Agencies Conspiring Against First Amendment

In a totalitarian display of blatant disregard for a free press, the Democratic members of the Federal Election Commission voted secretly to punish right-leaning Fox News for its sponsorship of a Republican presidential debate.

Using an obscure and rarely employed law, those Democrats charged that Fox News’ debate sponsorship constituted an illegal corporate contribution.

Liberal attempts to use government regulatory authority in order to silence conservative voices in the media are nothing new

The measure was blocked by the three Republican commissioners of the FEC — one of whom, Leo E. Goodman, revealed the secret vote on Wednesday.

“The government should not punish any newsroom’s editorial decision on how best to provide the public information about candidates for office,” Goodman said. “All press organizations should be concerned when the government asserts regulatory authority to punish and censor news coverage.”

Unfortunately, liberal attempts to use government regulatory authority in order to silence conservative voices in the media are nothing new. Indeed, the only reason conservative news organizations and talk radio shows exist is because the Federal Communications Commission’s “Fairness Doctrine” was killed by the Reagan administration in 1987.

In theory, the “Fairness Doctrine” required broadcasters to air contrasting views regarding controversial issues. In practice, however, the rule was anything but fair — it was used to prevent conservatives from voicing their opinions via public media.

Now it seems that having witnessed Obama’s radical EPA rewrite its own rules — both the Clean Power Act and the Clean Air Act — purely in order to expand its own authority, liberals are once again moving to use regulatory power to push a political agenda.

But the brazen attempt of the Democratic members on the FEC to punish Fox News merely for hosting a political debate is just one facet of this renewed effort to silence conservatives in the public sphere.

The IRS is still trying to recover from the scandal which ensued after it was revealed that agents were making politically motivated decisions regarding certain political organizations’ nonprofit status. Conservatives organizations were routinely denied the status.

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The FCC’s so-called “net neutrality” rule also pose a direct threat to conservative media. Though ostensibly designed to regulate internet speed and access and prevent internet companies from charging extra for better, faster internet, by classifying internet providers as utilities the law provides the legal groundwork to regulate internet content itself.

“I could easily see this migrating over to the direction of content,” Republican FCC Commisioner Ajit Pai said last year. “What you’re seeing now is an impulse not just to regulate the roads over which traffic goes, but the traffic itself,” Pai warned.

“It is conceivable to me to see the government saying, ‘We think the Drudge Report is having a disproportionate effect on our political discourse. He doesn’t have to file anything with the FEC. The FCC doesn’t have the ability to regulate anything he says, and we want to start tamping down on websites like that.'”