ibejim's Blog

In the midst of economic troubles and much anticipation of a new administration about to enter the White House, the potential return of the Fairness Doctrine hasn’t gotten much attention. But on the eve of President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration, Republican members of Congress haven’t forgotten.

GOP Sens. Jim DeMint, S.C. and James Inhofe, Okla., along with two of their House colleagues, Reps. Mike Pence, Ind. and Greg Walden, Ore., introduced the Broadcaster Freedom Act at a press conference in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 7. 

DeMint, who is named on the Senate of version of the bill, the DeMint-Thune Senate bill, S. 34., told a group of reporters that he would fight any effort by the federal government to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine.

“We want to serve notice with the Broadcaster Freedom Act that we as Republicans are drawing a line in the sand and I hope this won’t just be Republicans,” DeMint said. “We’re looking for Democratic co-sponsors, but we are not going to allow this rule to be reenacted either by the FCC, by the Obama administration or by Congress. One of the most important freedoms we have is for people to know the truth about what we’re doing here and people learn more about what we’re doing from talk radio probably than from anything else in the country today.”

Rep. Greg Walden, one of the namesakes of the Pence-Walden bill, the House version of the Broadcaster Freedom Act, ,said there were instances of the use of the Fairness Doctrine as a political weapon.

“There is evidence in the past that administrations of both parties have used the Fairness Doctrine to go after people they oppose by threatening their licenses when those licenses were up for renewal,” Walden said. “And that’s the core of the issue here – is that government bureaucrats will decide whether a broadcast station owner gets his license or her license again – or is somehow punished for not having exactly the right other view on the airwaves.”

Walden also said the Doctrine would have a chilling effect on free speech in general. Radio station owners would be less likely to allow any violation of the Fairness Doctrine on their airwaves if they thought their station and its license would be threatened.

“Nobody with that capital investment would take that risk if they’re going to lose it all, lose their license because maybe they didn’t have the right person in place,” Walden continued. “So, if you are for free speech, and we should be in this country, then you should be against reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine or some other version of it.”

In 2007, Inhofe told a talk show host that he once heard Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. and Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. discuss legislating a version of the Fairness Doctrine back into existence. “And I said to that, ‘you miss the whole point, you know. It’s market driven and there’s no market for your stuff,” Inhofe said. He also cited an effort by John Podesta, the founder and president of the Center for American Progress, and currently the head of the Obama-Biden transition team, to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine.

“This effort to get this done was formalized a year and a half ago when John Podesta, who now has a different job, came out with this document – The Structural Imbalance for Political Talk Radio,” Inhofe said. “And it’s pretty scathing if you stop and look at it. On page 11, it says if you don’t do, talking about station owners, if you don’t do as we tell you to do in terms of addressing the content, quote, ‘if commercial radio broadcasters are unwilling to abide by these regulatory standards – a spectrum fee should be levied on owners to directly support local, regional and national public broadcasting.’”

Inhofe maintained it was a serious threat because it used rhetoric meant to intimidate station owners. Now, with Democrats controlling the White House and both houses of Congress, it’s even more of a threat.

“Now that’s enough to put the fear of God into anyone who’s out there in this business,” Inhofe said. “And I look at this really as intimidation, not as what is going to happen. But people are going to start being afraid of what kind of content is out there. So, this document pretty well formalizes that a year and a half ago they said, this is something we’re going to try to do and we now have a Democrat administration coming in. So I think it’s very important right now and I agree with my colleagues as how critical this issue is.”

The Fairness Doctrine was implemented by the FCC in 1949 in an attempt to ensure that broadcasters presented balanced and fair coverage of controversial subject matter. In 1985, the FCC determined that the Fairness Doctrine was no longer necessary due to the emergence of a “multiplicity of voices in the marketplace.”

According to a release from DeMint’s office, the FCC was also of the view that the Fairness Doctrine may have violated the First Amendment. In a 1987 case, the courts declared that the doctrine was not mandated by Congress and the FCC did not have to continue to enforce it. Twice Congress has passed legislation restoring the Fairness Doctrine, but Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush vetoed the bills.

Can anyone give me a logical reason why such legislation should be instituted??

A MAN has smashed his way into an adult shop and had sex with blow-up dolls before abandoning the sex toys in a nearby lane.

Business owners in Cairns believe the same culprit is responsible for break-ins and till thefts at the Sapphire Bar on Lake St and three break-ins at the Laneway Adult Shop off Spence St in recent days.

His method of entry is to smash through walls and squeeze through tight holes, The Cairns Post reports.

The owner of the adult shop, who wished to be named only as Vogue, said that in a first unreported break-in, the man had stolen five dolls and had sex with one of them.

“He has been taking the dolls out the back and blowing them up and using the dolls and leaving them in the alley,” he said.

“It is totally bizarre. It is a real concern that someone like that is out on the street.”

The burglar again smashed through a wall in the roof area of the shop on either Monday night or early yesterday morning but was scared off by a newly installed alarm system.

Vogue and David Sharman, the owner of the Sapphire Bar on Lake St that has a rear entry in the same lane as the adult shop, both believe they have been targeted by the same thief.

Both men said fleeting video images showed the burglar as being a tall, skinny Caucasian. He has left DNA evidence at the crime scene.

Mr Sharman said in one break-in at his business: "The burglar smashed a hole near the top of the roof line. He then clambered 15m down a sheer wall.

"He (only) took the surveillance recorders - we found them in the bin."

Read more on this story at The Cairns Post

Somebody ought to hook this guy up! On second thought, That might be hard to do, after this story.

Another strange story from this site. Call this one....."I want my kidney back...#$@%...

Coulter vs. The Counter-Coulters

by L. Brent Bozell III
January 07, 2009

Ann Coulter’s new book “Guilty” is out and two things are certain: It will surely be another best-seller, and she will once again drive the Left bonkers. No institution will be more offended than the national press. Prepare to witness their meltdown.

The Drudge Report caused a firestorm when anonymous NBC insiders leaked the word that Coulter had been “banned for life” from that network. CBS featured her on “The Early Show” and a combative Harry Smith tried to insult her to the extreme. He called her “goofy,” “simplistic,” “sophomoric,” and a “whiner.” “You should have a cross,” he said dismissively. “You should put yourself up on a cross.” Why are they so upset?

The so-called “objective” media clearly feel threatened because they are the very liberals Coulter is attacking. If they weren’t liberals, none of her mockery of liberals would bother them. Oh, they might not appreciate her style, as some conservatives don’t. But they wouldn’t have pitched debates inside their walls about how they will savage her in interviews – and I defy the networks to deny this – or how they would remove her from their airwaves altogether.

Those rumored bans have been demanded by the leftist lobbyists for the Censorship Doctrine – people who say they oppose “conservative misinformation,” but clearly want conservatives tossed from the radio and TV airwaves before “misinformation” or just plain conservative thought spills out. They have pressured the networks to stop helping Coulter sell books. Freedom of speech is truly a dangerous concept when conservatives exercise it.

But liberals who claim to oppose “inflammatory rhetoric” on television when it comes from conservatives have no problem with uncivil liberalism. Or 100 percent hate-filled left-wing character assassination. Take NBC, which could not look sillier if it ever seriously banned Coulter for being hyperbolic, when vicious, hyperbolic liberals (Olbermann, Maddow, and Matthews) dominate MSNBC.

It’s easy to run down a list of inflammatory liberals who are welcomed on the TV morning shows. Start with Kitty Kelley’s wild “investigative” books on the Reagans or the Bushes. Or Michael Moore’s kooky conspiracy theories. Or Al Franken suggesting Karl Rove and Scooter Libby should be executed over Plamegate. (NBC’s Matt Lauer and his off-camera crew laughed at that.)

Or recall Bill Maher on his HBO show in 2007 suggesting Arianna Huffington shouldn’t ban commenters on her website wishing Dick Cheney had died in a terrorist attack in Afghanistan. “That’s a funny joke,” Maher said. “If this isn’t China, shouldn’t you be able to say that?” He added that Cheney’s death by suicide bomber might be a public service: “I’m just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact.”

Harry Smith hosted Maher on CBS just months ago on his faith-mocking movie “Religulous” and didn’t say one discouraging word to him about his caustic remarks about Cheney or his hateful anti-Christian bigotry. Not one word.

But when Ann Coulter speaks, the brass knuckles come out. In 2007, Coulter was heavily criticized for joking that she couldn’t talk about John Edwards, since an ABC actor was forced to apologize for saying “EDIT” at the Golden Globes. Liberals were furious. Coulter responded by saying next time, she’d echo Bill Maher and just wish Edwards died in a terrorist attack. Elizabeth Edwards then denounced Coulter for suggesting she wanted her husband dead. Harry Smith invited Mrs. Edwards on CBS, offered her brief softballs and let her verbally whack Coulter with a bat.

Smith is an enormous hypocrite. He completely ignored vicious remarks by Mrs. Edwards just days before, in accepting a “Rage for Justice” award, that the Bush administration was waging a class war that compared to slaughters in Darfur:

“The White House has led the charge against working people, in their own class war. The late, great Molly Ivins once wrote: ‘If there was class warfare, that war was long over. And it was a massacre… a genocide to which there have been words of acknowledgment, as there have in Darfur, but as with Darfur, no meaningful action.’”

But when Ann Coulter comes on the set with Smith, the gloves come off.

Ann Coulter’s liberal-bashing columns and books and television appearances are fun for conservatives, simply because there’s nothing funnier for the right that witnessing CBS putting up on its own screen a Coulter quote about Ted Kennedy and CBS: “Kennedy may be a drunken slob, but unlike CBS News anchors, he is not certifiably insane.”

Call Coulter outrageous, call her a bomb-thrower, even state she goes beyond the pale of civility, if that’s your read. But do not assign that label to Coulter and then present your on-air love and kisses and giggles to all the public leftist hate-spewing that far exceeds any perceived incivility by Coulter. That is utterly transparent liberalism, and utterly transparent hypocrisy.

"Because the truth is that promoting science isn't just about providing resources - it's about protecting free and open inquiry. It's about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It's about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it's inconvenient - especially when it's inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us. That will be my goal as President of the United States - and I could not have a better team to guide me in this work."

—President-elect Barack Obama's Radio Address

Now, from a team member..

"The few climate-change "skeptics" with any sort of scientific credentials continue to receive attention in the media out of all proportion to their numbers, their qualifications, or the merit of their arguments. … The extent of unfounded skepticism about the disruption of global climate by human-produced greenhouse gases is not just regrettable, it is dangerous. It has delayed - and continues to delay - the development of the political consensus that will be needed"…

—John Holdren, from a commentary published in the Boston Globe, nominated by Obama as Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

I don't get it? Something fails to match-up here. A bold faced liar like Holdren certainly doesn't live up to Obama's promise

Change?

Or, control through change?

Welcome to the Global Warming Myth round-up, the first for 2009. I’m going to go ahead and assume that our friend The Daily Bayonet is still enjoying time with his visiting family, so I’ve put together the best-of-the-best for this week’s review.

Send your best wishes over to Klockarman, who broke his arm earlier this week. I hear he’s going to hunt and peck out blog posts with five fingers and an elbow now. Have a speedy recovery!

Now, on with the review:

• Composting saves the planet, right? Wrong. The worms used in compost heaps emit a greenhouse gas far more powerful that carbon dioxide. Let’s all just go back to burning our trash, you know, like we did back in the ‘70s.

• On a tip from Tom Nelson: Washington state will have to close over a dozen state parks due to budget constraints, but as $25 million to spend on solar panels for prisons.
• Thomas over at Climate Change Fraud tells us why subsidizing nations like India, China and Brazil to cut greenhouse gas emissions is delusional.
• Christopher Booker delivers the eulogy for global warming. So many climate change predictions in 2008. So many of them failed.
• Heliogenic Climate Change found out that Britain only has one year left to prevent dormice and house sparrows from reaching a point of terminal decline. Let’s check up on them this time next year.
• That pesky sea ice just won’t vanish like the plans say it should. Antarctic ice greater in November 2008 than in 1979. Let’s just call that a win for the good guys.
• Did you see this video that’s been on the front page all week? CNN Meteorologist exposes the global warming myth on television.
• The planet is slowing down, and some are blaming it on all that pesky carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases stuck in the atmosphere. We had to add a leap second this year, but the question has to be asked: how much of that can be blamed on the SUV?
• Plan on saving money by purchasing that fuel-efficient or hybrid vehicle. You won’t.
• Japan’s government is so desperate to cut their greenhouse emissions that they’re paying their citizens loads to install them.
• Check out the Kyoto Files, part four for this week. Tony continues to take us through the baloney that is the Kyoto Protocol.
• Physicists are bringing some common sense to the global warming debate.
• Got a green thumb? Are you green with envy? Can you spell green? You may be entitled to some of Obama’s stimulus package.
• Bigger government in the Philippines as Manila votes to create a climate change body.
• James Hansen is crying fowl over the NOAA muzzling scientists. But don’t the global alarmists do the same to dissenting opinion?
• Oh those big, bad oil companies. They’re part of the conspiracy, you see. They hate giving up profits so much that they…wait, they’re creating biofuels for jets now? Does this mean we can get back on the big oil payroll, alarmists?
• Dr. Roy Spencer has launched his own blog. Welcome to the blogosphere, Dr. Spencer!
• Klockarman discovers that alarmists don’t want The Oregonian to print letters to the editor from skeptics. Skeptics are too snarky, and clever, you see.
• Natural disasters killed over 220,000 in 2008. A good third of them from earthquakes, which aren’t even caused by global warming…yet.
• Want a history lesson on temperature? Look at what has happened in the last 25 years
• Do you hate koalas and polar bears? Good. Because if you question this, you hate them.
• James Hansen has asked the Obama’s to redistribute wealth in America. Can we start with him?