Yesterday we discussed the Obama legal attack on the American Issues Project's recent Obama ad. To summarize, Barack wants the AIP criminally prosecuted for airing an ad critical of him and his lifetime relationship with unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayres.
As if on schedule, the near complete hypocrisy that emanates from the liberal commitment to only power itself was again demonstrated right here on the pages of our own Des Moines Register just last Sunday. It appears that MoveOn.org ran a print ad that explicitly advocated Obama’s election.
We cannot find any internet reference to the Obama campaign’s pursuit of MoveOn’s criminal prosecution. Strange, almost sounds like another Democrat using the instruments of government to silence political opposition. That is what we typically call "censorship".
32 comments:
Wasn’t there a similar attempt during the Adams Administration? I thought the Alien and Sedition Act was found unconstitutional. Funny how when this is done to a Republican they treat it as a political issue, or instance the ad where George W was basically accused of allowing a black man to be dragged to death, but when an apparently truthful ad is put out against a Democrat they want to go to court. Are you kidding me?
Larry Disney
To be fair Ted, McCain/Feingold prosecutes those who violate its anti-speech tenets and McCain has stated that he would rather have open government than the First Amendment.
All the reasons we hated McCain in the primaries are still valid.
why isn't moveon.org prosecuted?
they advocate for candidates, they are openly campaigning for barack america in all of the 57 states in which barack is running for pres.
why isn't movon.org being criminally prosecuted?
MoveOn has a PAC. It can legally advocate the election of a candidate.
Ask any lawyer.
Spotlight
The American Issues Project released a statement responding to the letter.
"Having failed in its attempts to get our legal, factual and fully-supported ad off the air, Barack Obama's campaign now wants to put our donors in prison for exercising their right to free speech," said Ed Martin, the group's president.
"These over-the-top bullying tactics are reminiscent of the kind of censorship one would see in a Stalinist dictatorship, with the only difference being that those guys generally had to wait until they were in power to throw people who disagreed with them into jail."
oh - tricky legal paperwork. ok, that makes it soooooo much different.
spotlight - so you are completely ok with Captain America's relationship with Captain "I hate amerika" Willian Ayers? The guy who felt he didn't blow up enough government buildings even AFTER 9-11?
This guy isn't benign. This isn't just college hijinks. He's serious. He's teaching our kids as a professor in a college.
Why are you ok with that?
When you read the complaint by Oby, you find they don't have any issue with the content of the ad, or claim that the content is false, just the paperwork that set up the organization itself.
boo hoo bary.
is it possible that bary could be even whinier than jimmy carter?
What a bunch of whiny babies.
Boo Hoo Bary can't handle the truth being told about him. Hillary Clinton said so.
Plank #6 of the Communist Manifesto:
Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
Sporer & co.,
What is all this whining and crying about? How embarrassing and weak. I thought you were all about your superior message and masculine strength. A lawyer complaining about people applying & debating the law? This is what both sides do all the time. Be a man and get over it. Plus, how can you not know about MoveOn and other group's ability to advocate for candidates if they have the correct IRS designation? How embarrassing not to know such basic issues.
Don't know much about history, Don't know much about Wm Ayers, professor of Education at a prestigious university in Chicago.
But I know Obama is not a terrorist. You are trying to practice guilt by association. Have you ever associated with anyone who was not quite like you?
Spotlight
You are known by the company you keep. If you chose to associate with radical preachers, domestic terrorists, crooks and Chicago machine politicians should that mean nothing? If your wife says America is a mean place and that she is proud of it for the first time, doesn't that say anything about you? Gimme a break!
Boo Hoo Bary is using as his reason to elect that he has good "judgement". Do you consider it good judgement to associate with unrepentent murdering bombers just because they got a good job at what you consider to be a prestigious univerisity?
This goes to his "judgement" claim.
How do you feel about Ward Churchill, that little Hugo Chavez, from the University of Colorado?
How do you feel about that creepy sex pervert who just killed himself at the U of I?
How about that crazy geography professor from DMACC who belies
I often associate myself with people that are different than me - democrat, liberal, short, immigrant, dumber, smarter etc.
I don't hang with murderers, terrorists, mad bombers or sex perverts though. I have better judgment.
You, though, have demonstrated that your opinion is not to be considered. It's just junk mail. You have chosen to be aggressively ignorant on the subject.
See how easy it is to be a democrat? You just have to be aggressively ignorant and then your brain can't be troubled by the conflict between the truth and the lie.
I guess that's what they mean by ignorance is bliss.
If you lie down with dogs has it right!
"See how easy it is to be a democrat? You just have to be aggressively ignorant and then your brain can't be troubled by the conflict between the truth and the lie. I guess that's what they mean by ignorance is bliss."
I enjoyed reading that one so much I just had to repost part of it.
rf - we've been wondering the same thing about all this whining. So you are also disgusted by Boo Hoo Bary and his constant whining about today's so and so not being nice to him.
It truly is embarrassing to have the President of the United States not being strong in the face of adversity.
Boo Hoo Bary will ultimately lose because he does not project strength. The United States IS strength and our leaders must reflect that.
There is no crying in politics.
And..I find it very very very telling that Obama isn't refuting the content of the ad, just the paperwork.
My guess is that the paperwork is just fine.
Maybe Boo Hoo would like to talk about his "judgement" again rather than his terrorist, amerika hating buddies and wife.
I always thought B. H. Obama stood for Barack Hussein Obama, not Boo Hoo Obama.
DMACC has a professor of geography that teaches that 9-11 was in inside job.
The register has intervied him several times. He says he teaches it in his geography class too.
No one at DMACC cares. He's still employed and still trying to convince our children that the Govt of the United States arranged for islamic terrorists from Saudi Arabia to fly into the world trade center and murder 3000 innocent people.
DMACC feels they are a prestigious college.
I guess it depends on the definition of "prestigious", doesn't it, Spotlight?
You know nothing of obama, you know nothing of william ayers, you know nothing about history, yet you somehow you know that whatever the name of that univerisity is in Chicago it is "prestigious".
Go figure.
Did you know that Barack Obama is Black?
I just noticed that.
Obama must not believe in FDR's famous Four Freedoms.
Freedom of speech and expression
Freedom of religion
Freedom from want
Freedom from fear
If you use the definition of whining you folks are applying here, your former POW has become the greatest whiner of them all. Any sort of reference to his actual age, a fact, is the greatest insult ever. The fact that the other guy can give a great speech that scores of people want to hear makes you resent him and whine like a baby. You are possibly the greatest political media darling of all time, and you are complaining constantly how the media supposedly favors the other guy - a particularly hard charge to believe the last 4-5 months.
If you so resent a whiner of this kind, you obviously cannot ever vote for McCain. Or maybe you will just accept the fact that these are the kinds of issues and charges today's campaign spit out constantly. Both sides do it, so why don't you just get over it.
rf: I like you, and although an R, I agree with some of your thoughts. On this one, though, you are off. McCain isn't perfect, no one is, but he has a pretty good sense of humor about his age, even joking about it with Leno on the Tonight Show. I doubt if Obama will be yukking up his friendship with an admitted bomber ( and again let it be noted that Bill Ayers is still proud of his past and not sorry for what he did)
btw, loved Hillary's speech last night.
Anon,
I think you are confusing what the candidates themselves are saying and what the campaigns, surrogates, etc. are saying and doing. You have to use the same measure for both candidates on this. I believe most of the "whining" you attribute to Obama is actually based on his campaign's actions or people around him. If you do that for Obama, you have to do the same for McCain. And by that measure, the whining is just as bad, if not worse, from the McCain people. And for sure, John himself has whined about the media stuff quite a bit. That really is pretty funny coming from him.
rf, Brother, I'm not whining about censorship, I'm criticising and condemning it.
The whiners are the Eddie Haskell's that run to the government to solve every problem they confront.
AIP is totally legal and will, of course, be vindicated. I object to Obama and his supporter's refusal to defend the charges in the ad (because he can't) and to demand that the criminal law intimidate his critics.
Sporer,
Yes, you are whining. Like I said, both sides do this stuff all the time, lawsuits and threats of lawsuits flying back and forth. Of all the people, you should know that.
sounds like we agree that whining is not a good characteristic for leaders. leaders don't whine.
leaders lead by providing light to dark, clarity to confusion, being brave in the face of danger, etc.
They don't play victim and act helpless.
The entire democrat platform and the message from democrat leaders is to convince voters they are victims and helpless, and thus need the government to "fix" things for them so they don't have to do it themselves.
Why would any voter be attracted to that?
Is that the legacy of Martin Luther King?
Nope - I don't think so. The GREAT great great Martin Luther King taught self-sufficiency rather than dependency. He taught people to rise up, not wallow in their victimhood.
He is rolling over in his grave at what has happened to his dream.
Obama is not the realization of his dream. Obama is advocating voters to waller in their victimhood rather than to rise and be free from dependency.
Martin Luther King was a leader. He didn't whine.
I'm glad I belong to the self-sufficiency party rather than the dependency party.
Anon,
I think you are confusing Obama with the Jackson/Sharpton brand of leadership. I know we are getting close to the election, but let’s try to keep it somewhat real.
On that front, even you R’s must give all the D speakers at the convention real credit for fully acknowledging McCain’s patriotism and service to this country. Looking back to some notable elections, R’s don’t have a good track record of showing similar respect for D’s.
Also, pointing out real facts about the last 8 years and where we are today is not whining. It’s being honest. Look at all the polls, and pretty much everyone except the $5-million plus income bracket thinks we are on the wrong track.
For the record, I agree with Anon on the counterproductiveness of the Jackson/Sharpton victimhood mentality. I will also admit that my party does have the tendency to go for the victimhood thing in other areas as well. I’m not a big fan of that. However, in my eyes the much greater mistake is denying reality about increasing income inequality (for all people, no matter what color) and the many other unpleasant realities regarding the results of the W/R agenda. This leads to the core reason I am a D. I just don’t think the rich and the powerful need a lot of defending in this world. They are doing just fine. It is the regular folks who need defending in this world. In my eyes, the R party has become just a tool of the rich and powerful, and the pushy religious fanatics. The latter being the other reason I could never be a part of today’s R party.
RF:
You are right on! Doubtful that the mindless conservatives here will be convinced however.
Sporie should know, more than most, that getting defensive and bogged down in refuting hyperbole leads to nothing other than a constant defensive stance since your opponents will keep coming with one innuendo after another. If the innuendos fail they'll shift to flat out lies.
Sporie:
In case you have forgotten, we have laws in this country and most of our laws are not all that clear cut, so it makes sense, rather than wasting time explaining an obscure situation, to invoke the legal process and let it run its course. From a political standpoint, the action is a refutation.
Are you concerned that with Obama in the White House bombing the Capital will become the activity du jour?
Not to in any way support or minimize the Ayers actions, but being a history buff you should recall that many of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson perhaps the most prominent, suggested that when the citizenry become extremely dissatisified with government they should start a revolution.
The Boston Tea Party was an act of terrorism, though mild by 20th century standards.
RF is correct; you are whining.
Im all for freedom of speech but that doesnt mean that you can just lie about someone.
I am glad that Barack stood up to these Militant-ultra-right-wingers.
It is truly sad when you are ashamed of your own party, I am a Republican, but these guys remind me more of Westboro Baptist than the party that Regan Build.
Tone down the hate and lets talk about some issues
There's a problem with that last statement because Obama refuses to honor his pre-nomination position to debate John McCain anywhere anytime. I guess he meant to say he would debate John McCain as long as he had a teleprompter and his speech writer had questions in advance. Oh, and Obama wants to sue anyone talking about his past so discussing the issues is off the table as well.
3:00 - the fact is they aren't lying. Neither were the swiftboaters. And, finally, Bush really did win Florida.
Stop with the phoney republican line. It doesn't work for the phoney soldiers either.
AIP is telling the truth about Obama.
The truth hurts.
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