Category: First Amendment rights

Categories
First Amendment rights

Unliberating Bondage

Two big lies have been making the rounds about the proposed return of the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine. This is the rule that forced broadcasters to air “both sides” of controversial issues until the agency scuttled it in 1987.

One big lie is that critics of the doctrine shouldn’t worry because nobody is really thinking about reviving it. The other big lie, which sort of cancels out the first, is that the Fairness Doctrine should be re-imposed because it won’t restrict freedom of speech.

Writer Steve Almond argues the latter in a Boston Globe op-ed. He calls Fairness Doctrine foes “desperate and deluded” liars for saying it would assail their First Amendment rights.

But compulsion really is compulsion. Almond himself admits as much when he notes that conservative radio hosts worry that the Doctrine would “spell the end” of what he calls “their ongoing cultural flim-flam.” They would be forced half the time to turn their microphones over to the likes of Steve Almond. In this way, he says, Americans would be compelled to confront their biases.

Not that Almond is exactly an exemplar himself when it comes to pondering or tolerating alternative views. The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto recalls that in 2006, Almond noisily resigned a teaching position at Boston College . . . because he disliked one of the speakers the college had invited to campus.

So much for hearing all sides.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights too much government

The First Casualty of Health Care Reform

The first casualty of war is truth. The first casualty of health care reform? Free speech.

While most health care insurers have gone along with reform proposals, even helping write the bills, a few insurance companies fall outside the insiders’ perimeter, fearful of more regulation. The regulatory environment is already oppressive, after all — though, for the insurance industry these regs come mainly from the states.

So, we now learn, at least one medical insurance provider, Humana, sent out a special letter to policyholders who also participate in the Medicare Advantage program, advising them of what the effects of new reforms on their coverage would likely be.

What happened next?

If you guessed “gag order,” you got it.

After Humana’s expression of First Amendment rights, the Department of Health and Human Services told all insurers participating in Medicare Advantage to zip it, stifle themselves, express their thoughts in no way about any proposed reform to their policyholders — even if all such expression amounts to is a list of facts.

Penalties include both fines and jail time.

Yes, folks, this is what unlimited government means. Increase government’s role and “hasta la vista” to some very basic freedoms.

Just as government micromanagement of markets leads to shortages and rising prices, so increased government has predictable consequences. We pay for big government in lost freedom as well as dollars.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights property rights too much government

California Crackdowns

A government agency practicing extortion . . . who’d’a thunk it?

In 1987, the California Coastal Commission lost a Supreme Court case about its attempt to demand beach access from property owners in exchange for building permits. One justice said it was practicing extortion.

Nevertheless, the agency still dictates what land owners must do to receive permits — which are required even to move piles of dirt around. In one instance, the unelected Commission ordered that most of an owner’s land be given over to farming. The Pacific Legal Foundation is fighting this insanity in court.

Richard Oshen decided to produce a documentary about the CCC after friends told him how it was interfering with their own property. The agency had even gone so far as to prohibit them from tape recording its inspection of their land.

Oshen spent years conducting interviews. He even managed to film a conversation with CCC head Peter Douglas in which Douglas downplayed the agency’s dictatorial powers. But Reason magazine reports that Douglas now wants to revoke the permission he gave to use that interview. He’s also demanding to see a pre-release version of the movie — either to try to prevent its release or just on general principles of harassing critics of tyranny.

I’ve reported on the commission before. It behaves as a kind of environmentalist mafia operating under color of law — and clearly the CCC is no fan of free speech.

Let’s hope that Douglas fails, Oshen succeeds, and California land owners get a reprieve.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights national politics & policies

Stop Us Before We Kill Free Speech Again

The Supreme Court has yet another chance to refer to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And follow it.

The case before the court, Citizens United versus FEC, has to do with how federal campaign finance laws and the regulations issued by the Federal Election Commission are violating freedom of speech.

Citizens United is a conservative non-profit organization that produced a documentary critical of Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign last year. A D.C. court ruled that producing it with the help of corporate funding was a violation campaign finance law, specifically the McCain-Feingold Act.

Eight former FEC commissioners have now filed an amicus brief in the case. They argue that the lower court’s decision violates the First Amendment — you know, the part about not making any law to abridge freedom of speech. One of the former commissioners, Hans von Spakovsky, explains in the Wall Street Journal that it is virtually impossible to know under the convoluted regulations exactly when one is allowed to engage in political speech and when one must shut up. Why not just let everyone exercise his First Amendment rights?

Spakovsky concludes that friends of campaign finance restrictions on speech have “lost sight of a basic truth: The answer to speech they disagree with is not to restrict that speech, but to answer it with more speech.”

That’s just — and this is — Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights U.S. Constitution

See: Amendment, First

Will friends of freedom of speech catch a break this time?

Soon the U.S. Supreme Court will have another chance to rule that McCain-Feingold-style muzzling of political speech is heinously unconstitutional.

In September, before its regular new term begins, the high court will hear the case of Citizens United versus Federal Election Commission. This involves the standing of two rulings. One is a 1990 ruling banning corporate funding of political campaigns does not violate the First Amendment. A 2003 ruling upholds a ban on corporate speech that even utters the name of a political candidate.

Does the Constitution permit or prohibit stuffing gags in our mouths to prevent us from speaking out of turn? Supporters of Campaign Finance Repression like to say that they’re only regulating the spending of money, not speech. Of course, human beings lack the power to engage in mass long-range telepathy. The only speech that costs nothing is the kind you utter to somebody sitting next to you in the room. Would the regulators claim that limiting the money newspapers can spend on printing presses or websites leaves them with unencumbered “freedom of speech”?

The First Amendment is explicit. “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” You make a law abridging the means of speaking, and you are abridging freedom of speech.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights initiative, referendum, and recall

Who Is John Lilburne?

Now that Citizens in Charge Foundation has given the John Lilburne Award to ten defenders of petition rights — most recently, to Oregon State Senator Vicki Walker — it seems time to talk to friends of Common Sense about the award and about Mr. Lilburne.

I founded Citizens in Charge Foundation to help put citizens in control of their own government. Voting for elected officials is one important means of doing that. But it’s not enough to prevent career politicians from ganging up on us and often ruthlessly stomping our liberties. We need ways to produce a better political result when politicians stonewall. That’s why Citizens in Charge Foundation promotes the right of initiative and referendum.

John Lilburne was a 17th-century political activist who pioneered the use of petitioning and referendums to redress governmental abuse of power. He was a leader of a radical democratic movement called the Levelers during the time of the English Civil War. He advocated religious liberty, wider suffrage, and equality before the law.

Critics saw Lilburne and his allies as trying to bring everybody down to the same level. Hence the label Levelers, intended to be pejorative. I view Lilburne as trying to bring everybody up to the same level — of democratic rights.

Each month, the Citizens in Charge Foundation gives the John Lilburne Award to a person who is particularly praiseworthy in pursuing the same goal.

So here’s to John Lilburne — a champion of the rights of everyday citizens.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights too much government

No Bible Studies Allowed

In San Diego, in May, a pastor and his wife found out how tyrannical a simple thing like a zoning law can be.

They hold Bible studies in their home. Being Americans, they expected the freedom to associate and practice their religion.

But a county employee grilled Pastor David Jones and his wife about what they were up to with their Bible studies — did they pray? did they say “amen”? Then they were told that the study group, averaging 15 people per meeting, violated county regulations.

“Unlawful use of land,” you see. It had nothing to do with suppressing religion, everything to do with how many cars appeared Tuesday nights. County officials said the ominous grilling about religion was done simply to find out which land-use regulation to use in filing the complaint.

And there was a complaint. Too often, these days, instead of neighbor taking up the matter with neighbor, the government gets called in. So, before these students of the Bible could even consider carpooling, to respect the Joneses’ neighbors’ parking concerns, government employees told them to cease and desist — or else apply for a major use permit. Which could take a lot more money than found in your average Sunday passing of the offering plate.

This story is almost a parable — of why zoning laws don’t make good neighbors. Zoning is a blunt instrument, indeed. There are alternatives.

But the alternatives require a bit of common sense.

I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights Ninth Amendment rights Tenth Amendment federalism U.S. Constitution

Sotto Voce Sotomayor

Last week, former Congressman and presidential candidate Bob Barr sent out a simple admonishment to his Twitter list: “Let’s have a real debate on Judge Sotomayor, not hysterics. . . .”

Unlikely. Appellate Judge Sonia Sotomayor is precisely the kind of jurist to divide us. She’s said things that seem racist and sexist and absurd. But, then, if I criticize her for those things, her supporters will call what I say racist or sexist or absurd.

And none of us want racism, or sexism, much less absurdity.

Let’s try sympathy, instead. It’s not easy to promote a constitutional philosophy consistent and widely acceptable at a time when much of what the federal government does belies — abridges — repudiates! — the Constitution itself.

Take the First Amendment. It begins, “Congress shall make no law . . .” No ambiguity. And yet Congress makes all sorts of law regarding speech, including regulating speech about politics, negating the whole point of the First Amendment.

What part of “no law” don’t today’s jurists understand? In many cases it’s the part where the states have power to fashion their own solutions to problems. It’s called the Tenth Amendment. And it’ usually ignored by all mainstream legal experts, along with the Ninth.

I’d like to have a quiet debate on this. Sotto voce, you might say. The opposite of hysterically loud.

That would be more important, even, than a debate about Judge Sotomayor.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom Second Amendment rights

Show-Me Madness

What if you were profiled by the police as a terrorist simply because of your political beliefs?

A new report entitled “The Modern Militia Movement,” prepared for law enforcement agencies by the Missouri Information Analysis Center, threatens just that.

The report doesn’t detail any current criminal activity in Missouri. It does suggest to police, however, that anyone opposing government bailouts, abortion, or the Federal Reserve is a potential militia member, possibly a terrorist, or both.

The report tells police how to recognize militia members. Look for literature that is “derogatory” toward the IRS, ATF, the CIA, and the like. And look also for people who support minor party presidential candidates, or one sitting Republican congressman.

Tim Neal told the Associated Press that he has become nervous about his Ron Paul bumpersticker. Hearing a litany of the tell-tale signs that a person is in a militia, he said he “was going down the list and thinking, ‘Check, that’s me.'”

Remember, it’s perfectly legal — and peaceful — to wear fatigues.

It is also legal to train, military-style, on private property. So is paintball. And both probably qualify as good preparation for all sorts of emergencies.

Governments focusing investigations and gathering “intelligence” on citizens on the basis of peaceful, perfectly legal political viewpoints is far more dangerous. And that’s happening right now in the Show-Me state.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights free trade & free markets too much government

Absurdity Then, Absurdity Now

There’s a famous quip by one English intellectual about another. “Oh, you know what so-and-so’s idea of a tragedy is: A beautiful theory killed by an ugly fact.”

Well, don’t I know it.

I wrote a column, recently, for Townhall.com, entitled “The Buxom Bailout Babes of the Umpteenth Brumaire.” In it I noted that while the Great Depression was a tragedy, today’s economic debacle, though a repeat of it, is more farce. To demonstrate its farcical nature I noted that some people are seriously talking about bailing out the newspapers, which have hit hard times.

And nothing, I assured my readers, could be more absurd than that. The point of having newspapers is to be critical of government. To have government support them would turn them into worse propaganda rags than they now are.

The trouble with this? Well, FDR, way back in the tragedy, also subsidized newspapers. Well, at least one.

Bailouts weren’t exactly the main thrust of the New Deal, but they happened. And, like most political acts, they were politically motivated. FDR was worried about Philadelphia, which was solidly Republican. The Democratic newspaper was failing.

So he bailed it out.

Simultaneously he set the IRS on the publisher of the Republican newspaper. In the next election, the area turned Democrat.

Here’s one theory that won’t be disproven: In government, it’s politics that matters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.