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December 11, 2003

Supreme Court Limits Freedom of Speech.

The ads close to an election usually are over-the-top, out-of-control attack ads. So the Court’s decision may really lead to more civilized elections.

At the same time, there’s tremendous concern from many observers that the Court has expressly limited the free speech guaranteed to us by the Constitution.

I never, in my most screwed up dreams, imagined that SCOTUS would uphold the part of the legislation that bans third-party commercials sixty days before an election. This is a definite blow to the first amendment—and against political speech, no less—and the Supreme Court let it happen.

This the Court has astonishingly, in fact done:

“The court has given government an extensive role in the area [TV commercials and so forth] on grounds that there is a fundamental national interest in rooting out corruption or even the appearance of it. That concern justifies limitations on the freedom of speech, the court has said.”

How can the Court discover in the Constitution a limit on freedom of speech? It’s insane.

Also, Rush makes a very good point. Now that candidates are forbidden to get their message out using the previously-normal method of TV and radio ads, how are they going to do it? They’ll have to go begging to the media—the overwhelmingly liberal media—for articles and interviews. This will give the media even more of a stranglehold over what can be said.

You know they’re not going to be bashing Democrats on these network news shows…. So what’s happened now, the mainstream press, they’ll go get whoever guests they want and they can trash whoever they want. That person who has been trashed cannot respond on television, can’t buy a commercial, can’t get a commercial run, can’t do it.

Just last week Ann Coulter was talking about the Supreme Court’s “discovering” all kinds of rights in the Constitution that couldn’t possibly have been intended by the Framers.

This appears to be insanity on a massive scale.