Tag: free speech

Categories
First Amendment rights incumbents

Congress Got Your Tongue?

Yesterday’s somber thirteenth anniversary of the 9/​11 terrorist attacks was marred by a brand new and savage act of violence against the very essence of America: the First Amendment.

Who orchestrated the attack? Responsibility was not claimed by ISIL or ISIS … or North Korea’s Kim Jong-​un … or even Dennis Rodman.

The culprits? A majority of the United States Senate.

Fifty-​four Democrats voted to scratch out the words “freedom of speech” from the First Amendment to be replaced by giving Congress new power to regulate the spending, and thereby the speech, in their own re-​election campaigns.

Conflict of interest, s’il vous plaît?

The assault was only thwarted because a simple majority falls short of the two-​thirds required to send the constitutional amendment to the House.

Dubbed the “Democracy for All Amendment,” supporters and their many cheerleaders in the media pretended Senate Joint Resolution 19 would overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and get big money out of politics. Certainly an amendment could do that, explicitly, but this one would have done no such thing.

Instead, SJR 19 would have empowered our despised Congress to regulate as it pleased, with such sweeping power that the amendment’s authors felt the need to reassure supporters (such as the New York Times) by stating expressly in the amendment that, “Nothing in this article shall be construed to grant Congress or the States the power to abridge the freedom of the press.”

Let’s hope that, for the 54 Senators who voted to repeal freedom of speech, this goes down as a suicide attack … politically.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights ideological culture

Half Clocked

Outside the U.N. General Assembly, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was asked if Salmon Rushdie remained under a death sentence. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, had issued a fatwā for the author’s fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, in 1989. Though that specific death sentence was rescinded a decade later, others have renewed the call for Mr. Rushdie to be killed.

Ahmadinejad responded jokingly, “Is he here in the United States? . . . If he is . . . you shouldn’t broadcast it for his own safety.”

Clearly, Mahmoud never completed a Dale Carnegie course.

On the bright side, nothing so clearly articulates the superiority of our system of government over Iran’s as does our embrace of free speech and their rejection of it.

Tragically, political leaders in the West often fail to stand up for this freedom. The Iranian leader cited a German law to claim the West has a double standard. He argued that Germany’s prohibition on publicly denying that the Nazi Holocaust ever happened makes it a criminal offense to “embark on historical research.”

Now, Mr. Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier, his point about historical research is moronic, and the tyrannical government he figure-​heads would really, really like nuclear weapons, making him extremely dangerous, to boot. But, more tragically, he has a point here.

He’s half as good as a stopped clock.

Germany’s abridgment of freedom in this instance doesn’t help battle Nazism, much less Islamofascism; it hurts by undercutting a key value. We have nothing to fear from free speech. Indeed, it’s important to hear fully what both our friends and our enemies are thinking.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights U.S. Constitution

Corporations Are Made of People

After the Supreme Court torpedoed restrictions on political speech by corporations, foes of the First Amendment bitterly denounced its Citizens United v. FEC decision.

They don’t consider themselves enemies of freedom of speech, of course. Instead, they think the Court erred by assuming that corporations have First Amendment rights. They say corporations aren’t people; they can’t have rights. 

But hey: Corporations — non-​profit or for profit — are actually made up of people.

One corporation denouncing free speech for other corporations is The New York Times. Their angry editorial states, “The Constitution … mentions many things and assigns them rights and protections — the people, militias, the press, religions. But it does not mention corporations.”

First, the Constitution does not assign any rights to “press” or “religion.” It forbids Congress from abridging individuals’ freedom of the press, freedom of religion. 

Second, the Constitution doesn’t exhaustively list relevant institutions. The drafters thought everybody knew that one way we exercise their rights is to organize, cooperatively, into groups — à la freedom of association.

Media corporations have been exempt from limits on campaign spending and political speech. The Times group editorial mind ignores this contradiction. They’re saying, “Our corporate speech is special and worthy of constitutional protection! We’re sincere and good! Members of other corporations, by contrast, can’t be trusted! Therefore, the First Amendment does not apply to them!”

Insist all you like, Mr. Times. You’re still wrong.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights

No More Speech Rationing

Advocates of campaign finance regulation, what George Will calls “speech rationing,” say letting corporations — including non-​profit corporations — spend unlimited money on political speech corrupts democracy.

Actually, muzzling speech is what corrupts democracy and the point of it: i.e., to protect our freedoms, including freedom of speech.

Protecting these freedoms is a vital political good, even if some speech is deplorable. 

The recent Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. FEC, dramatically strikes down unconstitutional limits on electioneering by businesses and non-​profits. But it leaves intact unconstitutional limits on their direct contributions to campaigns.

It also doesn’t touch requirements forcing campaign donors to disclose personal information. In his partial dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas pointed to how California donors giving more than $100 must reveal their names and addresses, info then publicized on the Internet. Supporters of a recent controversial ballot proposition were subjected to intimidation and property damage as a result.

The disclosure laws have spawned what Justice Thomas calls “a cottage industry that uses forcibly disclosed donor information to pre-​empt citizens’ exercise of their First Amendment rights.” 

Thomas is right. And campaign finance regulation should be tossed out root and branch.

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 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.