Not The Second, The First
There's been a lot of fuss over this ad:
In fact, if the Obama campaign hadn't raised a ruckus, I'm sure I wouldn't have noticed it. (It's great to live in a non-swing state where we're spared a lot of political advertising.)
The Obama people claim it's false and misleading, but instead of countering it with facts of their own, have decided to threaten the licenses of stations that run it.
Most of the political ads out there seem false and misleading to one side or the other. We already know McCain wants the government to regulate political speech during elections. Too bad Obama agrees.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:32 AM
9 Comments:
"Claim" it's false and misleading? I think we can safely start from the premise that it is false and misleading, as have some of Obama's ads. That said, I strongly agree with you that the only correct response is more speech.
I have seen defenses of the honesty of the ad and I find them at least as convincing as Obama's side. Which of the claims of the ad in particular are you saying are definitely false and misleading?
These things can be tricky. Look at the recent Supreme Court Second Amendment case. Obama said he supported it, but everything he'd said or done up to that point showed he didn't. If someone took out an ad saying Obama doesn't support the result of the case, I'd say that's correct, even though we have Obama on record saying he does.
This is not new. Obama is just continuing a pattern the Democrats have been pursuing for years. In 2004, John Kerry and the DNC threatened TV stations and the Sinclair Broadcasting's license over the Swift Boat Veterans Ads and the anti-Kerry documentary "Stolen Honor".
That same year, a group of Congressmen sent a letter to Fox News, implicitly threatening legislative action against the network for what they considered "unfair and unbalanced" reporting.
In 2006, Senate Democrats sent a letter to Disney complaining about the "Path to 9/11" mini-series and asking them not to broadcast it. On a side and possibly not unrelated note, anyone wondering why that mini-series is still not available on DVD?
And, as I've posted previously on this blog, Obama's actions towards WGN, Stanley Kurtz and David Freddoso have been obvious attempts at intimidation.
The common factor is that this seems to be a largely Democrat tactic - the only exception I can find is Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, and I suspect Obama would not want to emulate him - and that, regardless of the legality of the tactic, it doesn't play well with the public at large.
It's difficult to be seen as a 1st Amendment advocate when you actively try to deny that right to others. And whatever you may think of McCain's views on regulating political speech, I don't believe he's threatened anyone.
McCain hasn't threatened anyone? You mean there are no penalties in McCain-Feingold? I'm guessing the DOJ can put people in jail because of M-F.
Now there's an acronym.
GoSWMBCg
Really? Has that happened? Did I miss something?
Has anyone even been threatened with punishment for violating M-F?
And yes, I think it's a perfectly appropriate acronym. I wish it weren't law, but that's another conversation.
I wonder if the sentencing blog has this sort of data?
In any case, does it matter whether it's been used? Are you saying you don't mind that it puts felonies on the books, that you're comfortable with prosecutors not exercising the law? That's almost worse, isn't it?
Big Time wrote this about it: Finally, members of both parties have been startled to learn the law's penalties. A violation of McCain-Feingold -- be it a national party official's soft-money raising, or a senator's acting as a host at a fund-raiser on behalf of a governor -- is a felony carrying a prison sentence of as much as five years.
Now, is big time a big liar? No doubt. But I suspect he's right about this.
I agree M/F is bad law. I wish it had never been passed and I wish W. hadn't signed it. But to compare it to how the Obama camp has been dealing with speech they don't like is disingenuous at best.
M/F was passed as a bipartisan piece of legislation. Both parties should have known what they were getting. That they now claim surprise about how the law works should tell you all you need to know about the people running our country.
On a related note, how long is it before some congressman is going to say about the bailout "I didn't know it was going to do that!"
Well, I don't get how it's disingenuous. Isn't it precisely the same, using legal process to shut down your opponents? Are you suggesting that McCain gets a pass because Democrats were in on the deal, too?
No one gets a pass for M/F. Bad law is bad law. But to compare what McCain (and others) was trying to do with it, i.e. clean up and reduce the influence of big money on elections, with what Obama is attempting, i.e. to shut down and penalize speech he doesn't like, is definitely disingenuous.
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