 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
 |
||||||||
Am I the only one wondering why the heck Janice Rogers Brown isn’t on the Supreme Court yet?
This, of course, is the former California State Supreme Court Justice, and recently confirmed D.C. Circuit Court judge, who wants to roll back the New Deal.
Jonathan Rauch sheds some light on the matter.
That Web site again is NoNewGasTax.com.
They got their initiative, I-912, on the ballot, and now the voters vote.
They’ll need more money, and every dollar donated is a thumb in the eye to those who think they should get to decide who speaks and who doesn’t.
Off of campaign finance for a moment, have you ever wanted meat without the cow?
I know I … haven’t.
So, here are a couple of the supporting documents for this Washington radio story. I guess this is the new open-source journalism. I like it, because I think readers should see this sort of primary material.
Anyway, here’s the judge’s ruling. The offensive stuff is mainly on the second page.
Now, I want it to be clear just how odious this entire prosecution was. Some people think that going after a radio station to disclose its hosts’ support for a ballot initiative is no big deal. After all, the reformers always say, it’s just disclosure. If you have nothing to hide, why hide it?
Of course, no one is hiding anything by not disclosing. They’re simply going about their business without reporting it to the government. And, in the case of supporting an anti-gas tax ballot initiative on one’s own radio show, a person might just be under the misimpression that he or she is engaged in protected political speech and has no obligation whatsoever to report, disclose or answer to anyone whatsoever.
In Washington state, however, in the jurisdiction of San Juan County Prosecutor Randall Gaylord and his friends, one would be wrong.
As noted in my article, Gaylord was alerted to No New Gas Tax’s brazen violations of campaign-finance law by a law firm on the board of a pro-gas tax group, Keep Washington Rolling. Now, that law firm, Foster Pepper & Shefelman, is said to have a financial interest in the gas tax hike being implemented. (They are, I’m told, looking to handle a bond issue for the state.) But despite these multiple conflicts of interests, Gaylord delegated his prosecutorial powers in this case to Foster Pepper & Shefelman.
That means that in the heat of a contentious campaign to get an anti-gas tax initiative on the ballot, the pro-gas tax side was granted — by the state — the power to prosecute and conduct discovery against its political opponent, No New Gas Tax.
Think about that for a minute: One political faction given — again, by the state — the power to issue subpoenas against another. It boggles the mind.
Then, look at this subpoena, delivered to Fox News affiliate KVI-AM:
Again, it boggles the mind.
An American radio station was ordered, by its political opponents, to turn over tapes of radio shows and logs of airtime spent on various subjects.
This is not an amusingly outrageous story. It is an atrocity against the First Amendment.
And two people should be losing their jobs: Randall Gaylord, for pursuing a blatantly political prosecution against a press entity, and Thurston County Superior Court Judge Chris Wickham, for being an illiterate.
To add to the story of the two Washington state talk-radio hosts who have been told that their broadcasts are “contributions” to an anti-gas tax campaign…
One aspect of the story I didn’t get into in my column (for space reasons) is that there was a parallel charge against the No New Gas Tax group. On top of challenging NNGT for not reporting the radio coverage as contributions, the San Juan County Prosecutor, Randall Gaylord, charged the group with failing to disclose enough information about its donors.
These donors were by-and-large folks who went onto a Web site and gave money through PayPal. PayPal collects names and e-mail addresses, but not physical addresses (which are required under state law).
Now, technically, NNGT was possibly in violation of state law (as stupid and possibly unconstitutional a law as it may be). But it’s clear this was a ludicrous prosecution.
“We want honesty and disclosure now, when it matters,” Gaylord said when the prosecution was announced. “It’s the little guy that will get hurt if they don’t comply.”
But these donors, as Gaylord acknowledged when I spoke to him on Monday, were primarily giving $20, $40, $50. Some were giving $200. A few $500. A very, very, very few $1,000. Doesn’t it seem just a little bit possible that the gas-tax opponents were the little guys … and that Gaylord was screwing them?
Here’s my most recent Post column, about a very disturbing case out of Washington state:
The campaign-finance-reform lobby has always claimed that it wants to regulate money, not speech.
So why are two talk-radio hosts being harassed by Washington state officials under local campaign-finance laws for their on-air support of an anti-tax ballot initiative?
And why did a judge back the government attack, ruling that on-air speech can be considered a campaign contribution — which leaves it subject to myriad rules and regulations?
Because, contrary to the reformers’ claims, money is speech, and speech is money. If you set out to regulate one, you will inevitably regulate the other.
Here’s the situation.
Follow the link for the situation.
My latest column, from Tech Central Station:
Last Thursday, the latest wave of terror washed over the Western world. It wasn’t the biggest. After New York and Madrid, it was actually the smallest. But the mere thought that 50-plus dead in London was almost a relief — that it could have been so much worse, that we expected it to be so much worse — was enough to make the heart sink.
There’s come to be an awful rhythm to life in the world after September 11, 2001. It’s a rhythm of shock, followed by grief, followed by anger, followed by nervousness, followed by recriminations, followed by complacency, followed by alarm at our complacency, followed (of course) by more complacency, followed by — inevitably — another shock.
And thus it goes. We were at peace — or so we thought. Then we were at war. And then we felt that we were at peace again, that the threat had receded with time. And then, last Thursday, we awoke to images of our closest allies blackened and bloodied by nameless, faceless, but savage enemies.
To stick with the image of waves of terror crashing over the landscape of the Western world, it’s clear that these waves will — and are intended to — cause a certain amount of erosion. We know that our enemies hope to erode our sense of safety, our sense of well-being and our support for our government.
But something else is eroding as well: A middle-ground in the War on Terror.
We can only fight harder, or retreat completely.
I’m not sure why sending news anchors out to stand in the wind and rain is supposed to make hurricane coverage interesting, but it’s been informative watching Anderson Cooper get blown by Dennis.
Blown around by Dennis. Sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.
Just saw Dark Water. Anyone who owns real estate on Roosevelt Island might want to consider joining a class-action lawsuit. Your property value just went down 10 percent.
Recent Comments