Court Alters '08 Landscape (McCain-Feingold takes a hit.)

The Hill ^ | June 26, 2007 | Alexander Bolton

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

McCain and the rest of the Congressional crowd have zero respect for the Constitution. Or they never would have passed "campaign finance reform" in the first place.

Exactly. And Bush signed it, after I preferred Bush to McCain in the '00 primary exactly because McCain-Feingold was an abomination then, and a worse abomination now that it is being enforced - enforced even by Scalia and Thomas - on the Supreme Court.

The fundamental fallacy of "Campaign Finance Reform" is the conceit, promoted by Big Journalism and ratified by Big Incumbency, that journalism is "objective."

Journalism claims that it objectively follows its own rules as to what is and what is not "news." But (even were that so), that begs the question as to whether those rules are in the public interest. It is easy to see that those rules - "If it bleeds, it leads," "'Man Bites Dog,' not 'Dog Bites Man,'" and "There's nothing more worthless than yesterday's newspaper," (a.k.a., "Always make your deadline," a.k.a. "The show must go on," are designed to interest the public. But it is far from obvious that the rules of commercially successful journalism promote the public interest.

The public interest - insofar as the government can promote it - is defined by the preamble to the Constitution and does not be reiterated daily in the newspaper. It is far more apt to state that what interests the public is most often what is not in the public interest - but that journalism flatters the public, and itself, by suggesting that journalism interests the public in weighty matters rather than in titillating entertainments.

The reality is that in order to reliably protect the expression of profound analysis and of well-founded fact, the First Amendment was crafted in such a way as to also protect expression which is arrogant, superficial, and/or ill-founded. In McCain-Feingold, Big Journalism and Big Incumbency turned logic on its head and implanted in law the conceit that First Amendment protection of journalism's right to be wrong at the top of its voice implies that journalism is always right.

And the reality is that since

Half the truth is often a great lie - Benjamin Franklin

even proof that journalism never misstates facts (yeah, right) would not be sufficient to prove that journalism expresses the public interest. Such proof would be necessary (and impossible), of course - but not sufficient.

Why Broadcast Journalism is
Unnecessary and Illegitimate

[E.G.C.]

BTTT

[Milhous]

In McCain-Feingold, Big Journalism and Big Incumbency turned logic on its head and implanted in law the conceit that First Amendment protection of journalism's right to be wrong at the top of its voice implies that journalism is always right.

Well said!

[T Lady]

YES!

...This thing was garbage from the get go.