Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, May 17, 2010
In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Senator Mitch McConnell pointed out that Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan once argued that the government should have the power to ban books and censor political pamphlets, as yet more alarming information on Kagan’s hostility towards the First Amendment comes to light.
During the Citizens United vs. FEC case, Kagan’s office was asked by Chief Justice John Roberts if the government could ban publications it they were paid for by a corporation or labor union.
“If it’s a 500-page book, and at the end it says, ‘and so vote for x,’ the government could ban that?” Roberts asked, to which Kagan’s deputy, Malcolm L. Stewart, said the government could censor such information.
Justice Roberts blasted Kagan’s argument at the time, reports Newsmax.
“The government urges us in this case to uphold a direct prohibition on political speech. It asks us to embrace a theory of the First Amendment that would allow censorship not only of television and radio broadcasts, but of pamphlets, posters, the Internet, and virtually any other medium that corporations and unions might find useful in expressing their views on matters of public concern,” he wrote.
“Solicitor Kagan’s office in the initial hearing argued that it would be OK to ban books,” Senator McConnell said. “And then when there was a rehearing Solicitor Kagan herself in her first Supreme Court argument suggested that it might be OK to ban pamphlets.”
McConnell called for a full investigation of Kagan’s First Amendment stance in light of her “troubling” position on free speech, adding that classic political pamphlets like Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” and the Federalist Papers could be banned under Kagan’s logic.
Under Kagan’s definition of the government’s role in policing free speech, the state would also have a remit to censor things like newspaper editorials, as well as the political opinions of radio talk show hosts or television reporters. This is alarming given the fact that Obama’s information technology czar Cass Sunstein has called for the re-introduction of the “fairness doctrine,” which would also force political websites to carry mandatory government propaganda...
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