Bill Whittle Gives a Speech at Last Sunday’s Wake Up America Rally in LA

And what a barnburner it was. The following is just a highlights video, about 15 minutes long. Note the conspicuous absence of a teleprompter.

A Brilliant Defense of Free Speech by Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn makes a remote appearance at an event held by Australia's Institute for Public Affairs to stand up for the free speech rights of Australia's best known conservative columnist, Andrew Bolt. Bolt is being prosecuted under the country's very restrictive racial tolerance laws.

Mark Steyn on Free Speech at the IPA from Institute of Public Affairs on Vimeo.

(Via  Power Line)
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Pima Sheriff and County Prosecutor Trying to Silence the Tucson Tea Party

This is shameful conduct on the part of Pima County Sheriff Dupnick and County Attorney Barbara LaWall and should not be happening in a free and open society.

This Is a Thing of Beauty.

A magnificent rant by  Don Surber:

For two years now, I have been called ignorant, racist, angry and violent by the left. The very foul-mouthed protesters of Bush dare to now label my words as “hate speech.”

Last week, the left quickly blamed the right for the national tragedy of a shooting spree by a madman who never watched Fox News, never listened to Rush Limbaugh and likely did not know who Sarah Palin is.

Fortunately, the American public rejected out of hand that idiotic notion that the right was responsible.

Rather than apologize, the left wants to change the tone of the political debate.

The left suddenly wants civil discourse.

Bite me.

The left wants to play games of semantics.

Bite me.

The left wants us to be civil — after being so uncivil for a decade.

Bite me.

There's more. Really, do read the whole thing.

The First Amendment to the Constitution is Under Attack, Again.

"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."

The above is the plain, unmistakable text of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Yet abridging the natural right of freedom of speech, to express one's opinions freely is exactly what the leftists in Congress are trying to do again.

Unhappy with the SCOTUS decision in the case of Citizens United vs. FEC (I wrote about it here in February) that overturned most of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill, the Democrats are trying to end run the Constitution by introducing the DISCLOSE act  which could have the effect of banning books, or even blogs like this one based on whether the government thinks I am "spreading misinformation" or engaging in "hate speech" (which is anything that disagrees with the leftist narrative) . I, for one, am not going to accept a government muzzle because someone in the government disagrees with what I have to say.

Paul Hsieh has a very good post over at Pajamas Media on this subject, which of course you should go and read in its entirety, but he makes these important points about what the First Amendment means that I want to call out:

"For classical liberals, this means the right to express one’s ideas without government censorship. The government could not suppress speech, regulate its dissemination, require licensing before one could state opinions, or promote one form of speech over another.

This is just an application of the broader principle that the only proper function of government is to protect individual rights. Unless we violate others’ rights through force, fraud, or threat thereof, we should be left free to live according to our best rational judgment — including the freedom to express our ideas without government interference. (Speech that violates others’ rights, such as fraud or death threats should not and would not be protected.)

Equally important, the right to free speech does not mean the right to the means of speech, such as an alleged “right” to newspaper space or broadcast time. A private publisher has no obligation to allow you to express your views on his pages. There is no such thing as a “right” to an audience. Private parties who choose not to publish your ideas are not engaging in censorship; only the government can commit censorship."

If this legislation passes, then we have a Congress that doesn't even pay lip service to the Constitution any more and we need to vote them out of office while we still can, which may not be much longer.

Repealing the First Amendment

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal had an op-ed about how leftists in Congress are trying to end-run the recent Supreme Court ruling in the case of Citizens United vs. FEC which invalidated a major part of the McCain Feingold campaing finance law by banning certain categories of people, primarily corporations, from spending any money promoting political messages.  Congress critters Donna Edwards (D-Maryland) and John Conyers (D-Michigan) are actually proposing to amend the Constitution so it bars corporate free speech. John Kerry and Arlen Specter are also supporting this First Amendment attack. The common argument among supporters of these efforts is that corporations aren't people and therefor shouldn't enjoy the same free speech rights as real people. Of course they have no problem about other artificial entities, such as unions, having the same free speech rights as they do now. This is the comment I left after the article:

I’m getting rather tired of hearing that corporations shouldn’t have First Amendment free speech rights because they are not “real people”. While it is true a corporation is a legal and accounting construct, it is much more than that. It is run by real human beings and it is owned by real human beings, exercising their free association rights to pool their resources and conduct business. I own stock in many corporations, either directly or through mutual funds. Nearly everyone who has any kind of retirement plan, whether it is an IRA, 401K, union pension fund or what have you has an ownership interest in corporations.

The job of corporate management at the companies I own a part of is to look after the common interests of its owners, such as me. That job includes speaking out against government policies, or political officeholders/candidates that might be injurious to the company’s and therefore my interests as an owner. I believe the speech issue is actually somewhat of a red herring. Fundamentally what those who would muzzle corporations are doing is assaulting my property rights. They want carte blanche to do as they wish with my property whether it be, for example, imposing “windfall profit” taxes, i.e. seizing my legally earned money becasue they think I earned too much, imposing union labor contracts, violating my rights to associate or rather not associate with whomever I please, etc. They just want to be able to do it without my having the ability to protest their actions thorough the people who represent my interests, the management of those corporations.