Free Speech is in the dumpster in the States ... are you concerned? You should be!

There's an incredibly eery and alarming reminder in the air today, that judicial activists are out of control ... a very, very scary reality.

It's bad enough that Canadians have no property rights, but, watch your backs, boys and girls ... someone here is going to get the idea that anything you say, might have a nice juicy price.

After the SCOTUS Kelo rulings, the very idea of personal property rights went up in smoke ... now, Americans had better zip their lips, or pay the consequesces of having an opinion ... any opinion.

MC writes:

We had a recent court ruling here in the wild Pacific Northwest that has rippled out of the region.

Judge Christopher Wickham just made his attempt to kill the First Amendment last week by ruling that Kirby Wilbur and John Carlson of KVI Radio were political contributors because of their support of the gas-tax rollback initiative on the air. Their political contribution consisted of speech.

This has rightly caused an uproar. Shark calls for the Thurston County voters to deny judge Wickham another term on the bench. Michelle Malkin calls for a radio coalition for the free speech fight.

But the Seattle Times opinion piece yesterday gets closer to the fundamental issue at hand. It is meaningful to remember that the liberal Seattle Times is no friend of conservative radio KVI. But even the MSM can recognize the constitutional threat:

See what is being done here. The judge is following a simple syllogism:

All political contributions may be regulated;
Speech is a political contribution;
Therefore, speech may be regulated.

But most insigthful is:

"Two years ago, when the federal campaign-finance law reached the U.S. Supreme Court, dissenting justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas warned that something like this would happen. We doubted it; it seemed clear to us that the law applied to ads, not editorial content. We thought Thomas was over the top when he said campaign-finance law was leading toward "outright regulation of the press." [Ed: emphasis added]"

When was the last time that you remember the MSM quoting conservative SCOTUS justices?

This brings us to the point that I want to make. It is true that there is a judicial assault on free speech. It is true that this activist judge has found a penumbra emanating from election campaign finance to a citizen initiative. It is true that justices Scalia and Thomas predicted that the decision on MCCONNELL V. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION had such far reaching implications. These are significant.

But the larger question is: What if Scalia and Thomas are prophesying once again? In my last post on the recent SCOTUS decisions, I quoted some of Scalia's and Thomas' dissents. They are worth revisiting again.

On McCreary vs ACLU, KY (Ten Commandments display case), Scalia:

I have remarked before that it is an odd jurisprudence that bases the unconstitutionality of a government practice that does not actually advance religion on the hopes of the government that it would do so. See Edwards, 482 U. S., at 639. But that oddity pales in comparison to the one invited by today’s analysis: the legitimacy of a government action with a wholly secular effect would turn on the misperception of an imaginary observer that the government officials behind the action had the intent to advance religion.

On Kelo (the eminent domain case), Thomas:

"I cannot agree. If such "economic development" takings are for a "public use," any taking is, and the Court has erased the Public Use Clause from our Constitution, as Justice O'Connor powerfully argues in dissent. Ante, at 1-2, 8-13. I do not believe that this Court can eliminate liberties expressly enumerated in the Constitution and therefore join her dissenting opinion. Regrettably, however, the Court's error runs deeper than this. Today's decision is simply the latest in a string of our cases construing the Public Use Clause to be a virtual nullity, without the slightest nod to its original meaning. In my view, the Public Use Clause, originally understood, is a meaningful limit on the government's eminent domain power. Our cases have strayed from the Clause's original meaning, and I would reconsider them. [Ed: emphasis added]"

Scalia is saying that the door has been open for the removal of "In God We Trust" from our coinage. That "under God" could be removed from the Pledge of Allegiance. It is not difficult to imagine penumbral adventures into "restricting the free exercise" after this ruling as well.

Thomas not only says that the court restricts our liberties but that it declares open season on the property of citizens and that we simply are no longer secure in our own possessions. The coming land grab is nothing less than chilling.

And it doesn't take much to imagine what would happen in the case of a municipality against a church contesting an initiative against Christmas displays in which the Church both displayed and spoke about the importance of them during the initiative process - with the result that the Church lost its property to the municipalities' eminent domain.

Sound "over the top" to you?

Give it a couple of years.


Michelle Malkin writes:

A Thurston Co., Washington State judge has just ruled: "that on-air editorial comments by two of my old friends, Seattle talk hosts Kirby Wilbur and John Carlson of KVI-AM, are considered in-kind campaign contributions, subject to reporting under state disclosure laws." ...

The ruling has attracted attention beyond Washington's borders. "It is absolutely stunning in terms of the philosophical and theoretical questions it raises," says Michael Harrison, publisher of the talk-radio trade magazine Talkers; Harrison adds that he's not aware of a similar case elsewhere in the country. In Harrison's view, if no money changed hands then there's no contribution.

"Otherwise you can subject it to taxes, limits on contributions, all kinds of things that get in the way of free speech. To put a value on it is a very dangerous precedent." (In response to the ruling and to meet a deadline, the initiative campaign estimated the value of the hosts' work at $20,000).

Brian Maloney, a former Seattle-area talk-show host who now runs a national blog on talk-radio issues, raises this question: If talk-radio comments count as political contributions, why not newspaper editorials? Or Web sites?
Read the rest ...

My bold
Be afraid ... be very afraid!