(Examiner) – According to an explosive special report on Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s views on the First Amendment right to free speech, in September of 2009 Kagan encouraged the Court to adhere to a new philosophy on the First Amendment that would allow the government to censor posters, pamphlets, and TV and radio content–and the Internet.
In a stunning news report issued today by CNS, the following information was disclosed:
“The Government urges us in this case to uphold a direct prohibition on political speech. It asks us to embrace a theory of the First Amendment that would allow censorship not only of television and radio broadcasts, but of pamphlets, posters, the Internet, and virtually any other medium that corporations and unions might find useful in expressing their views on matters of public concern,” wrote Roberts. “Its theory, if accepted, would empower the Government to prohibit newspapers from running editorials or opinion pieces supporting or opposing candidates for office, so long as the newspapers were owned by corporations—as the major ones are. First Amendment rights could be confined to individuals, subverting the vibrant public discourse that is at the foundation of our democracy.”
Even liberal Justice Ginsberg questioned Kagan about the policy, inquiring as to whether or not the same principle could be used to ban books:
When the court heard oral arguments in the case again on Sept. 9, 2009, Kagan personally made the case for the administration. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked Kagan if the administration stood by its position that the government could ban books.
“May I ask you one question that was highlighted in the prior argument, and that was if Congress could say no TV and radio ads, could it also say no newspaper ads, no campaign biographies?” asked Ginsburg. “Last time the answer was, yes, Congress could, but it didn’t. Is that–is that still the government’s answer?”
Kagan told Ginsburg that the administration had changed its position. It now believed that although the law itself allowed the government to ban corporations from publishing books, it believed that if the government actually tried to do so a litigant would have a good case challenging that prohibition in court.
“The government’s answer has changed, Justice Ginsburg,” said Kagan. “It is still true that BCRA [section] 203, which is the only statute involved in this case, does not apply to books or anything other than broadcast. 441b does, on its face, apply to other media. And we took what the Court–what the Court’s–the Court’s own reaction to some of those other hypotheticals very seriously. We went back, we considered the matter carefully, and the government’s view is that although 441b does cover full-length books, that there would be quite good as-applied challenge to any attempt to apply 441b in that context.”
Thus, it is clear that the nomination of Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court is intended, in part, to bolster the Obama Administration’s intention to censor the Internet, radio and TV, posters and pamphlets, and, as an extension, books, despite Kagan’s claim that books would be protected from government bans.
The very fact that this is an issue revolving around a Supreme Court nominee points to a very disturbing aspect of this Administration that has gotten lost in the whirlwind of other issues–the frontal attack on free speech.
Source: Examiner
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