Smoking Out Censors

Proactivity is the lifeblood of leadership.  Just ask South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint, who isn't willing to passively sit back and allow the Right to be bureaucratically bound and gagged in the dead of night, but is flipping on the megawatt klieg lights before the Donkstapo can complete the shredding of the First Amendment:

Senator Jim DeMint announced that he will force a vote [this] week on a bill that prevents the Federal Communications Commission from reinstating the Fairness Doctrine.

The South Carolina Republican’s bill, the Broadcaster Freedom Act, is co-sponsored by John Thune, R-SD, and twenty-seven others and will be offered as an amendment to the D.C. Voting Rights bill.

President Barack Obama is opposed to any move to bring back the Fairness Doctrine, spokesman Ben LaBolt said Wednesday.

But as Senator DeMint notes in a statement, some Democrats in Congress have indicated that they would support a reinstatement...

"I'm glad President Obama finally confirmed his opposition to the Fairness Doctrine, which attacks the right of free speech on talk radio, but many Democrats in Congress are still pushing it.

“With the support of the new administration, now is the time for Congress to take a stand against this kind of censorship. I intend to seek a vote on this amendment next week so every senator is on record: Do you support free speech or do you want to silence voices you disagree with?"

Don't kid yourself; Red Barry is just as pro-censorship as the rest of his party.  He just doesn't want himself or his junta to be seen that way, which is why they would not reimpose the FD legislatively (forcing him to take just the sort of visible public stand that makes him break out in hives), or even bureaucractically in that guise. (In other words, they'll never do it honestly and openly.) Instead, they'd use the cover of "localism" and "station ownership diversity" to phase it in by attrition.  Like the proverbial frog in the slow-boiling plot, most Americans wouldn't realize what was happening until it was too late.

On second thought, if the Dems REALLY wanted PR cover, Crazy Nancy and Dirty Harry could ram through Fairness Doctrine legislation for the express purpose of giving King Hussein a chance to make a big "bipartisan" show of vetoing it.  That would buy at least a huge, guard-letting-down sigh of relief on the Right and appear to settle the issue, after which Red Barry could quietly impose it "behind the curtain".

Senator DeMint's BFA tears down that curtain by pre-empting any such legislative cover.  Particularly by linking it to a bill that Donks almost dare not oppose, it puts them between the rock of outraging "Black America" by opposing a voting rights bill in order to expose themselves on the legislative record as avowed enemies of free political speech and making it politically exceedingly difficult to ram or sneak through any center-right muzzlings after the fact.

I would expect Dirty Harry to try and muster some sort of corrupt parliamentary chicanery to detach the BFA amendment from the voting rights bill so that the former can be buried.  Failing that, though, I can't see so public a fight over the blatant evisceration of the core of the Bill of Rights being one the Donk Politburo really wants to undertake.  Not with their communization plate so full, and their governing boat already taking on water so alarmingly.