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A gag on the 1st Amendment
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
A gag on the 1st Amendment
Phil Kent
Given an opportunity to silence political opposition through a nation's airwaves, modern tyrants have seized and maintained power over huge populations. It is alarming to note that the just passed campaign-finance law is a seminal move to further undermine open and vigorous political debate in the land of the free.
Is it an overstatement to suggest that so-called campaign-finance reformers, and the legitimacy they seek through "scientific" studies, are the first wave of insidious government coercion of the body politic? Not when the Orwellian doublespeak of their tactics, and the big-lie technique of their experts, point to tyrannical ends.
The McCain-Feingold/Shays-Meehan team of "experts," beginning with the lawmakers themselves, has deftly introduced reams of so-called evidence underscoring the need to clean up the political process. The first major "evidence" consists of a two-year study, "Buying Time 2000," by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. Hailed by Clintonite attorneys like Seth Waxman, hired by Sens. John McCain and Russell Feingold to help defend Shays-Meehan against the omnibus constitutional attack filed by Sen. Mitch McConnell and more than two dozen plaintiffs, the study is itself a study in Clintonesque language manipulation.
Consider the definitions attached to political speech by the Brennan Center whiz kids. "Issue advocacy," limited by definition to ads that contain no demonstrable connection to any elected official or candidate for office, is acceptable, while "electioneering issue ads," or those ads that have a "negative tone," mention any candidate or bill sponsor by name, or mention a party label, are not "genuine" and are "illegal."
Interestingly, the Brennan Center elite describe group issue ads as a "shield" from federal campaign-finance law, which ostensibly makes it illegal for a campaign to promote itself in any but direct, hard money-funded ways. The BC brain trust is amazed by its finding that "candidate, party, and group ads shared similar advertising patterns over time," and worries that the flurry of so-called electioneering issue ads in the two months prior to the general election "changed the tone of the election itself."
Isn't that the point? Affecting the outcome of elections is, in fact, a critical part of all political advocacy. It is protected, and should continue to be protected, by the U.S. Constitution.
Most importantly, the plaintiffs in the McConnell lawsuit ask the question: So what?
So what that tens of millions of Americans, represented collectively by dozens of liberal, conservative and issue-based special-interest groups, spend their money to lobby the American people? The notion of independent expenditure, protected as a paramount right of speech under the U.S. Constitution and every noteworthy sacred document drafted since the founding of our nation, is that any American can speak out about public issues, political candidates and the issues that matter most to each individual.
Nevertheless, the study and its social engineer-authors make clear from the onset that organizations speaking out on issues are "sneaky," and that issue advocacy is actually a "major loophole in campaign-finance law because electioneering issue ads are usually treated as genuine issue ads for regulatory purposes." The quote from the study's executive summary speaks volumes about the arrogant and paternalistic way in which the authors - and the elites they represent - view the American people and free speech.
Interestingly, the congressional attorneys reviewing Shays-Meehan summarized in a report on the bill that "those who seek greater regulation seem to view the First Amendment, not as a protection to citizens from government regulation of political speech, but rather as a 'loophole' to be closed."
Southeastern Legal Foundation, as the prime funder of the McConnell legal team, will be releasing objective data and information about the Brennan Center study and its subject matter - overt political speech - over the next several months. Our goal, as a constitutional public interest law firm, is to underscore that political speech is vital to the health of a free republic, whether that is characterized as electioneering issue advertising or simply common sense. We believe the American people will see it's the latter.
Phil Kent is president of Southeastern Legal Foundation. http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20020603-30120328.htm
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Phil Kent
Given an opportunity to silence political opposition through a nation's airwaves, modern tyrants have seized and maintained power over huge populations. It is alarming to note that the just passed campaign-finance law is a seminal move to further undermine open and vigorous political debate in the land of the free.
Is it an overstatement to suggest that so-called campaign-finance reformers, and the legitimacy they seek through "scientific" studies, are the first wave of insidious government coercion of the body politic? Not when the Orwellian doublespeak of their tactics, and the big-lie technique of their experts, point to tyrannical ends.
The McCain-Feingold/Shays-Meehan team of "experts," beginning with the lawmakers themselves, has deftly introduced reams of so-called evidence underscoring the need to clean up the political process. The first major "evidence" consists of a two-year study, "Buying Time 2000," by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. Hailed by Clintonite attorneys like Seth Waxman, hired by Sens. John McCain and Russell Feingold to help defend Shays-Meehan against the omnibus constitutional attack filed by Sen. Mitch McConnell and more than two dozen plaintiffs, the study is itself a study in Clintonesque language manipulation.
Consider the definitions attached to political speech by the Brennan Center whiz kids. "Issue advocacy," limited by definition to ads that contain no demonstrable connection to any elected official or candidate for office, is acceptable, while "electioneering issue ads," or those ads that have a "negative tone," mention any candidate or bill sponsor by name, or mention a party label, are not "genuine" and are "illegal."
Interestingly, the Brennan Center elite describe group issue ads as a "shield" from federal campaign-finance law, which ostensibly makes it illegal for a campaign to promote itself in any but direct, hard money-funded ways. The BC brain trust is amazed by its finding that "candidate, party, and group ads shared similar advertising patterns over time," and worries that the flurry of so-called electioneering issue ads in the two months prior to the general election "changed the tone of the election itself."
Isn't that the point? Affecting the outcome of elections is, in fact, a critical part of all political advocacy. It is protected, and should continue to be protected, by the U.S. Constitution.
Most importantly, the plaintiffs in the McConnell lawsuit ask the question: So what?
So what that tens of millions of Americans, represented collectively by dozens of liberal, conservative and issue-based special-interest groups, spend their money to lobby the American people? The notion of independent expenditure, protected as a paramount right of speech under the U.S. Constitution and every noteworthy sacred document drafted since the founding of our nation, is that any American can speak out about public issues, political candidates and the issues that matter most to each individual.
Nevertheless, the study and its social engineer-authors make clear from the onset that organizations speaking out on issues are "sneaky," and that issue advocacy is actually a "major loophole in campaign-finance law because electioneering issue ads are usually treated as genuine issue ads for regulatory purposes." The quote from the study's executive summary speaks volumes about the arrogant and paternalistic way in which the authors - and the elites they represent - view the American people and free speech.
Interestingly, the congressional attorneys reviewing Shays-Meehan summarized in a report on the bill that "those who seek greater regulation seem to view the First Amendment, not as a protection to citizens from government regulation of political speech, but rather as a 'loophole' to be closed."
Southeastern Legal Foundation, as the prime funder of the McConnell legal team, will be releasing objective data and information about the Brennan Center study and its subject matter - overt political speech - over the next several months. Our goal, as a constitutional public interest law firm, is to underscore that political speech is vital to the health of a free republic, whether that is characterized as electioneering issue advertising or simply common sense. We believe the American people will see it's the latter.
Phil Kent is president of Southeastern Legal Foundation. http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20020603-30120328.htm
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Comments
Nat Hentoff
Schoolboys used to learn what William Pitt said in the English Parliament, in the 18th century, when the king was ordering more searches of private homes and businesses: "The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the Crown."
Pitt said the roof of his cottage "may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storm may enter; the rain may enter; but the King of England may not enter - all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement."
But that was before J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI and cyberspace. In Attorney General John Ashcroft's USA Patriot Act, there is a sneak-and-peek provision, which resembles what in Hoover's time was called "black bag jobs." Last October, Congress overwhelmingly passed the bill. Most members didn't have time to read the lengthy document.
With a warrant, FBI agents may now enter homes and offices of citizens and non-citizens when they're not there. The agents may look around, examine what's on a computer's hard drive and take other records of interest to them.
These surreptitious visits are not limited to investigations of terrorism, but can also be used in regular criminal investigations. Unlike many parts of the USA Patriot Act, these searches are not subject to the "sunset clause," which requires Congress to examine in four years whether the new law's incursions on American liberties have gone too far. This section of the USA Patriot Act is now a permanent part of American criminal law.
While in the office or home, the FBI can plant a "Magic Lantern" in your computer. It's also called the "sniffer keystroke logger." The device creates a record of every time you press a key on the computer. Unless you are very technically savvy, it's hard to know where the Magic Lantern resides.
"What the 'Magic Lantern' records is saved in plain text," says Jim Dempsey of the Washington-based Center for Democracy and Technology - someone I've consulted repeatedly on advanced technological invasions of privacy. "During the next FBI secret visit to a home or office, that information is downloaded while the agents look for other papers and records they might want to take along."
It is worth noting that a precursor to the Magic Lantern was being used during the Clinton administration. I have a copy of a May 9, 1999 application to a U.S. District Court in New Jersey from a U.S. attorney that authorizes a "surreptitious entry" to search and seize "encryption key-related pass phrases from a computer by installing a specialized computer program . . . which will allow the government to read and interpret data that was previously seized pursuant to a search warrant."
Under previous criminal law, when the FBI made a furtive search of homes and offices, the agents had to leave notice that they'd been there, and list what they'd taken. That way the person whose records were taken could immediately challenge the search. The agents may have had a bad lead or gone to the wrong address or may have exceeded their legal authority.
Now, the FBI is entitled to give what is called "delayed notice." For up to 90 days, the agents don't have to inform the occupant of their break-ins, and the FBI can delay notice even further by going to a judge and getting extensions of that 90-day provision. Also, if they don't find anything the first and second times, they can keep coming back, hoping they may yet hit pay dirt. Eventually, they will have to give notice.
Meanwhile, according to a Reuters dispatch, the FBI is developing a way that will allow it to plant the Magic Lantern without having to break into a home or office. " 'Magic Lantern,' " says Reuters, "would allow the agency to plant a Trojan horse keystroke logger on a target's PC by sending a computer virus over the Internet, rather than require physical access to the computer, as is now the case."
In 1928, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis predicted that "ways may be developed, some day, by which the government, without removing secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences of the home." Or of the office.
Who knew how chillingly prophetic Justice Brandeis would be?
Nat Hentoff is a columnist for The Washington Times. His column runs on Mondays. http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20020603-13959396.htm
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
- Life NRA Member
"If cowardly & dishonorable men shoot unarmed men with army guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary...and not by general deprivation of constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878