Justice Thomas’ dire prediction

Well said...but you're wasting your time.

And if the First Amendment is dead, can we honestly claim to be a democratic republic any more?

Well the First might as well follow the other amendments that have been schredded

Things aren't hopeful when a GOP president who promised to veto the legislation and who believed it Unconstitutional signed it after a GOP dominated cingress passed it

I AGREE.

a small group of lke minded inviduals buying an ad? give me a break. In almost all cases Ads are bought by large groups.

Those large groups -- viz. the 241-chapter, 77,000- contributor Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life -- are made up of small people like me and my wife who typically make contributions of approximately $20-30. And what Court is now legitimately and constitutionally going to tell us that MCCL can't publish the Democratic candidate's voting record on partial-birth abortion bills, no matter how close to the election that documented information is disseminated?

We just can't make an ad for our "friendly" congresscritter at certain times to "help their effort."

And that's an arbitrary, whimsical abrogation of First Amendment freedom.

"The First Amendment died earlier this month.

And if the First Amendment is dead, can we honestly claim to be a democratic republic any more?"

Borders? We ain't got no STEENKING BORDERS!

Democracy? We ain't got no STEENKING DEMOCRACY!

(Democracy has been replaced with "another" option.)

"The question is or at least ought to be, how can such a small, godless, minority have such influence over our courts and legislative processes?"

Answer:

U.S. Supreme Court, 2003 - The Oligarchy*

(All Your Sovereignty Are Belong To Us!)

Back Row (left to right): Ginsburg, Souter, Thomas, Breyer
Front Row (left to right): Scalia, Stevens, Rehnquist, O'Connor, Kennedy

ol•i•gar•chy
Pronunciation: 'ä-l&-"gär-kE, 'O-
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -chies
Date: 1542
1 : government by the few
2 : a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes; also : a group exercising such control
3 : an organization under oligarchic control

sov•er•eign•ty
Variant(s): also sov•ran•ty /-tE/
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -ties
Etymology: Middle English soverainte, from Middle French soveraineté, from Old French, from soverain
Date: 14th century
1 obsolete : supreme excellence or an example of it
2 a : supreme power especially over a body politic b : freedom from external control : AUTONOMY c : controlling influence
3 : one that is SOVEREIGN; especially : an autonomous state

"And what Court is now legitimately and constitutionally going to tell us that MCCL can't publish the Democratic candidate's voting record on partial-birth abortion bills, no matter how close to the election that documented information is disseminated?"

Once the United States Constitution is no longer a legitimate document, the "court" that will do the rest of the dismantling of our once great Republic will assuredly be those in post #25 . .

a sad bump, but one we can work around, by starting our own free weekly or monthly tabloid size newspapers.

That has nothing to do with free speech. You can still make your plea to anyone willing to listen. Show me in the constitution where the founding fathers mentioned broadcast.

McCain Feingold stinks. But no one could possibly believe that the Framers intended, if indeed they could possibly have imagined, the First Amendment to inculcate and protect the culture of money for access and influence which was on display in Washington this year, exemplified in the energy bill and the medicare drug bill debates.

The Framers provided for Senators to be elected by (and most likely from) legislators all of whom knew one another personally, and for Representatives to be elected from districts of gross populations around 50,000, of whom at most 10,000 would be the 21-year-old male freeholders entitled to the franchise. The assumed that Electors for President and Vice President would be selected with (at most) the same franchise as prevailed for the Representatives, and made it possible for the state legislators directly to choose the Electors, as well.

Something must be done -- and the moral of the story is that in the absence of good proposals, problems as dire as the culture of Washington will inevitably draw solutions which are worse than nothing when no one is forcefully offering solutions that are better than nothing...

The saddest part of this tragedy is that so few seem to understand what just happened to us.

And that's an arbitrary, whimsical abrogation of First Amendment freedom.

Obviously the supremes disagree.

Ok, when you show me in the Constitution where the founding fathers made abortion a protected right. Words mean nothing. The politics of the "justices" is all that matters now.

starting our own free weekly or monthly tabloid size newspapers

the internet is what they fear. bill and hillary klinton are being taken apart by something they can't control.

the socialists in the republican party fear the net.

mcain-feingold is based on old technology.

tax cuts are the only thing that matters. the insects in washington can't survive on the scale they are now without tax increases. that is the battleground; cashflow is everything.

I find it hard to believe that at the beginning of the 21st century, someone would claim that in reducing us to no more powerful voice than word of mouth, our freedoms have not yet again been curtailed. Incumbants have full access to the press, advertizing, push-polling, franking, and all the other assorted methods they use to manipulate the electorate, yet we are reduced to countering all this by chatting with our neighbors over a fence post.

I really wish we had some document with teeth that said something about 'congress shall make no law'...

Need an opinion here.

Where does a website like http://www.jimgreenwood.com fit in after this sc ruling?

Anybody?

Also, is there unlimited online access in Allenwood?

Maybe those barbed wire enclosed camps that some people were taking pictures of and reporting about a couple of years ago are equipped with internet access.

Ya think?

Well said...but you're wasting your time.

I'm new to FR. Well, I guess not completely. I lurked a long time, but not many posts. I find FR to be a great place to sample the news over a cuppa in the morning.

I guess you're right, though.

You seem to be hip to the real sitch, so I'll address others who may peruse this missive.

From what I can see principle is not a big consideration here - but power is. Perhaps better to say the illusion of power. Feeling close to it. Feeling connected to it.

It's the classic deal Satan offers - compromise and in exchange I'll give you some worldly power and glory. But in the end of course Old Slewfoot double crosses the chumps that take the deal and they wind up losing all.

But everybody knows that, but they take the deal anyway, because they just can't pass up the nice baubles.

My take on most of the GOP base is that they deeply need to feel somehow close to the ruling elites. They get high on the thought of even proximity to power, and so they'll sell their principles in exchange for that every time. It isn't principle to conservative causes that animates them, but rather a childish need to feel close to celebrity. You REALLY see that in the Democrats, who worship star power, but what can one say of the GOP's support of Ah-nold, who is a Democrat in all but name, is a product of Hollywood, supports abortion on demand, and is even married to a Kennedy? (I love that last one - I guess Uncle Ted personally advised on Ah-hold's campaign. How many parties are there?) It's the cheap pull of glitz and celebrity and image that gets the chumps every time.

It's really the same phenomenon of people letting their kids go to Michael Jackson "pajama parties" even though they know he's a freak - or who now demonstrate on his behalf. They need to feel close to celebrity and power, and they'll literally betray their own children to get the feeling (not the real thing, of course). The GOP faithful are like that.

The elites who control "both" parties understand the sick need of the GOP base to feel loved and appreciated by the Leader, and they can predict with near mathematical certainty how many they can three-card-monty into supporting their core platform via clever packaging and marketing of "image" issues.

Hey, I'm a corporate shirt. Been one for a good part of my life. I've spent years of my life sitting in management meetings listening to really highly paid, very smart and very ruthless people talk about identifying our psychological "need states" (it's always sex, power, presitge, security that they play to) and how to identify and exploit "market segments" based on that information.

Keep in mind that these people trained at top universities and studied the works of great minds who spent their careers dissecting human emotions and vulnerabilities over decades and decades on behalf of the corporate elites who fund the universities.

This is all really cynical stuff, folks. Believe me, I know. I remember one meeting on how best to position a candy product to take advantage of compulsive overeaters while not alienating the "youth" and "occasional indulgence" market segments. You wouldn't believe how callous it all is, talking about people with real problems and how the company can make money by exploiting their sick needs, or how they can get kids to pester their parents to buy them tons of sugar that their little bodies surely don't need.

And it works very well. If read this and haven't figured it out yet, KILL YOUR TELEVISION.

Now, the leadership of the big parties (actually, the "big party") not only know all of this, they're largely the same folks who desiged the ad campaigs that peddle smut to your children. Note the revolving door between the corporate world and top politics. Is it an accident that Robert McNamara, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and so on and so forth were corporate bigshots before they became political bigshots? I think not.

These same folks spend big money on these same Fifth Avenue advertising firms who analyze the need states of the party faithful, divide them up into market segments, package and market to them, with an eye of course on how far they can play one segment without alientating others beyond an acceptable point given the goals of the moment.

The GOP faithful are the most malleable of all the chumps, it seems to me. These folks elected Bush Sr. who stabbed them in the back on taxes and equivocated on abortion, and then they elected Bush Jr. who ran up ruinous budget deficits, killed the First Amendment, signed into law an enormous expansion of Great Society, refuses to enforce our borders after we were attacked by illegal aliens, and so on and so forth. Bush Jr. is now I think getting set to equivocate on sodomite marriage (the very thought makes me want to hurl). But the elites all understand beforehand that they can push it that far, and still keep their allegience, because they give them just enough of the illusion of influence that they keep coming back for more.

Anyway, since I'm just sitting around today I'll tell you another story from corporate land. I was at another dreary corporate meeting about 10 years ago, and an Advertising expert was going on and on about the big Ad campaign for the coming year. There was the usual parade of television commercials targeting this or that group, and playing on their basic needs in selling the products. I remember he got to the part about planting stories in the press through "friendly" journalists, and he said something like "we find that planting advertising as news stories is the most cost effective form of advertising, because - get this - most people believe that what they read in the press is objective journalism!" And all the corporate jackals around the table just laughed and laughed, including me. Man, we just couldn't get over that one. Such easy marks. Such nice cows just waiting to be milked. Nicens little moo-cow.

And it's TRUE. Most people really don't know that the major media is one large corporate advertisement. News is advertising, advertising is news. "The media are the story" is the slogan.

Get it?

Again, if you're only getting this now I gently suggest that you immediately murder your television. Cut your cable connection. Don't let your kids watch that crap.

I think that this is really the crux of it. Most people are well intentioned little bundles of need who just want to be cuddled and cared for and appreciated by those with the concomitants of power and noteriety, and they'll sell their souls (and those of their children) to anybody who can scratch their itch.

Most of the GOP base are just working stiffs who like their NFL team, watch a lot of television designed for sixth graders, and drink a lot of beer. Most have never left the confines of their small towns, never travelled much, speak only English (and that often poorly), have read little other than newpapers, and get their opinions in the can from talk radio. I mean, for these folks Rush Limbaugh is a great mind! Sheesh!

They're mostly good folks, but they're easy marks for the predatory animals that are our revolving-door politcal/corporate power elites just love to take for all their worth. Men like Cheney and Rumsfeld. Those guys scare the bejeesus out of me.

But what can one say to the a group who take the Left Behind series seriously - seeing it as a reliable blueprint to American Mideast policy?!

I mean, WHAT THE F### CAN YOU SAY TO THAT?!

It's so patently delusional, and dangerously so, that - well, 'nuff said.

You know, I think that the big problem is that humans have too much of a spread on the IQ bell curve. There aren't so many really smart people, but there are lots of really not-so-brights, and this disparity just BEGS the oppression of the dumb by the smart. It just leans out for the smart to form their own alliances to milk the nice, dumb moo cows.

One last rhetorical question: do most of you here understand that the corporate elites on both coasts sneer at the inhabitants of the rest of America? They call where you live "fly-over country" because they never go there they only fly over it on their way between New York and LA. Do you understand that they consider you animals to be herded and kept in their place?

There's a book called the "Bell Curve" that approaches this question (and if you've heard of it, I can tell you that the issue of race is just a small part of it), and foresees a future of very wealthy intellectual elites safely ensconsed in their walled suburban developments ruling over masses of the not-so-bright. This is a serious book written by serious scholars, and I can't recommend it too hightly. It also ponders the question of how these bright elites who will tend to have brighter children might try to form an hereditary elite of the smart. Although not mentioned, it hints at exclusive use of genetic tools to ensure that only their children are smart, and all the rest are dumb. There's an interesting Sci-Fi film called "Gattaca" that explores those notions. I think that we may be seeing the beginnings of that now. I also suspect that on some subconscious level this sneering contempt that our elites have for those of us from "fly-over country" drives their desire to dilute our numbers through massive immigration (if not legal, then they'll settle on just ignoring the law - hey, they rule!), abortion on demand, medical research on human embryos, and so on. I admit that I'm specualting there, but think about it. Doesn't that ring true with you? It does with me.

I didn't think so.

Okay, go turn on the tube before you miss the next NFL play off game? Don't forget to take your Soma (I mean, drink your Budweiser. Tastes great! Less filling!)

And don't forget to vote for whomever Rush tells you next November (if he's sober enough to talk!)

Anyway, end of rant!!

"There is this joke about a wealthy man who flirted with a woman. He said, 'If I pay you $1 million dollars, will you sleep with me?' She replied, 'Well, maybe..." He then said, 'Will you sleep with me for $1?' The woman became enraged and said, 'What do you think I am?' The man replied, 'We have already established what you are, now we are just haggling over the price!'"

This is not a(n) old joke, it is a true story. The "wealthy man" was George Bernard Shaw, and the currency was British pounds. The 'joke' was Shaw's and the object of the joke was his target:

=================================================

George Bernard Shaw was reported to have asked a socialite. “Would you sleep with me for a million pounds?” he asked her. “Certainly,” she replied with a smile. “Would you sleep with me for ten pounds?” Shaw then asked. “Certainly not!” she replied indignantly. “What do you think I am?” “We’ve already established that,” Shaw said. “Now we’re just haggling over price.”

Congress has the power to remove this topic (campaign reform) from the authority of the Court. Indeed, Congress (imagine for a moment it has cojones) can remove any topic from the purview of the Court...with certain very specific exceptions. Interesting, no? Don't believe, me? Read this with my emphasis:

U.S. Constitution, Article III, section 2:

"In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make."

I should have added, 'using roll call votes as the primary thrust of the paper'. People love roll call votes. Politicians hate roll call votes.

Liberals dispise roll call votes.

A paper, tabloid size, that is 12 pages long with tow colors, runs about 500. per five thousand printed.

Get a good illustrator to work with the writers and you have a paper that will be read by about 3.5 to 5 per issue printed.

If you can't raise $1,500 a month or issue in advertiseing revenue, you should be a democrat at DU not a conservative at FR.

The line has been crossed. The law of unintended consequences will commence.

Many writings I read now are similar in sentiment to what people wrote between 1750-1775.

We are about to meet that old Chinese saw: "May you live in interesting times."