Feb 10 Legislating Censorship

Democrats Chuck Schumer and Chris van Hollen are putting legislation together in an attempt to thwart the Supreme Court's Citizens United v. the FEC ruling. Here's what's they're thinking about:

"I support a constitutional amendment, but that will not be part of the legislation that Sen. Schumer and I introduce. We are very focused on trying to pass something that will blunt the impact of the court's decision; but again, our goal is to get something that can be implemented sooner rather than later," Mr. Van Hollen said.

He said they are looking at several approaches: banning foreign-controlled corporations from being able to run political ads; trying to curb the ability of companies that take federal contracts from running ads, since taxpayer dollars would in essence be used to campaign; and to require either approval or notification of shareholders before corporations run ads.

The Supreme Court will shoot this down just as surely as they ruled against the FEC. That isn't what's important to Mssrs. van Hollen and Schumer, though:

"It's a losing proposition for Republicans to be supporting a position which basically says corporations and unions need more influence and more money," said Mark McKinnon, a Republican strategist who worked on the poll with leading Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg. "I don't think there's a single voter in America that agrees with that position, or frankly that corporations and unions need more First Amendment rights."

For Democrats, there's another reason to act: According to the survey, most voters say special interests have more influence on the political process now than they did a year ago when Mr. Obama took office. "People think special interests are dominant," Mr. Greenberg said.

Democrats think they've got a winner with this but they don't. Right now, it's framed as the people vs. the pwoerful. The minute that it's framed as Censorship vs. the First Amendment, I'm betting that the polling shows a strong majority favoring the First Amendment.

If I were put in charge of messaging to argue against the Democrat's legislation, I'd make the point that our First Amendment rights are given to us by our Creator, not from the government. Then I'd make the point that anything that the government can give us, a corrupt government can take away.

Considering the monopoly Democrats had on Washington, my next argument would be whether we'd trust government to properly regulate anything, especially something as precious as speech. To those who said that they'd trust government, I'd introduce them to Mark Lloyd's thoughts on the First Amendment:

It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies.

[T]he purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance.

I'd then point out that Mr. Lloyd serves as diversity czar on the FCC, putting him in perfect position to regulate what can and can't be said on the airwaves, in print or on the internet.

Mr. McKinnon's statement that voting against the Democrats' bill is disturbing in that it tells me that he thinks that the First Amendment isn't worth fighting over. Sometimes, principled people need to cast a tough vote. I don't think voting against censorship is that difficult a decision but if it is, then so be it.

My bet is that the thought of Washington messing with the most precious constitutional right will stir up all kinds of support across the political spectrum.

There's no doubt that people are bothered by special interests getting their way too much of the time. I'd bet, though, that those same people would be more than upset if Washington tried messing with the First Amendment.

Comments welcome at LFR.