As Government's Assaults On Constitution Continue---Where Is The Outrage?

Correct answers to all these FCC media survey questions: "Fuck You." Tweet by David Burge

In my post yesterday, I asked the question: Is America In Peril With The Scope Of This Government's Overreach? I proceeded to list the number of incidents where our government overstepped its bounds regarding the First Amendment including the most recent news about the FCC's intent to monitor the nation's newsrooms as well as newspapers.

I'm now inclined to ask another question. Where is the outrage? After this news broke, it was largely neglected by most of the networks (excluding Fox News and several news associations).  In other words, our own news networks ignored threats to the freedom of the press---a guarantee entrenched in the First Amendment of the Constitution. To me, as well as many others, this is further proof that "real" journalism is dead. They don't even bother to defend themselves against government assault on their Constitutional rights.

Their behavior is even more disturbing when one considers the intent of what the government wants to do. For example, the FCC proposed that monitors set up shop in our nation's newsrooms to "determine whether journalist are producing articles, television reports, internet content and commentary that meets the public's 'critical information needs,'" reported Byron York today. York points out that these "needs" will be defined by the {Obama} administration.

So what survey questions does the FCC intend to ask of these news outlets? The following are some examples of those questions: 

• What is the news philosophy of the station?
• Who decides which stories are covered?
• How much influence do you have in deciding which news to cover?
• How much does community input influence news coverage decisions? (this question leads me to believe Pres. Obama and his enablers were involved in creating this survey. Hint: Community Organizers).
• How do you define critical information that the community needs?
• How many reporters and editors do you employ?
• Do you employ news people?

Get the message? These are all exceedingly intrusive questions into private news enterprises that don't get government funding with the exception of the PBS networks (I'm sure they are awaiting these questions with open arms).

But, after having read most of these questions, I have a suggestion for the FCC surveyors: just turn on your damn TV set. It will have the answers to most questions staring you in the face. In addition, the FCC would save taxpayers millions of dollars by simply watching the news on TV.

Is America In Peril With The Scope Of This Government's Overreach?

President Obama Warns Ukraine To Treat Dissenters Like He Does. But Ukraine Officials Do Not Have The IRS At Their Disposal...Tweet by Jay Carnie

• As any student of history knows (as its victims know well), governments that control health care, abridge privacy and restrain the press have all been oppressive and tyrannical. Those of you who have been regular readers of mine know I'm all too familiar with Communist regimes. They presented an illusion of offering many free things like health care, but those came with a price---the abridgment of the freedom and liberty. By the way, their free health care sucked.
• So it really came as no surprise to me with the reports yesterday that our own government wants to place "monitors" in our nation's newsrooms. Actually, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) actually proposed this last May. Their purpose was to determine the process by which stories are selected. This would also include examining "perceived station bias" and "perceived responsiveness to undeserved populations." In fact, it's been reported the FCC has already selected eight categories of "critical information" that the news stations should be carrying.
• Now for those who might be charging me and others with brandishing hysteria, I have two government organizations for you to consider: IRS and NSA.
• Allow me to also remind you of several incidents in the past. In May of last year, the feds targeted James Rosen of Fox News. His emails and phone messages were also compromised.  Even the far-Left Huffington Post wrote at the time: "The DOJ Targeting Of Fox News Reporter James Rosen Risks Criminalizing Journalism." The Department of Justice also targeted the Associated Press.
• Several months earlier, respected reporter of Watergate fame, Bob Woodward, reported he was on the receiving end of WH intimidation when he referred to the sequester as "madness." About the same time, Bill Plante of CBS News, said, "They {the Obama administration} are undercutting the First Amendment."
• But perhaps the hardest hitting attack by the media of the administration's harassment of the press came from non other than USA TODAY (which often surprises even me): "Another day, another excessive use of government power by the Obama administration."
• So the question remains: Is America in peril with the scope of this government's overreach? Once again, I'm not offering up hysterical visions of past tyrannical regimes. However, that question should be asked in the face of the attacks we've seen by our own government on its citizens whether coming from the IRS, the DOJ or the FCC.
• When referring to Obamacare, I think Michelle Malkin said it best last week: "It's a criminal enterprise rooted in ideological fraud." If that's all it is, we're lucky.

John F. Kerry, The Fake, Phony + Fraud Jumps On Al Gore's Fake, Phony And Fraud Climate Change Train

Iron Dumped In Ocean Might Slow Global Warming...The Onion

• Anyone who has read my posts over the years knows I pegged Al Gore as a fake, phony and fraud years ago. 
• But for a few moments, I'll defer to Andrea Peyser of the NY Post. She's written some remarkable pieces on Al Gore and global warming (oh, excuse me, I mean climate change---italics are my words). In 2011, she wrote the following: "Can it be? Has the guru of global warming, the Bozo of ozone and the pooh-pah of the probably-not-so-endangered polar bear, gone completely off his bleeping rocker? I'm talking about Al Gore...who, after leaving the White House, reinvented himself as a minor deity (as everyone knows, Obama was considered the major deity at the time)---a Gulfstream-riding, energy-slurping champion of Planet Earth...Gore has long lived by the hypocrite's mantra, 'Do what I demand, not what I do,' after his Tennessee mansion was revealed to drink up to 20 times the energy of the average house, Gore added solar panels."
• And as recently as yesterday, Peyser wrote this about Al Gore, "I envy Al Gore. I'm jealous of all deluded salesmen of the junk science politically correct term 'climate change' who see a near future in which our entire planet turns into sunny Florida. No, wait---during the polar vortex that hit this country like a cold slap in the face last month, all 50 states recorded temperatures below freezing. That includes Florida, Hawaii too."

• For a moment, allow me to put my own feelings on the table. Unlike Al Gore and others, I don't believe it's "settled science." Instead, I believe it should continue to be debated. First of all, the earth's climate changes all the time. Most geologists agree the earth has gone through at least 5 ice ages including some mini-ice ages. Logic dictates the earth warms after an ice age. In fact, in the mid-1970's, geologists and scientists warned of another impending ice age (cover of TIME above).
• Yet, climate scientists had to admit last year that the Earth's surface temps stopped rising in 1997.
• In addition to being unsettled science, we've also learned that the global warming alarmists have a history of fraud. In 2009, one of the leading climate research centers in the world---Britain's University of East Anglia---was found to falsify and withhold information on global warming to suppress contrary findings. In other words, this group of global warming researchers corrupted climate science to hide the truth. Or, as Forbes pointed out so well in 2011, there are many who gain from advocating a flawed science. Namely, these include agenda driven federal regulatory agencies, environmental lobby groups, special interest hedge-fund managers and the U.N.

• So all of this brings me to that other fake, phony (and back-stabbing) fraud, John F. Kerry. This week Kerry is to make a clarion call for more action on climate change. He'll do it at the UN. This nitwit likened climate change to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. 
• But the insanity does not end there. Last week, Pres. Obama said he would ask Congress (wow! "ask" Congress---that's a first) to set up a $1B "Climate Change Resilience Fund." Say what? A Resilience fund?
• I'm sure the 92 million Americans who have dropped out of the workforce and the record number now in poverty appreciate that our government will waste another $1B on climate change---as they almost freeze to death this winter because they are unable to pay their energy bills.

On This President's Day---It Would Be Wise For Republicans To Heed Ronald Reagan's Advice

"Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives." Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan in his own words: