Friday, September 21, 2007

Congress Shall Make No Law... Abridging the Freedom... of the Press

I am rather surprised that there hasn't been more outcry over the Senate's decision, earlier this week, to condemn a political organization for an advertisement it ran in a newspaper. And the Senate voted to condemn this ad not because it was libelous or posed a threat to the republic, but because it was disrespectful.

This is appalling, outrageous, inexcusable, inexplicable and profoundly un-American. Not to mention unconstitutional. What right does the United States Senate have to tell us, the American people, what we should be allowed to write? I have written disrespectful things about Tom Petty on this blog -- should I be living in fear that the Senate is going to publicly condemn me?

In a few years, this is going to look like Plessy v. Ferguson, an absolutely unjustifiable move on the part of our government. What am I saying -- it looks like Plessy v. Ferguson right now. Does the United States Senate not realize that public figures, even governmental figures, even military figures, are mocked in the press all the time? And that much of this mockery, horror of horrors, emanates from the right? Rush Limbaugh literally slanders honored veterans every single day of his life, and still gets invited to the White House, but let a left-wing organization make a childish insult, and our nation's highest legislative body feels fit to condemn it. What a world we live in.

But this has nothing to do with the content of the ad, or the views of the organization that ran it. The Senate would be wrong to condemn Limbaugh, or any other conservative yakker. We can all agree on that, can't we? So it stands to reason that this recent condemnation should itself be condemned by all right-thinking Americans. Not a single senator who voted for this ridiculous motion is worthy of a seat on the Itta Bena, Mississippi, city council, much less making important decisions on behalf of this great nation of ours.

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