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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (77089)	1/27/2010 2:18:48 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

Is Freedom Of Speech Really An Emergency? By THOMAS MCARDLE Investor's Business Daily Posted 01/26/2010 06:54 PM ET A full year into his presidency we suddenly discover what it takes to get Barack Obama all worked up. Not terrorism. In the president's estimation, a near repeat of the Lockerbie bombing Christmas Day wasn't worth remarking on until three days later. Not the risk of a fiscal doomsday. Only after 12 months of joint one-party rule to secure his place as the biggest-spending president in history does he call for a bipartisan spending-restraint commission and a spending freeze. Both the commission and the freeze don't come along until the fall at the earliest, if they materialize at all. But when the Supreme Court nullifies congressional incumbents' legislative attempts to suppress the threat of political speech via modern means of communication, he runs to the microphone as if it were a national emergency. "With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special-interest money in our politics," he declared, promising swift action. "We are going to talk with bipartisan congressional leaders to develop a forceful response to this decision." Millions of Americans are suffering from double-digit unemployment. And now the nation has been assessed by the congressionally mandated Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation as being unprepared for a biological terrorist attack. The panel slapped the Obama administration with a failing grade on its readiness and response plans to combat the use of deadly viruses or bacteria by an enemy. Yet what does the president devote his radio address to last Saturday? Accusing the high court of the land of issuing a ruling that "strikes at our democracy itself." Most Americans may be under the misapprehension that terrorists such as underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab are the people to keep from striking at our democracy. Uh-uh. According to the president's priorities, the real threat to our democracy comes from Justice Anthony Kennedy and his warped view that American citizens should be able to use "their financial clout to directly interfere with elections by running advertisements for or against candidates in the crucial closing weeks." The president says, "I can't think of anything more devastating to the public interest" — not $12 trillion in federal debt; not an abysmal 26% of teens working (a record low since statistics began being kept in 1948, according to a report by Northeastern University); not the terrorist state of Iran on track to building nuclear bombs. Let's look at that Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which our chief executive considers a calamity of such historic proportions that "When this ruling came down, I instructed my administration to get to work immediately with members of Congress willing to fight for the American people to develop a forceful, bipartisan response to this decision." Kennedy is viewed by liberal Democrats as the most reasonable of the five conservative justices; he was co-author with former Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and David Souter in their joint Casey opinion reaffirming the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. Kennedy's 5-4 decision abrogating McCain-Feingold pointed out that under that law, "skits on YouTube.com" satirizing politicians too close to Election Day are a felony "solely because a corporation, other than an exempt media corporation, has made the 'purchase, payment, distribution, loan, advance, deposit, or gift of money or anything of value' in order to engage in political speech." Before posting that YouTube video with corporate funding, of course, McCain-Feingold lets you ask Uncle Sam's (specifically the Federal Election Commission) permission. As Justice Kennedy's ruling notes: "If parties want to avoid litigation and the possibility of civil and criminal penalties, they must either refrain from speaking or ask the FEC to issue an advisory opinion approving of the political speech in question." Then, "government officials pore over each word of a text to see if, in their judgment, it accords with the 11-factor test they have promulgated." As he and the four justices joining him recognize, "This is an unprecedented governmental intervention into the realm of speech." Yet it is this victory for free speech last week that requires, according to Obama, "a forceful, bipartisan response" — not the whole myriad of more pressing challenges facing our country, ranging from the fiscal time bomb of out-of-control entitlement programs to our dangerously porous borders. Blasting the Citizens United ruling may set the stage for another successful Supreme Court nomination for the Obama administration. But it won't restore the public confidence a president needs at a time of serious economic troubles and a continuing global war on terror. • McArdle is a senior writer with Investor's Business Daily. investors.com