(Doesn’t the First Amendment give you the right to call your elected officials morons? – promoted by Colorado Pols)
This is almost too stupid to be believed. Sarah Palin is actually claiming that the press – by criticizing her negative campaigning – is violating her First Amendment rights. Source and more after the jump.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/polit…
ABC News reports that in an interview with a conservative radio station, Palin criticized the media for chilling her First Amendment rights:
Palin told WMAL-AM her criticism of Obama’s associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate’s free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.
“If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations,” Palin told host Chris Plante, “then I don’t know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media.”
There’s much more on Palin’s latest gaffe here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…
It’s really quite stunningly ignorant for a candidate for the second-highest office of the land to think that politicians have First Amendment rights to be protected against criticism by media – “mainstream” or otherwise.
Why, it’s almost like thinking that the Vice President is “in charge of” the Senate.
I would really love to see any of the pro-Palin commenters on this blog defend this latest idiotic comment by Gov. Palin.
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I was going to do a diary on the fact the Repubs are coming out in droves saying Palin is not qualified to be VP – three days before the election.
Was winning the election at the expense of the safety and well being of America really worth it?
We all knew that Palin was not the right call from the very beginning, but it is three days before the end of an election that all Repubs know they are going lose and lose big, and now the pundits and politicians are coming out in droves to say Palin was not ready for the big league. Why didn’t they say this 9 weeks ago?
This makes me really mad. Are we so wrapped up in being Democrats and Republicans that we would sacrifice our very nation and our way of life just for a political party to win?
My Dad would say, “This is cutting off your nose to spite your face.”
I just don’t get it. My country is more important to me than my party.
>>Warning! Off topic post about food!!<<
I was in Denver at the beginning of the week and convinced a couple of friends to have dinner with me at 8 Rivers. It was the first time (in Denver) I picked the restaurant for this group.
8 Rivers made me look real good!
We’ll be back!
I hope she’s the one the hard right rallies ’round for the next four years. That will ensure that these couple of “bad years being Republican” becomes a bad decade.
Of course, also in fairness, most of us aren’t asking to, you know, be in charge of the country.
Sarah Palin is a fucking moron.
which is also in the first amendment are equally odd.
Evangelical Christians have the freedom to worship as they choose.
All others should emigrate and leave the USA to “real” Americans.
about 23% of the population. Since not every one of them is white and they don’t ALL live in small towns that would make small town white evangelicals an even smaller minority. So what makes them the real Americans any more than other minorities, such as blacks or Hispanics, living in large metro areas or Italian Catholic firefighters living in New York City? Just wondering.
Doesn’t have an impact on the media. Well, not directly anyway. The media cannot violate the first Amendment. The Amendment is a restriction on governmental action, not media action.
We do see the public misunderstanding of this on the left during the Dixie Chicks incident. What Clear Channel and the like did in using collusion in essence to blacklist a group was vile and perhaps ought to be restricted by law, as they are a private entity, it was not a violation of the First Amendment.
Yes, I know this lecture was not for anyone here, but it is what comes naturally to me.
The Clear Channel thing might possibly have been open for a collusion in restraint of trade suit or you could hit them with anti-trust action but it doesn’t violate the first amendment. BTW, outside of the field of labor law, I generally find your posts to be on point and well-argued.
I was listening to Jay Marvin’s radio show one morning, and he had someone from the ACLU on talking about schools restricting what teachers can say about the election. A caller said her friend teaches in a Catholic school, which prohibits teachers from having poltical bumper stickers on their cars if they park in the school lot.
Jay Marvin and the ACLU person agreed that such a restriction violated the first amendment. I wasn’t surprised at Marvin, who seems to have only the most tenuous grasp of most issues. However, I was surprised and very depressed that an ACLU rep didn’t know that the first amendment doesn’t prevent a private school (and a religious one at that) from regulating the speech of its employees on its property.
A public school can regulate the speech of its employees while they are carrying out their paid duty.
Bob, I guess I’ll take your qualified praise 😉
is that both freedom of speech and the press are contained in the same clause…see below
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
and the press is free to criticize what people say. Got that Sarah?
If she thinks people are laying into her bad now…
Our beautiful soon to be Vice President Sarah Palin is the best future leader for this nation, not Senator Barak Obama. Our beautiful soon to be Vice President Sarah Palin is also would be better at leading our nation in the future after a McCain Presidency than Senator Barak Obama would be in leading our nation in the future starting in January 2009. There are great reasons our soon to be Vice President Sarah Palin would be a better future leader than Senator Barak Obama. The greatest reason for our soon to be Vice President Sarah Palin’s is ideology. Our soon to be Vice President Sarah Palin is conservative in that she is pro life, marriage, guns, low taxes, low government spending, small government, unintrosive government, traditional and judeo Christian values, Bible reading and prayer in our public schools, and military spending.She is also pro free and private enterprize. Senator Barak Obama is a liberal who is anti every thing that I have described that our soon to be Vice President Sarah Palin is pro about or for. A second reason that our soon to be Vice President Sarah Palin is superior is because of experience. As a governor she has two years of executive administrative governing experience that Senator Barak Obama does not have. A final reason that our soon to be Vice President Sarah Palin is superior is because of political accomplishments. When our soon to be Vice President Sarah Palin came to office she accomplished 3 major things which are as follows: she showed great leadership in the 3 following areas: government reform, the state budget and the economy, and wise use of natural resources. She reformed government by standing up to the big oil companies by breaking up the monopoly on power and resources. She insisted on competition and basic fairness which ended the control that the oil companies had on the state, and thereby returning control of the state back to the people. She also stood up to the special interest and lobbyist, and produced major ethics reform. She lead well in the state budget by generating a surplus which came about by vetoing a half billion dollars of wasteful spending, ending the abuses of earmark spending by congress, and by getting rid of the private jet, the chef, and the chuffer. Economically under her leadership she brought about the largest private-sector infrastructure project in North American history. She also suspended the state fuel tax, and when oil and gas prices went up dramatically, and filled up the state treasury, she sent a large share of that revenue back where it belonged – directly to the people of Alaska . On natural resources she has shown great leadership by beginning a nearly forty billion dollar natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence. When the last section of the pipeline is laid and its valves are opened, will lead America one step farther away from dependence on dangerous foreign powers that do not have our interests at heart. Senator Barak Obama has done nothing, so please vote John McCain for President and give to our beautiful soon to be Vice President Sarah Palin the opportunity that she deserves leading the nation into the future after a John McCain presidency. When our soon to be Vice President does lead the nation as President after a John McCain presidency,she will be the greatest President that we have ever had. Finally she is smarter than Senator Barak Obama
Thank You
John Warren
Wow…just wow…
These shills and trolls are soon-to-be GONE!
Come to think of it, also the day on sentence structure.
Oh, and the day on critical thinking.
John baby, Obama has more intelligence in his earwax than both hemispheres of your “pretty” VP candidate.
maybe we should give john credit for successfully jamming every single positive Palin talking-point into one paragraph.
I couldn’t do it if I tried! 🙂
n/t
There, I’m done.
Like, wow, I’m so surprised.
Guess those McCain toasters are going fast.
Do a google search on the text, you’ll find the same spam posted many other places.
There’s a reason they are called ditto heads.
for “Our beautiful soon to be Vice President.”
Way to plagiarize, johnthetroll!
I only went down the first google page, but where I could see the poster’s name it was always john warren or johntheman7. No, it looks like this guy wrote this and is so pleased with it that he’s hitting every single blog that has something to say about Sarah Palin.
Talk about needing to get a life…
It never occurred to me that one person could be that much of a zealot, but it appears that every one of those hits represents johnthetroll’s handiwork.
A troll?
Is Palin going to promise me a $3200/year check, like Alaskans get from the taxation of Big Oil, if she becomes Vice President?
I see you waited three minutes between registering and cutting and pasting.
That’s actually a lot compared to most people like you.
That’s OK. You’ll get McCain points toward that free toaster anyway.
Since you’re new here, let me point out something that might make your life as a Colorado Pol a bit easier.
We regulars appreciate paragraphs more than you’ll ever know.
I know that the wingnut manual says that you have to paste shit without paragraph breaks, but if you use actual paragraphs, it makes you look a lot less like a dumbass.
You know. Just in case you care.
1. Who’s Barak? I already voted for a guy with a similar name, sorry, but I didn’t know about this other guy.
2. How is being beautiful a qualification for leadership?
Note to DavidThi808 – Apparently you didn’t give Pam Anderson a high enough position (no inappropriate jokes, please).
I already voted for Barak Obama. If only I’d read your post first, I’m sure I would have voted for our beautiful soon to be Vice President Sarah Palin.
…just when you thought she couldn’t get any dumber. Someone refresh her drink please.
“The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very firest object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I sould not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” Thomas Jefferson to Carrington, 1787.