Peeve Farm

g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

Brian Tiemann
Silicon Valley-based purveyor of a confusing mixture of Apple punditry and political bile.

btman at grotto11 dot com

Read These Too:

InstaPundit
USS Clueless
James Lileks
Little Green Footballs
As the Apple Turns
Entropicana
Cold Fury
Capitalist Lion
Red Letter Day
Eric S. Raymond
Tal G in Jerusalem
Secular Islam
Aziz Poonawalla
Corsair the Rational Pirate
.clue
Ravishing Light
Rosenblog

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Friday, August 6, 2004

13:27 - Congressman, legislate thyself
http://www.celluloid-wisdom.com/pw/index.php/weblog/entry/ladies_and_gentlemen_this_

(top)

Via Cold Fury...

I've made some noise lately about people dimly aware that something called "The First Amendment" exists, deciding that it means they should be allowed to say anything they please in any venue, and provided with protection against people who might dare to disagree with them. I've been trying patiently (and not-so-patiently) to explain what precisely the First Amendment does and does not guarantee.

Let's review:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

In other words, unless Congress is involved, the First Amendment doesn't frickin' apply. "Free speech" between private parties is regulated by the market of ideas, and one side is free to shout down or stifle the other and stop buying tickets to its concerts.

No Congressmen around? Then no First Amendment breach. Congress doesn't get involved in private discourse, because to do so�on either side�would be censorship. Got it? Good.

Several members of Congress sent a letter Tuesday to Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, to express their opposition to what they say is the network�s �unfair and unbalanced� bias towards the Republican Party.

The group, composed of 38 Democrats and Independents from the U.S. House of Representatives, has requested that Murdoch meet with them to discuss their concerns.

�The responsibility of the media is to report the news in an unbiased, impartial and objective manner,� the letter reads.

�It seems clear that Fox News network has a deliberate bias in favor of, and often serves as an extension of, the Republican Party�s policies and ideology.�

. . .

A spokesman for Rep. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said there were legislative avenues that the group could pursue as a secondary measure but declined to speculate on what those might be.�

Uh...

Wait.

You wanna run that by me again?

No, that can't be what you're saying. You're saying that members of the House of Representatives�you know, Congressmen ...

... and Fox News ... the only network that even vaguely demonstrates a lack of liberal slant ...

... and unspecified legislative avenues ...

Tell me, Congressman�how much more flagrantly do you think it's possible to breach the explicit verbatim commandment of the First Amendment?!

Oh, and just watch: these guys will be hailed as "brave" and "conscientious" for standing up to the heinous threat to free speech that Fox represents. When Murdoch is hounded from the dial and we have ideological purity once again, this group of Congressmen will be called American heroes, and anyone who opposes them will be branded "enemies of free speech and the First Amendment".

How has this happened? How can there not be anyone on the Left who sees something like this and takes a step back and says, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, let's not get carried away here�promoting liberal ideas is all well and good, but let's not turn the very premise of the First Amendment on its ass! Let's at least practice what we preach, and observe a little self-restraint before we end up rewriting the whole Constitution out of pure spite!"

If these Congressmen don't find themselves impeached by their own party for flagrant disregard of the Constitution that they'd sworn to uphold, then the Democrats have forfeited any claim even to understand this country's founding principles, let alone to be trusted to defend them.

My God, I have seldom been so angry.