspapers. Lincoln's bill, called the Internet Safety and Child Protection Act of 2005, would apply only to adult sites subject to controversial record-keeping requirements regarding the identities of people participating in sex acts displayed on Web sites. Those sites must cough up the taxes and use age verification techniques "prior to the display of any pornographic material, including free content." The Supreme Court has largely rebuffed Congress' previous attempts at Internet censorship. It rejected the Communications Decency Act's prohibition on "indecent" material, and upheld an injunction against the Child Online Protection Act, which targeted "harmful to minors" material online. Other Senate sponsors of the legislation--all Democrats--include Thomas Carper of Delaware, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Ken Salazar of Colorado, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Evan Bayh of Indiana and Kent Conrad of North Dakota.