Tag: free speech

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Democrats on FEC move to regulate Internet campaigns, blogs, Drudge

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Joseph Goebbels

Democrats on FEC move to regulate Internet campaigns, blogs, Drudge

BY PAUL BEDARD | OCTOBER 24, 2014 | 8:26 PM

In a surprise move late Friday, a key Democrat on the Federal Election Commission called for burdensome new rules on Internet-based campaigning, prompting the Republican chairman to warn that Democrats want to regulate online political sites and even news medialike the Drudge Report.

Democratic FEC Vice Chair Ann M. Ravel announced plans to begin the process to win regulations on Internet-based campaigns and videos, currently free from most of the FEC’s rules. “A reexamination of the commission’s approach to the internet and other emerging technologies is long over due,” she said.

The power play followed a deadlocked 3-3 vote on whether an Ohio anti-President Obama Internet campaign featuring two videos violated FEC rules when it did not report its finances or offer a disclosure on the ads. The ads were placed for free on YouTube and were not paid advertising.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/dems-on-fec-move-to-regulate-internet-campaigns-blogs-drudge/article/2555270

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Lois Lerner breaks silence

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Lois Lerner breaks silence

By RACHAEL BADE | 9/22/14 4:59 AM EDT Updated: 9/22/14 1:13 PM EDT

Employers won’t hire her. She’s been berated with epithets like “dirty Jew.” Federal agents have guarded her house because of death threats. And she’s spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending herself against accusations she orchestrated a coverup in a scandal that has come to represent everything Americans hate about the IRS.

Lois Lerner is toxic — and she knows it. But she refuses to recede into anonymity or beg for forgiveness for her role in the IRS tea party-targeting scandal.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Lerner said in her first press interview since the scandal broke 16 months ago. “I’m proud of my career and the job I did for this country.”

Lerner, who sat down with POLITICO in an exclusive two-hour session, has been painted in one dimension: as a powerful bureaucrat scheming with the Obama administration to cripple right-leaning nonprofits. Interviews with about 20 of her colleagues, friends and critics and a survey of emails and other IRS documents, however, reveal a much more complicated figure than the caricature she’s become in the public eye.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/lois-lerner-breaks-silence-irs-scandal-111181.html#ixzz3E7zD5CXu

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Al Franken Misrepresents the Censorship Power Democrats Are Demanding

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Al Franken Misrepresents the Censorship Power Democrats Are Demanding

Jacob Sullum|Sep. 9, 2014 7:26 pm

MSNBC During today’s debate about SJR 19,  a proposed constitutional amendment that would restrict freedom of speech in the name of “democratic self-government and political equality,” Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.)claimed the measure would merely “restore the law to what it was before Citizens Unitedwas decided.” Not so. True, the amendment would allow Congress to re-enact the speech restrictions overturned in that case, which barred unions and corporations, including nonprofit advocacy groups, from criticizing federal politicians on TV or radio close to an election. But as I noted yesterday, the amendment would go a lot further than that.

The amendment would allow Congress and state legislatures to “regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections.” That means it would overturn Buckley v. Valeo, the 1976 decision in which the Supreme Court upheld limits on donations to candidates but rejected limits on spending by candidates, reasoning that such caps amount to restrictions on speech, since communicating with a mass audience requires money.

The amendment that Franken and at least 48 of his colleagues favor also would allow legislators to impose limits on independent spending by individuals, which the Court has never upheld. Section 2 says legislators “may distinguish between natural persons and corporations or other artificial entities created by law,” but there is no requirement that they do so. Congress might decide, in the interest of “political equality,” that opinionated billionaires such as George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Sheldon Adelson, and the Koch Brothers should shut the hell up and let other people have a turn. It could even ban political ads featuring celebrities,  on the theory that they have an unwarranted influence on voters.

Given the breadth of this authority, the examples of possible censorship listed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed piece—including bans on the distribution of voter guides by the National Rifle Association, on pro-life or pro-choice advocacy close to an election, on get-out-the-vote efforts by churches or unions, and on documentaries critical of politicians running for office—are not at all fanciful. In fact, that last example is exactly what Citizens United involved. Under this amendment, such a documentary could be squelched even if it were the work of an independent filmmaker unaffiliated with any group organized as a corporation.

https://reason.com/blog/2014/09/09/al-franken-misrepresents-the-censorship

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Readers not impressed with Mayor Aronsohn’s Move to Squash Free Speech

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Readers not impressed with Mayor Aronsohn’s Move to Squash Free Speech 

The Council would rather hear themselves talking than hear those who pay the bills talking.

What objective criteria are being used to determine whether a remark is personally abusive or offensive? Answer: there are no objective criteria to determine such. This is a subjective call based upon the whim of our mayor.

Remarks that are either personally abusive or offensive. “With the Three Amigos that anything that doesn’t tout the accomplishments .

Aronsohn and Pucciarel , and Hauck regularly put down their colleagues on the council for no good reason. Usually they are trying to cow somebody into refraining from accurately describing the three amigo’s actual behavior, or what they should have done but didn’t, or explaining why what they did or failed to do was ethically or legally or morally wrong. So they basically want to disarm their political opponents while retaining complete flexibility to fillet people they don’t like with impunity. How and why do we put up with this transparently mendacity behavior in our elected officials?the Council would rather hear themselves talking than hear those who pay the bills talking.

Microsoft Store

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Student Accuses High School Of Blocking Conservative Websites

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Nazi book burning next?

Student Accuses High School Of Blocking Conservative Websites
June 18, 2014 9:52 AM

WOODBURY, Conn. (CBS Hartford) – A high school student claims that a firewall is blocking conservative websites at his school.

Andrew Lampart, a senior at Nonnewaug High School, discovered that he couldn’t get on the National Rifle Association’s website while on campus as he was doing research for a classroom debate on gun control in May.

“So, I went over to the other side,” Lampart told WTIC. “And I went over on sites such as Moms Demand Action or Newtown Action Alliance and I could get on these websites but not the others.”

The 18-year-old decided to investigate further by broadening his search terms to political parties in Connecticut.

“I immediately found out that the State Democrat website was unblocked but the State GOP website was blocked,” Lampart said.

The student took it a step further and looked at websits focusing on abortion issues and religion. He discovered that “right-to-life” groups were blocked by the firewall but that Planned Parenthood and Pro-Choice America weren’t.

https://connecticut.cbslocal.com/2014/06/18/student-accuses-high-school-of-blocking-conservative-websites/

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Sources: Lois Lerner’s emails likely gone forever

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Sources: Lois Lerner’s emails likely gone forever

By RACHAEL BADE | 6/18/14 9:59 PM EDT Updated: 6/18/14 11:34 PM EDT

Ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s crashed hard drive has been recycled, making it likely the lost emails of the lightening rod in the tea party targeting controversy will never be found, according to multiple sources.

“We’ve been informed that the hard drive has been thrown away,” Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Repu told POLITICO the same late Wednesday, citing IRS officials.

Two additional sources told POLITICO the same late Wednesday, citing IRS officials.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/irs-lois-lerner-emails-108044.html#ixzz354hOtzEn

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The Internet’s 51 New Regulators

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The Internet’s 51 New Regulators

The FCC goes ahead with its plan to control Web pricing.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler went ahead with his proposal on Thursday to give his agency the power to decide whether the terms and prices of broadband Internet services are “reasonable.” That’s bad enough as political discretion, but according to dissenting Commissioner Ajit Pai, regulators from every state will also be able to get into the act.Mr. Wheeler’s goal is to satisfy the “net neutrality” supporters demanding that every broadband customer receive the same deal, no matter how much bandwidth they consume. Backed by two other Democrats, Mr. Wheeler said he prefers the “reasonable” pricing standard. But he also suggested another, even worse option to regulate broadband prices: reclassifying Internet connections as “telecommunications services.”

For two decades Congress has wisely refused to give the FCC the same power over the Internet that it holds over the telephone system. And for two decades the Internet has enabled a gusher of creativity that was unimaginable over a century of regulated telephony. Mr. Wheeler’s brainstorm to change all this is simply to pretend the Internet is a phone network.

This would apply to today’s broadband networks common-carrier rules that were designed for monopoly telephone companies—and created decades before the inventors of smart phones and social media were even born. Since this designation would automatically impose myriad obligations that have nothing to do with current customer needs—and that many modern firms could not possibly fulfill—the commission would then have to issue a flurry of exemptions (“forbearance” in FCC parlance) to prevent chaos in the market for Internet connections.

https://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304547704579564151980296612?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_opinion&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304547704579564151980296612.html%3Fmod%3DWSJ_hpp_sections_opinion

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Judicial Watch Obtains New Documents Showing IRS Targeting Came Directly From Washington D.C.

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Judicial Watch Obtains New Documents Showing IRS Targeting Came Directly From Washington D.C.

Katie Pavlich | May 14, 2014

New documents obtained and released through a Judicial Watch lawsuit show the targeting of tea party and conservative groups came directly out of Washington D.C., not a rogue IRS office in Cincinnati.

On July 6, 2012, former Director of the IRS Rulings and Agreements Division and current Manager of Exempt Organizations Guidance Holly Paz sent an email to IRS Attorney Steven Grodnitzky asking for an explanation of how tea party group applications were being handled. Grodnitzky responded by confirming the cases were being handled in Washington.

“EOT is working the Tea party applications in coordination with Cincy. We are developing a few applications here in DC and providing copies of our development letters with the agent to use as examples in the development of their cases. Chip Hull [another lawyer in IRS headquarters] is working these cases in EOT and working with the agent in Cincy, so any communication should include him as well. Because the Tea party applications are the subject of an SCR [Sensitive Case Report], we cannot resolve any of the cases without coordinating with Rob,” Grodnitzky wrote.

When the IRS targeting scandal broke last year, officials in Washington immediately pinned the blame on the Cincinnati office. This documentation proves not only that direction was coming out of Washington, but that Washington instructed Cincinnati about how to handle tea party applications.

A new email from Lois Lerner also details how BOLO lists (be on the look out) were specifically created for tea party groups or groups with issues related to government spending, debt, taxes and “how the country is being run.”

“Because the BOLO only contained a brief reference to “Organizations involved with the Tea Party movement applying for exemption under 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4)” in June 2011, the EO Determinations manager asked the manager of the screening group, John Shafer [IRS Cincinnati field office manager], what criteria were being used to label cases as “tea party ” cases. (“Do the applications specify/state ‘ tea party’? If not, how do we know applicant is involved with the tea party movement?”) The screening group manager asked his employees how they were applying the BOLO’s short –hand reference to “tea party.” His employees responded that they were including organizations meeting any of the following criteria as falling within the BOLO’s reference to “tea party” organizations: “1. ‘Tea Party’, ‘Patriots’ or ‘9/12 Project’ is referenced in the case file. 2. Issues include government spending, government debt and taxes. 3. Educate the public through advocacy/legislative activities to make America a better place to live. 4. Statements in the case file that are critical of the how the country is being run. . . ” Lerner wrote on April 2, 2013. “So, we believe we have provided information that shows that no one in EO “developed” the criteria. Rather, staff used their own interpretations of the brief reference to “organizations involved with the Tea Party movement,” which was what was on the BOLO list.”

Judicial Watch also found the IRS put red and orange alert symbols on tea party issues for heightened awareness. Here are two slides from a “Heightened Awareness Presentation” used at the IRS.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/05/14/new-documents-show-irs-targeting-came-directly-from-washington-dc-n1838128

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FEC chair warns that conservative media like Drudge Report and Sean Hannity face regulation — like PACs

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Joseph Goebbels would have been impressed 

FEC chair warns that conservative media like Drudge Report and Sean Hannity face regulation — like PACs

BY PAUL BEDARD | MAY 7, 2014 AT 8:49 AM

Government officials, reacting to the growing voice of conservative news outlets, especially on the internet, are angling to curtail the media’s exemption from federal election laws governing political organizations, a potentially chilling intervention that the chairman of the Federal Election Commission is vowing to fight.

“I think that there are impulses in the government every day to second guess and look into the editorial decisions of conservative publishers,” warned Federal Election Commission Chairman Lee E. Goodman in an interview.

“The right has begun to break the left’s media monopoly, particularly through new media outlets like the internet, and I sense that some on the left are starting to rethink the breadth of the media exemption and internet communications,” he added.

Noting the success of sites like the Drudge Report, Goodman said that protecting conservative media, especially those on the internet, “matters to me because I see the future going to the democratization of media largely through the internet. They can compete with the big boys now, and I have seen storm clouds that the second you start to regulate them, there is at least the possibility or indeed proclivity for selective enforcement, so we need to keep the media free and the internet free.”

All media has long benefited from an exemption from FEC rules, thereby allowing outlets to pick favorites in elections and promote them without any limits or disclosure requirements like political action committees.

But Goodman cited several examples where the FEC has considered regulating conservative media, including Sean Hannity’s radio show and Citizens United’s movie division. Those efforts to lift the media exemption died in split votes at the politically evenly divided board, often with Democrats seeking regulation.

Liberals over the years have also pushed for a change in the Federal Communications Commission’s “fairness doctrine” to cut of conservative voices, and retired Supreme CourtJustice John Paul Stevens has delighted Democrats recently with a proposed Constitutional amendment that some say could force the media to stop endorsing candidates or promoting issues.

https://washingtonexaminer.com/fec-chair-warns-conservative-media-drudge-hannity-face-regulation-like-pacs/article/25481

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“The US has lost the moral authority to talk about a free and open internet,”

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“The US has lost the moral authority to talk about a free and open internet,”
By Richard Waters in San Francisco

A meeting in Brazil this week will reveal whether Washington has succeeded in preventing international anger over the Edward Snowden revelations clouding discussions about future governance of the internet.

São Paulo is to host a two-day international meeting, starting on Wednesday, called by Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, one of the international leaders who was a target of US surveillance.

International unrest over US and British internet surveillance has weakened Washington’s ability to shape the debate about the internet’s future, according to people involved in the process.

“The US has lost the moral authority to talk about a free and open internet,” said a former senior US government official.

The São Paulo meeting had the potential to become deeply political and expose rifts between countries over future control of the internet, said Greg Shatan, a partner at law firm Reed Smith in Washington. “It was called under extraordinary circumstances, it’s a reaction to a perceived crisis,” he said.

The US made a highly symbolic gesture last month in an attempt to defuse the situation.

In a move that had long been urged by Brussels, Washington said it planned to give up its last remaining direct role in controlling the internet. This involves checking the accuracy of changes to internet addressing made by ICANN, the international body that oversees the system. Though a limited and highly technical function, this has long been a focus for international discontent at US influence over the internet.

https://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4529516c-c713-11e3-889e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2zVSW5HCG

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Welcome to Fascism 101: The FCC Wades Into the Newsroom

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Welcome to Fascism 101: The FCC Wades Into the Newsroom

Why is the agency studying ‘perceived station bias’ and asking about coverage choices?

Feb. 10, 2014 7:26 p.m. ET

News organizations often disagree about what Americans need to know. MSNBC, for example, apparently believes that traffic in Fort Lee, N.J., is the crisis of our time. Fox News, on the other hand, chooses to cover the September 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi more heavily than other networks. The American people, for their part, disagree about what they want to watch.

But everyone should agree on this: The government has no place pressuring media organizations into covering certain stories.

Unfortunately, the Federal Communications Commission, where I am a commissioner, does not agree. Last May the FCC proposed an initiative to thrust the federal government into newsrooms across the country. With its “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs,” or CIN, the agency plans to send researchers to grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run. A field test in Columbia, S.C., is scheduled to begin this spring.

The purpose of the CIN, according to the FCC, is to ferret out information from television and radio broadcasters about “the process by which stories are selected” and how often stations cover “critical information needs,” along with “perceived station bias” and “perceived responsiveness to underserved populations.”

https://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304680904579366903828260732

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USA Plunges To 46th In World Press Freedom Index…

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Biggest rises and falls in the 2014 World Press Freedom Index

The 2014 World Press Freedom Index spotlights the negative impact of conflicts on freedom of information and its protagonists. The ranking of some countries has also been affected by a tendency to interpret national security needs in an overly broad and abusive manner to the detriment of the right to inform and be informed. This trend constitutes a growing threat worldwide and is even endangering freedom of information in countries regarded as democracies. Finland tops the index for the fourth year running, closely followed by Netherlands and Norway, like last year. At the other end of the index, the last three positions are again held by Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea, three countries where freedom of information is non-existent. Despite occasional turbulence in the past year, these countries continue to be news and information black holes and living hells for the journalists who inhabit them. This year’s index covers 180 countries, one more than last year. The new entry, Belize, has been assigned an enviable position (29th). Cases of violence against journalists are rare in Belize but there were some problems: defamation suits involving demands for large amounts in damages, national security restrictions on implementation of the Freedom of Information Act and sometimes unfair management of broadcast frequencies.
Read more

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Obama administration looks to curtail free speech and squelch dissent with New IRS 501c Regulations

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Obama administration looks to curtail free speech and squelch dissent with New IRS 501c Regulations

commentary by Ron DuBois
Jan 27

Well, once again I am saddened by the illegal and unconstitutional machinations of our Government. The fraud and illegal maneuverings of the last three elections pale in comparison to this. The IRS is issuing “regulations” that would prevent 501 (c) (4) organizations – mainly Conservative organizations – from doing just about anything opposing the President. People cannot support a group or candidate, or even mention them, can’t donate money, or even volunteer their time. They cannot do a get-out-the-vote drive, hold a bi-partisan meeting, or hand out flyers. Nothing. This would effectively prevent any opposition from being mounted against any Democrat, the President, or any Presidential appointment. The IRS does this knowing there is insufficient time to mount a legal challenge prior to the November elections.
I would hope there would be a way for Congress to intervene, but the Democrats still control the Senate. This is a major, major, development.                    Ron D.

New IRS Regs can Tip 2014 Elections

With his signature ‘stroke of the pen’, Pres. Obama’s IRS has proposed sweeping new powers to oversee campaign laws. As you will see, these rules stack the deck against opposition to the President.

Under a proposed regulation, Pres. Obama is using the IRS to close the loophole that allows §501(c)(4) groups to spend 49% of their budget on elections without disclosing the names of their donors.

By itself, that disclosure may not be bad, but the new IRS regs do not stop there. If these rules go into effect, many of the activities readers are engaged in right now could lead to fines and imprisonment.

The new rules require reporting on all §501 (c)(4) donations that engage in any form of political activity.  (See below for the expanded definitions of ‘political activity’.) But, the same does not hold true for groups like Planned Parenthood that can segregate their donations between abortion activities and other activities.

While most conservative groups use §501 (c)(4) organizations, liberal groups tend to use §527 organizations that do not fall under these new rules.

For the first time in our history, the rules consider administration appointments and the confirmation process itself as political activities.  This give the IRS the authority to police opposition to any administration nominations.

Once an issue has been raised for or against a candidate or appointee, the IRS sees discussion of that issue or even retaining information about that issue in website archives as political activity that can be controlled.  This includes distributing voter guides, registering voters or getting out the vote drives.  While one can argue that voter guides can be distributed by either party, therefore this applies to liberals and conservatives alike, not really. Once the practice is controlled by the government, the sitting administration is the only one left that can guide the electorate.

These are the proposed regulatory changes:

1.       The IRS would declare that a broadly expanded category of “candidate related political activity”, including voter registration drives and non-partisan voter education, is not beneficial to the community as a whole and does not promote social welfare.  Therefore it is treated as political speech.

2.       The definition of “candidate” is expanded to include anyone who is proposed by another for selection, nomination, or appointment to any public office in a political organization, or to be a Presidential or Vice-Presidential elector.

3.       “Candidate political activity” would include the appointment and confirmation of executive branch nominees.

4.       Issue oriented communications would be treated as “candidate related political activity” even if it is neutral or non-biased or if it is just intended to explain a non-electoral action such as a vote on pending legislation.  Voter guides and get-out-the-vote drives would be defined as “candidate-related political activity.”

5.       “The Treasury Department and the IRS contend that content previously posted by an organization on its Web site that clearly identifies a candidate and remains on the Web during the specified pre-election period would be treated as candidate-related political activity.”

6.       Any event an organization hosts within the 60/30 day election timeframe, at which a candidate appears, whether or not it was previously scheduled, would constitute “candidate-related activity.”

7.       The definition of “express advocacy” is radically expanded to include any communication that makes “reference to a particular issue or characteristic distinguishing the candidate from others.”  (For example, during an election that included Pro-Life and Pro-Choice candidates, any reference to the abortion issues would become express advocacy, even if the election was not mentioned.)

8.       The IRS would include statements about political parties, not just candidates, in its definition of express advocacy.

9.       Any contribution to a §501(c) organization that engages in “candidate-related political activity” would itself constitute “candidate-related political activity” by the donor.

10.   Contributions would be defined to include in-kind donations and volunteer services as well as cash.

This regulation severely represses Free Speech and Free Association of those opposing the president, while leaving his supporters relatively untouched. While it is likely most of this ruling is unconstitutional, the point is moot for the short term.  By the time any opposition case makes its way through the court system, the 2014 elections will be over.

Then there is the perception issue.  The media will hail the fairness of finally forcing §501 (c)(4) organizations to reveal their donors while ignoring the colossal trampling of Free Speech.

There still is an opportunity until February 27th to make comments to the IRS on IRS REG-134417-13.

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Leaning Right in Hollywood, Under a Lens

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Leaning Right in Hollywood, Under a Lens
By MICHAEL CIEPLY and NICHOLAS CONFESSOREJAN. 22, 2014

LOS ANGELES — In a famously left-leaning Hollywood, where Democratic fund-raisers fill the social calendar, Friends of Abe stands out as a conservative group that bucks the prevailing political winds.

A collection of perhaps 1,500 right-leaning players in the entertainment industry, Friends of Abe keeps a low profile and fiercely protects its membership list, to avoid what it presumes would result in a sort of 21st-century blacklist, albeit on the other side of the partisan spectrum.

Now the Internal Revenue Service is reviewing the group’s activities in connection with its application for tax-exempt status. Last week, federal tax authorities presented the group with a 10-point request for detailed information about its meetings with politicians like Paul D. Ryan, Thaddeus McCotter and Herman Cain, among other matters, according to people briefed on the inquiry.

The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the organization’s confidentiality strictures, and to avoid complicating discussions with the I.R.S.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/23/us/politics/leaning-right-in-hollywood-under-a-lens.html?_r=0