Free speech is important in our democracy yet there are boundaries to everything. We have already adopted the rule (law?) that you may no longer falsely yell fire in a crowded theater. I know little of laws that aren't beaten into us daily, like not going through a red light, not cheating on income taxes, not breaking and entering, stealing and all those obvious to us through daily living. However, it is less clear to me what we do with radical media who are inciting revolution, death to Obama, overthrow of the government they believe is fearful to their beliefs, even plan revolution.
Max Blumenthal wrote for the Daily Beast on 5/1/09 "Armed Revolt in the Obama Era? Right-Wing Gun Nuts Share Their Paranoid Worldview. Read his highlighted report and you will see immediately the 'slippery slope' thinking that is being fostered by a few hateful media gurus making money off spreading lies and fear.
Is it not time that the FCC, or some agency which can legally monitor these public broadcasts, do something about the actual lies being spread? MoveOn.org is calling for impeachment of Judge Bybee. His crime is interpreting too freely the use of torture. One has to ask the question 'where does misinterpretation of laws and outright lying begin and end?'.
Sean Hannity on radio:: "On the March 18 broadcast of his radio show, Sean Hannity blamed congressional Democrats for the AIG bonuses, falsely asserting that they voted for the bonuses when they voted for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Hannity stated, "Now, if you're upset about this, you need to understand something, that there's a reason this happened. Every single Senate Democrat voted for those bonuses. Every -- almost every Democrat in the House voted for those, because they voted for the stimulus bill. And by the way, Republicans did not." In fact, as Media Matters for America has documented, the economic recovery act did not require that AIG pay bonuses. Rather, the relevant provision in the act, which was based on an amendment by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), restricted the ability of companies receiving money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to award bonuses in the future."
The American Politics Journal reports on Rush Limbaugh's 20 years of lies and hate. I see that there is a strong line to be drawn between the right to freely express an opinion and calling disciples to illegal action. At the height of the war against abortion, there was a call to kill doctors performing them. The doctors houses were picketed and families and children suffered greatly. Something is wrong with that picture. The group even killed some doctors in the name of saving lives!! It goes beyond the ability to express, verbally, an opinion when innocent people are killed.
We have heard for a long time that there are armed militia ready to revolt. Is this what we wish to develop, American citizen terrorists killing our own people?
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