Nancy Pelosi wants to amend the First Amendment. She thinks corporations have too much speech and she wants to limit it.

When Pelosi says “special interests,” she means the interests of those opposed to establishment Democrats. Clear Channel is a corporation. So is Fox News. There are thousands of websites, newspapers, think tanks and political action committees that Pelosi and the Democrats consider corporations.

In Citizens v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that the free speech of corporations is protected by the First Amendment. Corporations that produce political books, documentaries, and other materials have the same freedom of speech rights as individuals.

Pelosi and the Democrats want a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s ruling. It is part of a “three-pronged strategy that also includes promoting the DISCLOSE Act, which would increase disclosure requirements for organizations running political ads,” writes Terence P. Jeffrey of CNSNews.

In order to sell the scheme, Pelosi and the Democrats have tied it to campaign finance reform.

“We have a clear agenda in this regard: Disclose, reform the system reducing the roll of money in campaigns, and amend the Constitution to rid it of this ability for special interests to use secret, unlimited, huge amounts of money flowing to campaigns,” Pelosi said on Thursday.

In ruling in favor if a First Amendment right for corporations, the “Supreme Court had unleashed a predator that was oozing slime into the political system, and that, indeed, is not an exaggeration,” said Pelosi. “Our Founders had an idea. It was called democracy. It said elections are determined by the people, the voice and the vote of the people, not by the bankrolls of the privileged few. This Supreme Court decision flies in the face of our Founders’ vision and we want to reverse it.”

Pelosi was joined by the usual suspects, including People for the American Way and Common Cause.

Both are globalist assets: People for the American Way is funded by the Rockfeller Brothers and Common Cause is a Soros operation.

Source: Infowars. Written by Kurt Nimmo. Video at link.

It’s unclear exactly why, but the Department of Homeland has been operating a ”Social Networking/Media Capability” program to monitor the top blogs, forums and social networks online for at least the past 18 months. Based on a privacy compliance review from last November recently obtained by Reuters, the purpose of the project is to “collect information used in providing situational awareness and establishing a common operating picture.” Whatever that means. Either way, the list of sites reported by Reuters reveals in a Wednesday afternoon exclusive is pretty intriguing:

Social Networks

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Myspace

Blogs

• The Drudge Report
• The Huffington Post
• The New York Times‘s Lede blog
• Wired’s Threat Level
• Wired’s Danger Room
• ABC News’ investigative blog The Blotter
• “blogs that cover bird flu … news and activity along U.S. borders … drug trafficking and cybercrime”

Multimedia

• Hulu
• YouTube
• Flickr

In conclusion, the Department of Homeland Security is just like you. We’ve seen no reports of The Atlantic Wire being on the list. But if we are, hello Department of Homeland Security employees — thanks for reading!

Source: The Atlantic Wire.

My Two Cents: Yes Fox News lies but so does all corporate media. Would these people respond the same way to Lawrence O’Donnell? If they’re expressing themselves freely, what gives them the right to prevent and censor Geraldo from doing his job and reporting on the event? Point is, it’s easier to chant like angst-ridden mindless sheep than to allow a reporter to question your beliefs and try to tap into your psyche and give you a platform to express your dissatisfaction to millions. Reason being, most of these people don’t know what their opinion is until it is handed down to them by some unseen anonymous power pulling the strings. They all want their voices to be heard but when an outlet is available they push it away because they know they can’t stand on their own two feet and effectively combat the system verbally. End Two Cents.

*Taken from Infowars. Written by Paul Joseph Watson.

Google-owned You Tube has sensationally censored a video clip showing Eric Schmidt at the 2011 Bilderberg Group conference, by removing the “honors” associated with the Alex Jones Channel and preventing the clip from going viral, while You Tube has also threatened to terminate the account altogether after baseless accusations of racism were made against an Obama Joker video for the second time.

Google chief Eric Schmidt betrayed his notorious disregard for online privacy in 2009 when he told CNBC, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Maybe Schmidt should take his own advice, because he’s obviously keen to prevent the world from finding out about his 2011 attendance of the Bilderberg conference and how he discussed new ways to police the Internet with other technology moguls from the likes of Facebook and Microsoft.

CONTINUED..

*Taken from The Examiner.

Documents made public yesterday by Judicial Watch describe extensive collusion by Federal Communications Commission officials with a left-wing advocacy group in a campaign to expand government regulation of the Internet.

The documents, obtained by Judicial Watch in a December 2010 Freedom of Information Act request, were created after Democrat appointees solidified their 3-2 control of the agency in March 2009.

Judicial Watch is a conservative nonprofit that specializes in using the FOIA and other avenues to expose corruption in government.

The coordination between FCC officials and Free Press, the advocacy group, supported a proposal for the agency to regulate access to the Internet as if it were a public utility, in the interest of ensuring “Net Neutrality.”

CONTINUED..

*Taken from SF Gate. Video at link.

The hip, transparent and social media-loving Obama administration is showing its analog roots. And maybe even some hypocrisy highlights.

White House officials have banished one of the best political reporters in the country from the approved pool of journalists covering presidential visits to the Bay Area for using now-standard multimedia tools to gather the news.

The Chronicle’s Carla Marinucci – who, like many contemporary reporters, has a phone with video capabilities on her at all times – pulled out a small video camera last week and shot some protesters interrupting an Obama fundraiser at the St. Regis Hotel.

She was part of a “print pool” – a limited number of journalists at an event who represent their bigger hoard colleagues – which White House press officials still refer to quaintly as “pen and pad” reporting.

But that’s a pretty Flintstones concept of journalism for an administration that presents itself as the Jetsons. Video is every bit a part of any journalist’s tool kit these days as a functioning pen that doesn’t leak through your pocket.

In fact, Carla and her reporting colleague, Joe Garofoli, founded something called “Shaky Hand Productions” – the semi-pro, sometimes vertiginous use of a Flip or phone camera by Hearst reporters to catch more impromptu or urgent moments during last year’s California gubernatorial race that might otherwise be missed by TV.

The name has become its own brand; often politicians even ask if anyone from Shaky Hand will show at their event. For Carla, Joe and reporters at other Hearst newsrooms where Shaky Hand has taken hold, this was an appropriate dive into use of other media by traditional journalists catering to audiences who expect their news delivered in all modes and manners.

That’s the world we live in and the President of the United States claims to be one of its biggest advocates.

Just the day before Carla’s Stone Age infraction, Mr. Obama was at Facebook seated next to its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, and may as well have been wearing an “I’m With Mark” t-shirt for all the mutual admiration going back and forth.

“The main reason we wanted to do this is,” Obama said of his appearance, “first of all, because more and more people, especially young people, are getting their information through different media. And historically, part of what makes for a healthy democracy, what is good politics, is when you’ve got citizens who are informed, who are engaged.”

Informed, in other words, through social and other digital media where videos of news are posted.

The President and his staffers deftly used social media like Twitter and Facebook in his election campaign and continue to extol the virtues and value. Except, apparently, when it comes to the press.

So what’s up with the White House? We can’t say because neither Press Secretary Jay Carney nor anyone from his staff would speak on the record.

Other sources confirmed that Carla was vanquished, including Chronicle editor Ward Bushee, who said he was “informed that Carla was removed as a pool reporter.” Which shouldn’t be a secret in any case because it’s a fact that affects the newsgathering of our largest regional paper (and sfgate)and how local citizens get their information.

What’s worse: more than a few journalists familiar with this story are aware of some implied threats from the White House of additional and wider punishment if Carla’s spanking became public. Really? That’s a heavy hand usually reserved for places other than the land of the free.

But bravery is a challenge, in particular for White House correspondents, most of whom are seasoned and capable journalists. They live a little bit in a gilded cage where they have access to the most powerful man in the world but must obey the rules whether they make sense or not.

CBS News reporter, Mark Knoller, has publicly protested the limited press access to Obama fundraisers, calling the policy “inconsistent.” “It’s no way to do business,” wrote Politico’s Julie Mason, “especially [for] a candidate who prides himself on transparency.”

A 2009 blog by the White House Director of New Media states that “President Obama is committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history.”

Not last week.

Mason referred to the San Francisco St. Regis protest as “a highly newsworthy event” where “reporters had to rely on written pool reports…”

Except, thanks to Carla’s quick action with her camera, they didn’t.

I get that all powerful people and institutions want to control their image and their message. That’s part of their job, to create a mythology that allows them to continue being powerful.

But part of the press’ job is to do the opposite, to strip away the cloaks and veneers. By banning her, and by not acknowledging how contemporary media works, the White House did not just put Carla in a cage but more like one of those stifling pens reserved for calves on their way to being veal.

Carla cannot do her job to the best of her ability if she can’t use all the tools available to her as a journalist. The public still sees the videos posted by protesters and other St. Regis attendees, because the technology is ubiquitous. But the Obama Administration apparently wants to give the distinct advantage to citizen witnesses at the expense of professionals.

Why? Well, they won’t tell us.

Some White House reporters are grumbling almost as much as the Administration about Carla’s “breaking the rules.” I can understand how they’d be irritated. If you didn’t get the video because you understood you weren’t supposed to, why should someone else get it who isn’t following the longstanding civilized table manners?

The White House Press Correspondents’ Association pool reporting guidelines warn about “no hoarding” of information and also say, “pool reports must be filed before any online story or blog.” While uploading her video probably was the best way to file her report, Carla may have technically busted the letter of that law.

But the guidelines also say, “Print poolers can snap pictures or take video. They are not obliged to share these pictures…but can make them available if they so choose.”

Then what guidelines is the White House applying here? Again, we don’t know.

What the Administration should have done is to use this incident to precipitate a reasonable conversation about changing their 1950′s policies into rules more suited to 2011. Dwight Eisenhower was the last President who let some new media air into the room when he lifted the ban on cameras at press conferences in 1952.

“We’ve come full circle here,” Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Foundation’s Project for Excellence in Journalism told me today. “A newspaper reporter is being punished because she took pictures with a moving camera. We live in a world where there are no longer distinctions. The White House is trying to live by 20th century distinctions.”

The President’s practice not just with transparency but in other dealings with the press has not been tracking his words, despite the cool glamour and easy conversation that makes him seem so much more open than the last guy.

It was his administration that decided to go after New York Times reporter James Risen to get at his source in a book he wrote about the CIA. For us here in SF who went through the BALCO case and other fisticuffs with the George W. Bush Attorney General’s prosecutors, this is deja vu.

Late today, there were hints that the White House might be backing off the Carla Fatwa.

Barack Obama sold himself successfully as a fresh wind for the 21st century. In important matters of communication, technology, openness and the press, it’s not too late for him to demonstrate that.

*Taken from Infowars. Written by Kurt Nimmo.

In response to the idiotic and pointless burning of the Koran by a Florida pastor and the deadly riots that followed in Afghanistan, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has proposed limiting the First Amendment.

“I wish we could find a way to hold people accountable. Free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war,” Graham told CBS’ Bob Schieffer on Sunday.

Graham mentioned government censorship of the First Amendment during the Second World War. FDR signed Executive Order 8985 in December of 1941 and established the Office of Censorship. The order gave a legion of bureaucrats “absolute discretion” over the exercise of the First Amendment and the free speech of all Americans.

In the years following FDR’s decree, the government attempted to squelch free speech a number of times for political reasons, most notably in regard to the Pentagon Papers. During Bush Senior’s invasion of Iraq in 1991, the Pentagon revisited wartime censorship and prevented journalists from independently reporting the news. Bush and Reagan tightly controlled the flow of information during the invasions of Panama and Grenada.

In 2004, then vice president Dick Cheney outlined what Americans should expect henceforth – a war against shadowy enemies that will last generations.

President Bush went so far as to tell NBC’s Matt Lauer it was possible the war could never be won, while Democrat John Kerry said terror would probably never be done away with, but that it might be reduced to a “nuisance.”

Graham reminded us that our rulers have in mind a forever war not unlike the one envisioned by Joe Haldeman in his Hugo-winning 1976 novel by the same name. It is said Haldeman wrote the science fiction novel in part as an antiwar response to Robert Heinlein’s fascistic Starship Troopers. Haldeman served in Vietnam.

It seems Graham and his neocon fellow travelers are in agreement with Heinlein’s premise in the novel that social responsibility requires being prepared to make individual sacrifice, especially when humanity is engaged in a never-ending “Bug War.” A character in the novel, Colonel Dubois, specifically criticizes the Declaration of Independence as naïve and unrealistic.

According to neocon globalist faction, our once proud heritage of liberty and its reflection in the Bill of Rights has “no contemporary relevance,” as Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnettnoted in 2007. “Sure it was fine that persons should be secure in their papers and effects back in the old days when there wasn’t a danger of terrorism and mass murder,” said the professor in regard to the Fourth Amendment. It is “archaic [and] we don’t need it anymore.” Strangely, Mr. Barnett is considered a libertarian.

Sen. Lindsey Graham’s cavalier attitude regrading the First Amendment and its imagined subservience to the dictates of an undeclared war against enemies largely manufactured by government is once in vogue now that a Democrat president has attacked yet another faction of officially designated Muslim enemies.

Installed puppet Hamid Karzai – a former advisor for the transnational Unocal – has demanded our representatives draft a resolution condemning the free speech of Florida pastor Terry Jones, who unwisely burned the Koran in order to make a political statement.

The First Amendment was drafted specifically to protect political speech. The cherished idea of true sovereigns free to speak their minds, however, soon withered under attack – beginning with the Alien and Sedition Acts passed in 1798 by the Federalists – and has continued on and off until this day.

“Ten to 20 people have been killed,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “We’ll take a look at this of course. As to whether we need hearings or not, I don’t know.”

It is wholly predictable that the government will spend its time and our money – or the money they borrow – to condemn an individual who has managed to offend the medieval religious sensibilities of people who kill Christians and burn churches. Seven UN workers in the Afghan town of Mazar-e Sharif died Friday during riots. Mr. Jones may have outraged millions of people, but he did not kill anybody.

Congress has yet to condemn Muslims in Afghanistan who have burned the U.S. flag and torched aneffigy of Obama. According to MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, who filled in for Chris Matthews the other day, burning the Koran is far worse than burning the U.S. flag.

Of course, Muslims have all the right in the world to burn the U.S. flag and burn Obama in effigy – so long as they own the flag and the materials they used to patch together Obama’s likeness.

Terry Jones, according to no shortage of Congress critters, does not have this right, even though his country has a Constitution its Congress has sworn to uphold and defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

*Taken from the Drudge Report.

Staffers with Vice President Joe Biden confined an ORLANDO SENTINEL reporter in a closet this week to keep him from mingling with high-powered guests gathered for a Dem fundraiser.

Reporter Scott Powers was the designated “pool reporter” for the vice president’s Wednesday visit to the massive Winter Park, Fla., home of developer and philanthropist Alan Ginsburg. The veep hadn’t arrived yet but most of the 150 guests (minimum $500 donation) had. They were busy noshing on caprese crostini with oven-dried mozzarella and basil, rosemary flatbread with grapes honey and gorgonzola cheese and bacon deviled eggs, before a lunch of grilled chicken Caesar and garden vegetable wraps.

Not so for Powers. A “low-level staffer” put Powers in a storage closet and then stood guard outside the door, Powers told the DRUDGE REPORT. “When I’d stick my head out, they’d say, ‘Not yet. We’ll let you know when you can come out.’”

And no crustini for Powers, either. He made do with a bottle of water to sip as he sat at a tiny makeshift desk, right next to a bag marked “consignment.” Powers was closeted at about 11:30 a.m., held for about an hour and 15 minutes, came out for 35 minutes of remarks by Biden and Sen. Bill Nelson, Florida Democrat, and then returned to his jail for the remainder of the event.

Powers’ phone didn’t work in the closet, but his Blackberry did, so he fired a picture of his impromptu prison to his editors, who posted a short blog item on the lack of freedom of the press under the veep’s control.

Powers didn’t mention his confinement in either of his pool reports that day, saying only that “press coverage was limited to a single pool reporter, filing on behalf of all local media, who was allowed to listen to the remarks but not given an opportunity to talk with anyone at the event.”

On Friday, Powers said, the home’s owner called him. “He said he had no idea they’d put me in a closet and was very sorry. He said he was just following their lead and was extremely embarrassed by the whole thing.”

Developing…

My Two Cents: Anyone else starting to think this whole WIkileaks thing was bullshit? Just throwin’ that out there. They will try and control everything though, won’t they? The reason the Internet has succeeded to the level that it has is because of the fact that it is a free market entity. Now the governments of the world want to control the free flow of information. In time, the Net will be as full of as much bullshit as the mainstream, government approved, media. You’ll also be jailed for your 1st Amendment rights. End Two Cents.

*Taken from iTnews.

WikiLeaks sparks push for tighter controls.

The United Nations is considering whether to set up an inter-governmental working group to harmonise global efforts by policy makers to regulate the internet.

Establishment of such a group has the backing of several countries, spearheaded by Brazil.

At a meeting in New York on Wednesday, representatives from Brazil called for an international body made up of Government representatives that would to attempt to create global standards for policing the internet – specifically in reaction to challenges such as WikiLeaks.

The Brazilian delegate stressed, however, that this should not be seen as a call for an “takeover” of the internet.

India, South Africa, China and Saudi Arabia appeared to favour a new possible over-arching inter-government body.

However, Australia, US, UK, Belgium and Canada and attending business and community representatives argued there were risks in forming yet another working group that might isolate itself from the industry, community users and the general public.

“My concern is that if we were to make a move to form a governmental-only body then that would send a very strong signal to civil society that their valuable contribution was not required or was not being looked for,” an un-named Australian representative told the meeting.

Debate on the creation of a new inter-governmental body stemmed from a UN Economic and Social Council resolution 2010/2 of 19 July.

The resolution invited the UN Secretary-General “to convene open and inclusive consultations involving all Member States and all other stakeholders with a view to assisting the process towards enhanced cooperation in order to enable Governments on an equal footing to carry out their roles and responsibilities in respect of international public policy issues pertaining to the Internet but not of the day-to-day technical and operational matters that do not impact upon those issues.”

Much debate concerned the meaning of “enhanced cooperation” and whether a new inter-governmental body was required. Participants also debated the roles of existing organisations – such as the Internet Governance Forum, ICANN and the ITU.

The IGF – an organisation that informs the UN but makes no decisions – is running close to the end of a five-year mandate, due to expire at ?the end of the year.

The likes of ISOC, ICANN and more recently the World Information Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA) have recently expressed concerns [PDF]? that a working panel to decide on the future of the IGF has been limited to representatives from member-states.

“Australia is a very strong supporter of the Internet Governance Forum,” the unidentified Australian UN representative said at the New York meeting this week. “That is very much due to the multi-stake-holder approach of the IGF. It is an inclusive process.”

Australia’s Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy said that Australian Government welcomed the resolution of the Second Committee of the United Nation General Assembly (UNGA) to extend the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) for a further five years.

The DBCDE said it would like to see the organisation retain an open and participatory membership.

“Australia has always supported the participation of civil society and the private sector in the IGF and regards their participation as being integral to the IGF’s success,” a spokesman told iTnews.

*Taken from the Examiner. Written by Mark Tapscott.

You think the most essential purpose of journalism and the reason the Founders included freedom of the press in the First Amendment was to insure independent reporting about government, politicians, and public policy issues, right?

Well, you must be wrong because Fox News Washington Bureau Chief Bill Sammon is getting a raft of garbage from liberal activists masquerading as journalists at Media Matters, some liberal bloggers and a scattering of real journalists who ought to know better.

Why? Politico’s headline captures the controversy perfectly: “Fox editor urged climate skepticism.”

A journalist being skeptical? Who would ever have thought such a thing could be. I don’t know, maybe anybody who has heard this (attributed long ago to a crusty desk editor at the illustrious City News Bureau in Chicago): “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.”

In other words, we journalists are paid to BE SKEPTICAL.

For the record, here’s what Sammon said in a Dec. 8, 2009, memo to his reporting staff shortly after the Climategate global warming email scandal erupted:

“Given the controversy over the veracity of climate change data, we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies.”

Now I am from out of town and all, but Sammon’s injuction sounds to me exactly like what editors are supposed to tell their charges – report what A claims and what B says about what A claims, but keep your personal views about both A and B out of it.

Note that Sammon includes both those who say the planet has warmed – i.e. global warming advocates – and those who claim the opposite, that the planet has cooled – global warming critics. How much more even-handed – dare I say it, fair and balanced? – can the guy be?

There is also the factual nature of Sammon’s statement that critics question data. Critics DO question the data for a warming planet. He doesn’t demand that his reporters agree with the critics about the data or tell viewers that the critics are right and the global warming advocates are wrong.

Yet, Salon’s headline claims the Fox news executive was “again caught demanding conservative spin.” And the lead that follows makes another false statement, claiming Sammon directed his “anchors and reporters to adopt right-wing spin when discussing the news.”

Are these people so arrogant as to think the rest of us are too stupid to see that Salon totally and completely misrepresented Sammon’s comment?

The back story here, of course, is that Media Matters is doing exactly what billionaire radical liberal financier George Soros paid it $1 million to do, which is to trash Fox News at every opportunity no matter what the facts might be in any given situation.

Watching this campaign unfold, it becomes clear that Fox News drives today’s extremist liberals into the same sort of eye-bulging, irrational, spittle-flying, blind rage that we saw back in the 1950s from the far right whack-jobs in the John Birch Society who claimed Ike was either a fool or a card-carrying commie.

Now, just so everybody reading this knows: Sammon is a former White House reporter for The Examiner. I count him as a friend, a respected colleague and a solid journalist. And Fox News puts me in front of a camera as a talking head once in a while.

So how long you think it will be before Sammon’s critics claim my comments here aren’t credible as a result? The reality is that the left-leaning MSNBC folks sit me down in front of their cameras to bloviate far more frequently than Fox does. Go figure.

So here’s something to ponder when the paid Fox detractors at Media Matters tell you Sammon and I are both former Washington Timesmen and are thus Republican mouthpieces:

I was inducted into the First Amendment Center’s Freedom of Information Hall of Fame a few years ago. I mention this not to boast, but because I was among a bunch of very smart people for whom I have great respect – even though they came predominantly from the liberal side of things.

But I don’t recall seeing anybody from Media Matters among the inductees.