Assault on the 1st Amendment

[SuperScout]

Democrats in the Senate and the House are preparing a full-frontal assault on the First Amendment rights of conservative groups in parallel legislative moves. The Senate ethics bill, passed Thursday night, contains a provision that will hold grassroots groups that attempt to ?influence the general public? to the same rules as Washington lobbyists. This means that basically any group that suggests you write your congressman about an issue, from the humble editorial shop of The Patriot to the pastor of your local church, needs to file financial reports or face a $200,000 fine. In addition, any such group aside from liberal-loving unions that spends or collects more than $25,000 in three months would also be required to file.

The debate will continue, though, while House Democrats move to reinstall the ?Fairness Doctrine? in an effort to silence conservative talk radio. The doctrine, which was allowed to die a quiet death during the Reagan administration, for years forced television and radio stations to give equal time to conservative and liberal opinion. Though it was never actually made law, now Democrats want to enforce the Fairness Doctrine in the proposed Media Ownership Reform Act. Under the guise of giving people a choice in the political views that they absorb in the media, Democrats are actually looking to force conservative talk radio stations to cede time to lousy liberal programming like Air America (which recently declared bankruptcy for lack of listeners). So much for the marketplace of ideas. [B]The only programming choice liberals want to give the public is left and further left .[/b]

[39mto39g]

SS
I don't read an attempt to ?influence the general public? the same as any group that suggests you write your congressman about an issue. Now if that group said to write your congressman and tell him to vote NO. That would be an attempt to influence. Just saying write your congressman is not influencing anyone. even with a story in front of it. as long as when they say "write your congressman" they leave the contents of the letter up to you.

Ron

[SuperScout]

Kindly re-read the original post. You will note, I'm sure, that it bears little relationship to the mere writing or encouraging others to write their congressperson. But what is more ominous is the threat by da dims to stifle free speech. They have failed repeatedly and miserably trying to peddle talk-radio to the general public - "Air America" is their latest example of being rejected by the listening public. But their bullying tactic is that since they can't make it work for them then they don't want it to work for anybody, especially conservatives.