This blog printed on 100% recycled electrons.
Free speech forever! Here are some morning notes on the First Amendment:
Gas Pump Ad Company Nixes Obama Ads: Senator Barack Obama was working on some campaign ads to place on gas pump TVs. (People, you're filling your car with an explosive substance. Not the best time to be watching TV.) The ad would have mentioned Obama's plans for giving folks a $1,000 energy rebate funded by a tax on Big Oil's profits (just one of numerous planks in his energy policy, right alongside that common sense stuff about properly inflating your tires and tuning your engine—but oh, that's personal responsibility, and Republicans hate that).
But Gas Station TV, the Michigan company working to bring us video distraction at the pump, has nixed bringing Obama's message to their "captive audiences." "We avoid politics in general," said CEO David Leider. Especially when those politics tell voters that Obama will look for ways to lower gas consumption... which of course would mean less time motorists would spend in front of Gas Station TV's ad portals.
Not a violation of the First Amendment, but a good example of how corporations control the message whenever they can.
Protests Penned in at Denver Convention: A little closer to a weakening of the First Amendment is U.S. District judge Marcia Krieger's ruling that the U.S. Secret Service and City of Denver can restrict protestors to fenced-in areas during the Democratic National Convention. The judge admits the government is infringing on free speech rights, but alas, security comes first.
Oh well. We weren't sending any bloggers who might protest anything in Denver anyway.
Nix Free Speech by Nixing Camping: Denver is also making free speech more expensive by forbidding visitors from camping in city parks. Some youthful activists had hoped to bring 50,000 protestors to the city to make their voices heard during the convention. They had hoped they could set up camp in the parks. Now the city says if they want to come to Denver, they have to get a room... and given that the convention has had the city overbooked for months, that means the activists would have to spring for rooms in Boulder, Colorado Springs, or other long drives away. Sometimes the powers that be don't have to slap a gag on anyone; they just raise the price of free speech so that only folks who can afford the Hilton have the chance to speak.
The Predictability of the Sioux Falls City Council is painful to watch
-
Former City Councilor Big T wrote an excellent letter to the editor about
how the citizens need to vote on the new parks’ expenditures. I would
agree, $77 ...
9 hours ago
To make your first point valid, you would have to use an example of where they placed political ads on their screens in any of their markets.
ReplyDeleteI thought you of all people would have taken debate in High School!
Republicans have no problem at all with personal responsibility, when it comes to properly inflating your tires.
ReplyDeleteThe big deal is the absurdity of the original, I say again the original statement of Obama. The first time he made this speech (he then ommited one statement). He stated that we would not have to drill at all if Americans would properly inflate their tires. In subsequent speeches he ommitted the word drilling. This is why he is being hammered on the tire inflation issue.
guy smylie,
ReplyDeleteyou have to realize that this is cory's blog, not a public forum. you cannot expect cory to use well reasoned arguments, free from bias, and addressing both sides of an issue.
what you can expect is emotional rants, generalizations, misinterpretations, reading way too much into things, and the ever popular double standard.
just like a bad michael moore documentary, good ideas are brought up and good questions are raised, but are not well executed.
Restrictions on free speech are entirely constitutional when they are narrow and have no respect towards the content of the speech. I don't know exactly what they are doing in Denver but it doesn't sound like anything remotely unconstitutional to me.
ReplyDeleteAs a Republican, I've always thought that personal responsibility is one of our main themes.
ReplyDeleteWe Republicans do hate the prospect of having the responsibility for our own lives taken away from us and assumed by others who think that we have to be protected from ourselves. That would include (ironically) the current executive administration, which calls itself "Republican" but which, in my opinion, is not.
I will admit that if I was filling my tank with $4.00-a-gallon gas and saw Obama's face on an LCD panel, I might think, "H'mm. Maybe this guy can bring it down to $3.50." Someone else might think, "H'oo. This guy might put it up to $5.00."