More Censorship

This time from Democrats:

An early sign of this tendency was the orchestrated walkout by Democrat presidential candidates from debates co-sponsored by Fox News over the networks' presumed conservative bias. The spectacle was clownish at first glance, but it revealed a deep-seated aversion to question or debate that is not only unattractive in political leadership, but also downright ominous.

Then the House passed a bill to broaden the federal "hate crimes" law, which seeks to specify which inferred bigoted opinions involved in the commission of violent crime makes those crimes more offensive to society. Stripped of its emotional raison d'etre, the bill is essentially a thought-crimes bill. The violent acts were already illegal.

Of greater concern is the renewed push for the Fairness Doctrine. As reported in The American Spectator's "Washington Prowler," Democrat leaders in the U.S. House will, in their words, "aggressively pursue" the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine. Aides told TAE that Democrats were interested in the legislation specifically to limit conservative talk radio and have already begun to investigate certain targets, among them Rush Limbaugh, Bill Bennett, Michael Medved, and Dr. Richard Lind.

As I write this, on Wednesday afternoon, news surfaced on The Drudge Report that "[t]he Democratic Leadership is threatening to change the current House Rules regarding the Republican right to the Motion to Recommit or the test of germaneness on the motion to recommit." This change, which would "completely shut down the floor to the minority," would be the first change to the germaneness rule since 1822.

Others will no doubt point out that such heavy-handed squelching of dissent is 180 degrees out of phase with the Democrats' pre-election day promises of openness and fair dealings with the minority party. Nevertheless, winning on promises of new openness, fairer dealings, etc. and then reneging on them is a time-honored prelude to socialists usurping power in other countries. For that matter, so is silencing dissent.

Why is it lefty groups fear free speech? Simply, they cannot compete in the free marketplace of ideas--in the end they lose.