Cowardly Republican Party Threatens NBC and CNN

Did you see this?  The Republican National Committee has threatened NBC and CNN - the RNC will veto any Presidential debates held on NBC and CNN, if the two networks go ahead with their plans to air a mini-series and a movie about Hillary Clinton.  Reince Priebus, RNC Chair (to my science fictional eyes, the name sounds like he comes from some villainous planet in the Foundation series), says that he thinks airing the Clinton shows will give her an unfair advantage in the 2016 Presidential election.   Pressing the networks is villainous enough in itself - a heavy-handed attempt to regulate the free flow of information in our country.

The threat is also clueless.   Hillary Clinton is already world-famous whether she runs for President in 2016 or not.  As a former First Lady, former Senator from the great state of New York, close contender in the 2008 Democratic Presidential primary, and most recently Secretary of State, her life already has ample accomplishment and profile for the making of all kinds of movies and TV shows.   Priebus, desperate, is just doing what he can to limit the public's knowledge of an iconic figure who will continue to be iconic and better-known than any Republican candidate regardless of these dramatizations.

I try to be even-handed when I criticize politicians and parties about their interference with dissemination of information.   For example, Democrats like Chuck Schumer have been as dangerously wrong as his Republican counterparts in his caterwauling about Edward Snowden being a threat to national security.   But the Republicans still have the stage all to themselves when it comes to misunderstanding a media situation, and calling for de facto censorship.   Here's my advice to the GOP: try coming up with policies that Americans like, and stop trying to win elections by badgering the media.

The Fraudulent Hunt for Snowden

The big story today is the hunt for Edward Snowden - and, in particular, the gall of Russia for not just turning Snowden over to the U.S.  After all, he has been charged with espionage, and that's a very serious crime.  Senator Schumer (D-NY) even sees Russia's failure to turn over Snowden as equivalent to Russia's lack of cooperation with our plans for Syria.

How, exactly, Snowden has committed espionage has never been made clear.  Did he gave valuable information to a country engaged in war with the U.S.?  No one has alleged that he did.   Apparently his "crime" was telling the American people the truth about our own government's spying upon us - a truth that our government has systematically lied about over the years in testimony to Congress.  In what warped reasoning is telling the truth about that an act of espionage?

But our government needs that charge brought against Snowden, so we can pressure foreign governments to turn him over to us.   And if a government sees through that, and decides not to give us Snowden - because he's a whistle blower not a traitor - then that government gets criticized not only by Schumer, with his absurd analogy between Snowden and Syria, but by Jay Carney, John Kerry, and the whole weight of the elected and appointed American government.

And this of course is exactly what the government most wants.  Redirect everyone's attention to the flight of a whistle blower labelled traitor, and the countries who might object to that label, rather than the illegal activity that the whistle was blown upon: the US government's illegal collection of communication information from the American people, and its repeated lying about that every chance it got.

See also: David Gregory vs. Glenn Greenwald: Lessons about So-Called Progressives

Challenging Schumer and Gillibrand on SOPA

Largely missed among the online protests against SOPA and PIPA today - protests with whose goal I strongly agree, though I disagree with the tactics of shutting down online systems, as I indicated on Monday - were in-person demonstrations at the Manhattan offices of US Senators from New York Schumer and Gillibrand.

Unlike Wikipedia going dark, which inconvenienced millions of innocent people, the protests against Schumer and Gillibrand were lodged exactly such protests should be, in the faces of people who support SOPA and PIPA and apparently don't care about the damage such law if enacted would do to the Internet, and thereby our lives.  Not only support these bills, but in the case of Schumer and Gillibrand sponsored the Senate version of SOPA - that is,  PIPA.

I've lived in New York all my life, and yet I still find myself surprised when a New York elected official, let alone a Democrat, has such a benighted, retrograde position.  But Schumer has been a disrespecter of the First Amendment for a long time.  He loves the FCC and the fines it levies, and speaks glowingly of the Fairness Doctrine and hopes to see it reinstated.  He probably thinks all the First Amendment prohibits is the government's shutting down newspapers in the middle of the night, but I wouldn't put that past him, either, if the paper printed something he judged in bad taste.

I guess I expected more of Kristen Gillibrand.  Truthfully, I was disappointed when former Governor Paterson passed over Carolyn Kennedy for Hillary Clinton's replacement, and appointed the little-known Gillibrand.   She's done a pretty good job, until SOPA.  I tried to give her a chance.

But the Schumer-Gillibrand position on SOPA-PIPA is insulting to anyone with any intelligence.  Internet piracy is something we all want to stop.  Especially me, as an author.  But Schumer and Gillibrand think it's costing New Yorkers jobs.   Hardly - the movie and television industries are still situated in Hollywood, and the old music business, the RIAA-kind, isn't situated anywhere anymore.   What would cost jobs in New York are Internet companies going broke because of unconstitutional Federal fines and shutdowns in pursuit of pirates.

But speaking of jobs - I hope New Yorkers put someone up against Schumer next time a primary comes around, and as for Gillibrand - let's hope she comes to her senses and withdraws her support from SOPA and PIPA before she loses whatever support she still has from New Yorkers who want to build a better future.

Why the Supreme Court Decision Allowing Direct Corporate Spending on Elections is Correct

Good for the US Supreme Court for overturning the 20-year ban on direct corporate spending on elections.  Last time I checked, the First Amendment - "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" - contained no language excluding corporations from its protections.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, no great champion of the First Amendment, predictably voted with the minority - that is, to uphold the ban.  President Obama, apparently also no great friend of freedom of speech, said the decision gives a "green light" to special interests.   Predictably, Keith Olbermann just finished ranting about the decision.  Fortunately his guest, constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley, tried to set Olbermann straight.

Contrary to Senator Schumer of New York, the decision has "not just predetermined the winners of next November's elections."   The decision is not political.  It favors neither party.  It favors freedom.  (I'm a lifelong Democrat, who voted for Obama.)

Justice Stevens, who wrote the minority, dissenting opinion, thinks the First Amendment was not intended to apply to corporations, which  "are not human beings. They can't vote and can't run for office."  But  by that reasoning, The New York Times and The Washington Post would have been entitled to no First Amendment protection when Richard Nixon tried to prevent them from publishing the Pentagon Papers.

It's hard, I know, to support the right of people or organizations to speak and write and buy ads when you utterly and vehemently disagree with their positions.  But that is precisely what the First Amendment was designed to support and protect.   Because it protects the expression not just of opinions you may detest, but your own most cherished opinions, when others may find them detestable.