Free Republic

You don’t have to believe in karma to find the irony in the fact that the Web giant Google is finding itself in the cross hairs of the same pressure groups that it funded back when it was pushing heavily for “network neutrality.” The latest cause celebre among this crowd is “search neutrality,” the idea that somehow the government needs to get into the business of Internet search engines. After spending millions funding network-neutrality advocates when it was trying to pass along its bandwidth costs to consumers and companies such as Verizon and Comcast, Google is finding itself being opposed...

FCC chairman agrees to strike Fairness Doctrine from rule books By Gautham Nagesh - 06/08/11 12:12 PM ET Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said his agency will remove the Fairness Doctrine from the rule books in response to a recent request from House Republicans. "I fully support deleting the Fairness Doctrine and related provisions from the Code of Federal Regulations, so that there can be no mistake that what has been a dead letter is truly dead," Genachowski wrote in a letter Monday to House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.). "I look forward to effectuating this change...

Despite not being enforced following a 1987 ruling, two Republican House members have sent a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski asking that the Fairness Doctrine be officially removed from the FCC's rulebook. In their letter, Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) wrote, "The media marketplace is more diverse and competitive today than it was 10 years ago when the D.C. Circuit Court struck down the commission's political-editorial and personal-attack rules. The Fairness Doctrine, political-editorial and personal-attack rules would seem like an easy place to start since the FCC has already abandoned them based on principles you...

The Obama administration is asking the Supreme Court to overturn a court ruling that greatly diminished the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) ability to police the airwaves for indecency. Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal filed a certiorari petition ahead of Thursday's deadline after previously filing for two extensions. The administration is asking the Supreme Court to overturn the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals decision that struck down the FCC's indecency policy last July. The court ruled that the FCC's policy against fleeting expletives on live television, instituted in 2004 after U2 frontman Bono used an expletive during the 2003 Golden Globes,...

INTERNET GRABBERS House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa continues to demand answers from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski over why the head of a supposedly independent federal agency visited the White House 81 times between January 2009 and November 2010. It was during this time that Genachowski and his staff were developing a regulatory scheme that would ultimately place control of the Internet in the hands of the FCC. Of special interest to Issa is a meeting held September 17, 2009, which took place four days before Genachowski made a speech at the Brookings Institute laying out the broad...

The liberal group Media Matters has quietly transformed itself in preparation for what its founder, David Brock, described in an interview as an all-out campaign of “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” aimed at the Fox News Channel. The group, launched as a more traditional media critic, has all but abandoned its monitoring of newspapers and other television networks and is narrowing its focus to Fox and a handful of conservative websites, which its leaders view as a political organizations and the “nerve center” of the conservative movement. The shift reflects the centrality of the cable channel to the contemporary conservative movement,...

House Passes Amendment to Block Funds for Net Neutrality Order

Republicans Seek to Bury Regulation of Political Speech on Airwaves Published February 12, 2011 | FoxNews.com Seeking to hammer the final nail in the coffin of the Fairness Doctrine, two Republican lawmakers who are former broadcasters have reintroduced a bill that would prevent the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from regulating political speech on the airwaves. Amid calls for the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine after the assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz, last month, Reps. Mike Pence of Indiana and Greg Walden of Oregon unveiled this week the Broadcaster Freedom Act, which would ban the FCC from forcing broadcasters...

Half of Republicans are Tea Party supporters; 5% are "opponents" PRINCETON, NJ -- About 7 in 10 national adults, including 88% of Republicans, say it is important that Republican leaders in Congress take the Tea Party movement's positions and objectives into account as they address the nation's problems. Among Republicans, 53% rate this "very important."These results are from a USA Today/Gallup poll conducted Jan. 14-16, prior to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address.Although few Democrats (6%) are supporters of the Tea Party or even have a favorable view of it (11%), more than half say it is important...

L.A.-area elementary school blocks religious content, tells student to pick song that ‘does not say Jesus so many times’ Tuesday, February 01, 2011 LOS ANGELES — Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed a lawsuit Friday against Los Angeles Unified School District officials on behalf of a 5th-grade student who was prohibited from performing interpretive movement to a song at a school talent show scheduled for Feb. 4 because of the song’s religious lyrics. Students were permitted to choose the content of their performances--some approved performances include songs discussing teenage “love,” relationship problems, dancing, and violent imagery--yet Superior Street Elementary School officials...

Some have insisted the chance for the renewal of the Fairness Doctrine is a straw man argument perpetrated by conservatives to stir emotions so that they are able to exploit it politically and that this really isn’t a threat from legislators. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t still those who want to see government intervene and regulate the airwaves in a way a Fairness Doctrine would. On MSNBC’s Monday airing of “The ED Show,” host Ed Schultz asked his guest, National Action Network President Al Sharpton, if there should be ways that the Federal Communications Commission could intervene in the...

The most common left-wing objection to the right is that it wants to control others' lives. But, both in America and elsewhere, the threat to personal liberty has emanated far more from the left. In the past generation, the left has controlled so much speech and behavior that these controls are now assumed to be a normal part of life. Through the use of public opprobrium, laws and lawsuits, Americans today are less free than at any time since the abolition of slavery (with the obvious exception of blacks under Jim Crow). Public opprobrium is known as political correctness, and...

A town in Connecticut has backpedaled away from an attempt at censorship. The incident involved a public exhibition of the Michael Moore film SiCKO. The town forced the Enfield Public Library to abandon a January screening of Moore's documentary. Enfield Mayor Scott Kaupin told the Journal Inquirer that the film is a "poor choice" and that if the library didn't reconsider it would face "repercussions" from the Enfield Town Council at budget time(…) In the days since Enfield's censorship of its library made national headlines, politicians in this community are shifting their argument... Their back-up argument is that the library...

Keith Olbermann once put me on his nightly list of the worst people in the world. To add insult to injury, I was merely a runner-up. So I suppose I should smile now that Mr. Olbermann's career as the host of "Countdown" has at last tick-tocked to 00:00. Boom! Here was an anchor whose personality is every bit as unhinged as his politics; whose on-air epithets of choice include "prostitute," "monkey," "fascistic," "fat ass" and (about conservative pundit Michelle Malkin) "bag of meat"; who has been let go from nearly every job he ever held; and whose "childish attacks" were,...

There isn't a shred of evidence that deranged Tucson massacre suspect Jared Loughner ever listened to talk radio or cared about illegal immigration. Indeed, after 300 exhaustive interviews, the feds "remain stumped" about his motives, according to Tuesday's Washington Post. But that hasn't stopped a coalition of power-grabbing politicians, progressive activists and open-borders lobbyists from plying their quack cure for the American body politic: government-sponsored speech suppression. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting rampage, Democratic leaders mused openly about reintroducing the Orwellian "Fairness Doctrine" -- a legislative sledgehammer targeting conservative viewpoints on public airwaves. New York Democratic Rep. Louise...

African-American voters are finally getting the facts about the Republican Party and beginning to turn away from their traditional pattern of voting for Democrats, Atlanta talk radio host Herman Cain tells Newsmax.TV. The former CEO said talk radio has been key to this transformation and that is why liberals are seeking to resurrect the Fairness Doctrine. “I’ve had a lot of people tell me, and they would call my show and volunteer information as to the fact they were black, they were American and they were starting to see the light,” Cain said. “You see when people have the right...

Stop The 20 Year Government Takeover: Dem Leader Clyburn Strange Conspiracy Fairness Doctrine Rationalization http://www.theblaze.com/stories/stop-the-20-year-government-takeover-dem-leader-clyburn-strange-conspiracy-fairness-doctrine-rationalization/

As a recent column in the Wall Street Journal reminds us, online freedom is jeopardized in the name of “net neutrality” (The FCC’s Threat to Internet Freedom). This is just another case of the state re-labeling things to sound benign but that are really invasions of liberty and property rights–another good example being use of the term “intellectual property” to masque the true nature of state-granted monopoly privilege rights (patent and copyright) (see my post Intellectual Properganda). It is true that some corporations probably have extra-market power to control aspects of the Internet, as the result of state interventions such...

RUSH: I want to talk about this net neutrality business. We have dealt with this on this program before. The FCC has just asserted its authority to regulate the Internet, this "net neutrality" is a bogus name just like most legislative titles. Well, most titles of legislation are bogus. "Net neutrality" does no such thing. It does not promote neutrality and lack of bias or any such thing. We noted on this program back in September of 2009: Net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem. It's just a bunch of liberals wanting to get their hands on...

Net neutrality advocates in Washington have long insisted that eventual government regulations would be simple and easy to understand. Public Knowledge has called the Net neutrality concept "ridiculously simple," and Free Press said the rules would be "clear" and easy to understand.